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"People like James Dobson act like they own the GOP, and that they're the true conservatives."

Here is what fascinates me:

You would think that what I posted would get a flurry of responses. It doesn't.

I posted the same thing a couple of days ago on a busy thread. Zip. Nadda. Stunned silence.

Truth be told, the religious right were latecomers to conservatism. They used to be democrats, until Republicans became competitive in the South.

Conservatism was a product of people like Milton Friedman. And Goldwater and Reagan. Social libertarians, by today's standards.

With the quotes I posted, FR writers would decry them all as rinos and liberals, with their limited vocabularies. Actually just not Christian enough for them.

Then along comes Ted Haggard, prodigy of Dobson. Yet not even that renders him speechless.

Here is what fascinates me:
You would think that what I posted would get a flurry of responses. It doesn't.
I posted the same thing a couple of days ago on a busy thread. Zip. Nadda. Stunned silence.
Truth be told, the religious right were latecomers to conservatism. They used to be democrats, until Republicans became competitive in the South.

Conservatism was a product of people like Milton Friedman. And Goldwater and Reagan. Social libertarians, by today's standards.

Your point, I guess, is that your insight is so powerful as to render those who would disagree speechless. Maybe.

Or...it may be that many (like me) are used to the invective and revisionism that's aimed at social conservatives. I see no logic in your epistle to refute, much like something I would find in the local rag or on MSNBC.

They have discovered, as have I, that trying to reason with fools will make one insane. We don't bother anymore.

It doesn't get any responses from social "conservatives" because that would require confronting the fact that they hijacked the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

In the spirit of fairness, I can hardly claim to have been there from the beginning, since I wasn't alive yet. I'm a Gen Xer, meaning I grew up with Reagan as President, but I wasn't really politically aware until I got to college. I studied economics, and became a conservative largely because of people like Milton Friedman. At the time, I didn't see any logical connection between political conservatism and social conservatism, and to date I still don't.