No ‘social issues’ - Pro-life tracts banned at Sacramento Tea Party event

California Catholic ^ | April 18, 2011

[GonzoII]

Bud Reeves, president of the Sanctity of Human Life Network Inc., reports that he was intercepted at a Tea Party rally in Sacramento on Saturday and ordered to stop distributing pro-life pamphlets to attendees.

The event was sponsored by NorCal Tea Party Patriots and held at the Cal Expo in Sacramento. Scheduled speakers, among others, included U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center and a contributor to Fox News, radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, and Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute.

“Today I attended the Sacramento area gathering of the Tea Party to hand out prolife tracts,” said Reeves in an April 16 email. “Given that the Tea Party purports to be an organization promoting the U.S. Constitution and all that it stands for, I thought my handing out of a small prolife tract promoting the most important civil right, the right to life, would be welcome. I was wrong. Not long after we started passing out the 7 thousand tracts we had printed for the event, we were told that we must stop the distribution, which was welcomed by most of the attendees we approached and who received the tract.”

Reeves said he asked why and was told, “Because we will not be involved in the ‘social issues.’ I asked to talk to a supervisor. I was escorted up to the stage area and when a supervisor did not appear, I returned to the crowd to continue handing out the tracts. Not long after I heard my name on the P.A. system, asking me to respond. I did so and was met by Mr. Rapini, the organizer of the Tea Party event.

[allmendream]

Well you can go on searching in your quest for the immaculate conservative that could have won in Massachusetts - the rest of us will just have to go on with existence here in the real world.

[wagglebee]

I notice someone trying to cobble together “entitlements” as being equivalent to social conservatism. I assume that’s the talking point de jour of Liberaltarians.

Yep, anyone who doesn't favor the unrestricted murder of the unborn,, disabled and elderly is a "statist" or whatever they want to call it.

The TRUTH is that they are statists because they advocate collecting taxes for Social Security Medicare from a person and then killing the person before they can collect what they've actually paid for.

[wtc911]

The winner in 2012 will need 68-70 million votes. Neither side can win without the 12-20 million ‘independent’ voters. Make the election on Roe v Wade and you lose those voters and give the hard left another judge on the SCOTUS. All you would accomplish would be guaranteeing RvW ad infinitum. Is that what you want? If so then don’t kid yourself about your principles.

[allmendream]

“America killed over 50 million taxpayers”

Not to get all Bill Bennett and Freakanomics on you; but you REALLY think all 50 million of those aborted would be tax-PAYERS rather than net recipients of taxpayer money?

[wagglebee]

Is it really that difficult for you to understand that Brown was portrayed as real conservative and still won?

[misterrob]

"The TRUTH is that they are statists because they advocate collecting taxes for Social Security Medicare from a person"

LIAR!!! Now you have revealed even more of your dishonest discussion tactics. You make up stuff about people and their position to advance your own agenda.

FAIL!!!

[circlecity]

"Social cons may be against abortion but many favor the nanny state and entitlements."

please provide some evidence to back up that statement. (And no I would have no problem with low tax people handing out leaflets at a pro-life rally - I welcome all conservatives to the table)

[Secret Agent Man]

I think the more importan part of it when someone says “keep morality out of it” is a premise that needs to be immediately rejected as false, as EVERY ISSUE has moral components to it.

Trying to compartmentalize issues as one or the other is a liberal tactic and we msut never fall for it. It’s why they hold so many diametrically opposed views at the same time but think they are consistent. They want government out of their bodies yet they want government to pay for their abortions. They want to kill innocent (no crimes) people before they are born yet won’t execute those that murder other people. They say they want people to get educated and be successful but when they do they want to punish them for their success. They wnat more money to go to welfare food programs at the same time they drive up food prices propping up ethanol. They think the solution to violence is to disarm those that would only ever consider using a weapon in self-defense.

If you start compartmentalizing issues you are going to be stuck with liberal pretzel logic. Compartmentalization is not real life. It’s the way liberals want life to be looked at, because they only have to defend an idea from one way, and if someone tries to point out the obvious problems of the idea from another view they cry ‘foul’ - ‘I don’t look at it that way’. Well that makes it easier for you but it isn’t correct.

[arrogantsob]

Every successful politician is pragmatic. Including Reagan. Don’t confuse pragmatism with opportunism or mere expediency.

[wagglebee]

In reality, many of them would be taxpayers and even have children who were taxpayers.

And they would ALL be consumers and that is what is necessary for an economy to prosper.

[allmendream]

Portrayed as a populist everyman who drove his truck to campaign rallies and would vote against 0bamacare, yes.

Portrayed as a fiscal and social conservative? Not really.

But dream on that the Massachusetts electorate is laying in wait for an actual conservative and salivating at the thought of voting for one if that helps you go to sleep at night.

[arrogantsob]

Are you sure that that a large portion of the 50 million would not have ended up on welfare?

[Nevadan]

re: “The Tea Party is making a huge mistake if they try to purge social issues from their agenda.”

Look, I’m totally pro-life. I even participated in Operation Rescue events and was arrested for blocking an abortion mill’s doors.

However, though I think the Tea Party organizer was a bit too blunt and possibly rude to the pro-life guy handing out tracts - the point remains that the Tea Party is all about stopping the fiscal irresponsibility and the confiscatory taxation of our state and federal governments.

It is that single most issue that has rallied Americans from several political points of view. I dare say, that if we can stop the insane spending by our state/federal governments, it will stop the money given to the abortion industry. It will also put a stop the “open-border illegal alien” issue as well.

Why? Because these issues (abortion/illegal aliens) are all part of the tremendous drain on tax-payers. Tea Partiers are against the spending of tax payer money that ultimately supports illegal aliens in this country, they are against giving taxpayer money to private organizations like Planned Parenthood, the National Endowment for the Arts, or to unconstitutional federal departments like the Dept. of Education.

The common ground among all these things is the spending, spending, spending by our government on these and other things it has no business doing - the Tea Partiers recognize that we can no longer afford any of this stuff because we are flat broke as a nation.

Allow the Tea Party to focus laser-like on stopping the government spending and this will take care of the majority of social issues as well without having to become a distinctly “pro-life” lobby group. It is true, I believe, that the out of control government spending is what has motivated the millions of voting Americans across party lines to rally together to stop it.

If we try to turn the Tea Party from it’s primary unifying theme of stopping insane government taxation and spending, it will also stop the monentum of the movement and bog it down and things we all obviously don’t agree on. It will fragment the support.

Getting our fiscal house in order will directly influence the government spending on social issues we want stopped as well.

[Secret Agent Man]

I think by definition if they favor the nanny state and entitlements, they aren’t really social conservatives.

Whether they think they are, that may be what’s going on. But I would regard them, at the very least, as social moderates.

It is really disastrous what we have done under the guise of ‘government compassion’. Two words that should never be next to each other. Government has no capacity to be compassionate. Government compassion is taxes. How much compassion do you feel when the government legally takes money you have earned and gives it to other people?

[wagglebee]

LIAR!!! Now you have revealed even more of your dishonest discussion tactics. You make up stuff about people and their position to advance your own agenda.

You are truly one of the most deranged trolls that I've ever seen on here.

Now, I fully understand that libertarians despise the pro-life movement, I just find it rather humorous how irate you all get when the reason why is exposed.

Obamacare must be a tough issue for libertarians, on the one hand you side with conservatives on the opposition to socialized medicine, but on the other hand libertarians love the idea of death panels.

[demshateGod]

Plus, once the tea party gets organized like that, with party leadership making the decisions for the masses, it’s dead. It’s just another political party. The way I see it, no body speaks for the tea party.

[pgyanke]

Neither side can win without the 12-20 million ‘independent’ voters. Make the election on Roe v Wade and you lose those voters and give the hard left another judge on the SCOTUS.

Is that what you want? If so then don’t kid yourself about your principles.

Here we go. I'm really sick of this. In every poll of life issues, life wins hands-down. When they make it about "choice"... life still wins... but it's closer. Lies and obfuscations are the tools of the left. I won't be bated by another false choice. Those independents will not break entirely to the liberal side if we take (and articulate) a strong pro-life message. They could break down the middle, but they won't go entirely one side or the other. On the contrary, I would argue that most Americans recoil from the luke-warm panty-wastes unable to take a moral stand that we are offered election after election. We want a Reagan and you continue to compromise us into a Schwartzen-Kennedy.

Is that what you want? If so, then don't kid yourself about your prospects for winning.

[wagglebee]

Are you sure that that a large portion of the 50 million would not have ended up on welfare?

There is no reason to believe that the percentage would have been any larger than the percentage of the population as a whole. And regardless they would have all been consumers.