Understand the roots of "The Progressive Movement' are that they are Fascist. Mussolini was one of the earliest advocates of the philosophy - and was, in the 1930's, widely revered by many radical leftists in the US.
All of this history is well documented in "Liberal Fascism" by Jonah Goldberg - great read.
Essentially - your term "Republican Progressives" is an oxymoron. Progressives are "statists" and belong to the left.
None of this means that there are not liberal Republicans - RINO's....or as I prefer... "imposters", like I believe McCain to be. But lets keep our terms straight - it is in the interest of the enemy to conflate and confuse all these terms.
I have to say that the anti-gay protestations are a bit unfair.
I have read a number of postings on the “Gay Patriot” web site over the last year. Even though most posters are gay and conservative, even on that site they aren’t all jumping on the cultural acceptance bandwagon. And on every other issue, the vast majority are absolutely true conservatives (pro-military, pro-smaller gov’t, pro-life, pro tax cuts, etc.). Most posters there are more orthodox in their conservatism than any RINO.
Before anyone gets all upset at one brief paragraph of defense for this tiny niche group (gay conservatives) I suppose I’ll have to declare that I am straight as an arrow, wife and kids and all that, and a religious conservative to boot. On a spiritual level I have great concerns for unrepentant homosexuals as well as JWs, LDSers, and anyone who holds other unbiblical or extrabiblical religious views.
Having said that, when it comes to politics, I’ll take true conservatives over RINOs any day. Even the ones wearing either Prada or sacred undergarments.
I just watched Beck’s speech. Overall I liked it. One minor detail, though—my understanding is that Wilson in fact did try to get the English and the French to go a little easier on the Germans at Versailles, but he failed to persuade them, and they were keen to really stick it to the Krauts. Other than that, I pretty much bought his historical reading of progressives—>liberals—>progressives.
Rush Limbaugh was a tough act to follow, though. Rush absolutely killed with his speech last year. Note—both Rush and Beck managed to get through without the use of a teleprompter. Then again, all they had to do is speak the truth of their passions as conservatives. A liberal stepping onto a national stage must ALWAYS endeavor to hide the depths of their liberalism. For them it must always be a con job.
Were the GOP true to itself, given the American use of the word “liberal”, “liberal Republican” would be just as much of an oxymoron as “Republican Progressive”. Beck’s use of the term seems to be part of his popularization of Goldberg, and very much in the spirit of my call to ‘liberate’ the word “liberal” from the left, which has no real claim to it, but stole it to use as a mask for fascism (a.k.a. progressivism). In Europe and Australia, “liberal” means supportive of liberty, esp. free markets, and the left uses other names “Labour”, “Social Democrat”, “Socialist”.
As I noted up thread, I have a colleague who has been reading Woodrow Wilson after being prompted by Beck to look into the American Progressive Movement: he sounds Nazi over 20 years before Hitler’s rise to power, even uses the term “Aryan race”.
All Beck does with “Republican Progressives” is attach the party affiliation to the proper name of the movement of which “liberal Republicans” are a part. It should be an oxymoron—what in European terms would be called ‘the center-right party’ should not have men of the left on its electoral slate—but such is the state of the GOP.