NO SALE.
P.S.: How's that 100..700 Trillion dollars worth of derivative a$$paper you Useful Idiots helped create working out for ya?
Posted on 11/14/2010 3:38:40 PM PST by kristinn
A gay conservative group and some Tea Party leaders are campaigning to keep social issues off the Republican agenda.
In a letter to be released Monday, the group GOProud and leaders from groups like the Tea Party Patriots and the New American Patriots, will urge Republicans in the House and Senate to keep their focus on shrinking the government.
"On behalf of limited-government conservatives everywhere, we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement," they write to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell in an advance copy provided to POLITICO. "This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue."
The letter's signatories range from GOProud's co-founder and Chairman Christopher Barron — a member of a group encouraging Dick Cheney to run for president and who has been known to post images of his bare torso to Twitter — to Tea Party leaders with no particular interest in the gay rights movement.
As of Sunday evening, the letter had 17 signatories. They include tea party organizers, conservative activists and media personalities from across the country, including radio host Tammy Bruce, bloggers Bruce Carroll, Dan Blatt and Doug Welch, and various local coordinators for the Tea Party Patriots and other tea party groups.
"When they were out in the Boston Harbor, they weren't arguing about who was gay or who was having an abortion," said Ralph King, a letter signatory who is a Tea Party Patriots national leadership council member, as well as an Ohio co-coordinator.
King said he signed onto the letter because GOProud seemed to be genuine in pushing for fiscal conservatism and limited government.
"Am I going to be the best man at a same sex-marriage wedding? That's not something I necessarily believe in," said King. "I look at myself as pretty socially conservative. But that's not what we push through the Tea Party Patriots."
That indifference is essentially the point of the gay conservative group.
SNIP
TEXT OF LETTER
Dear Senator McConnell and Representative Boehner
On behalf of limited government conservatives everywhere we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement.
Poll after poll confirms that the Tea Party’s laser focus on issues of economic freedom and limited government resonated with the American people on Election Day. The Tea Party movement galvanized around a desire to return to constitutional government and against excessive spending, taxation and government intrusion into the lives of the American people.
The Tea Party movement is a non-partisan movement, focused on issues of economic freedom and limited government, and a movement that will be as vigilant with a Republican-controlled Congress as we were with a Democratic-controlled Congress.
This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue, nor should it be interpreted as a political blank check.
Already, there are Washington insiders and special interest groups that hope to co-opt the Tea Party’s message and use it to push their own agenda – particularly as it relates to social issues. We are disappointed but not surprised by this development. We recognize the importance of values but believe strongly that those values should be taught by families and our houses of worship and not legislated from Washington, D.C.
We urge you to stay focused on the issues that got you and your colleagues elected and to resist the urge to run down any social issue rabbit holes in order to appease the special interests.
The Tea Party movement is not going away and we intend to continue to hold Washington accountable. Sincerely,
Christopher R Barron
Chairman of the Board, GOProud
Andrew Ian Dodge
Coordinator, Maine Tea Party Patriots
Pam Stevenson
Coordinator, Arizona Tea Party Patriots
Dianna Greenwood
Executive Director, New American Patriots (Ashland, OH)
Jim Mason II
Chairman and State Coordinator, Nebraska’s Tea Party Patriots
Ralph King
Co-coordinator Cleveland Tea Party Patriots
Co-coordinator State of Ohio Tea Party Patriots
Jack Lien
Coordinator, Tea Party Patriots of Great Malls (Montana)
Tammy Bruce
National Radio Talk Show Host
JP Weber
Coordinator, Annapolis (Maryland) Tea Party
Doug Welch,
Blogger and member Southern Illinois Tea Party
Bruce Carroll
Conservative Activist and Blogger
Pam Stout
Coordinator, Sandpoint Idaho Tea Party Patriots
Dan Blatt
Conservative Activist and Blogger
Everett Wilkinson
Coordinator, Florida Tea Party
Jimmy LaSalvia
Executive Director, GOProud
Paul Crockett
President Santa Clara (California) Tea Party
David Thor Andreasen
Cumberland County (Maine) Tea Party
You guys will get us to power again when we screw up.....right?
This is nothing but pure divide-and-conquer BS. They're setting up a false premise that the Republicans elected are going to focus on social issues, and now they're going to "warn" them not to tackle said issues, even though they're not on the radar except for DADT.
A one-legged stool falls over pretty quickly.
Here’s to all three legs.
Social issues kill Republicans.
Ken Buck would be Senator-elect right now had he not stepped in it.
What matters right now, 300 congressional Republicans all opining on the nature of homosexuality and Other Things That Don’t Matter, or saving America from bankruptcy?
One path will save America from 0bama, the other will destroy the Republicans’ reclaimed majority, and America’s last hope with it.
The choice is theirs.
That's how the MA GOP undertands it -- their committee head said in an interview a couple of years ago with a gay newspaper that she didn't intend to bring up social issues. In practice, the state party has favored social liberals for at least 20 years, as far as I can tell.
Reagan was able to articulate a pro-life stance while still directing a conservative economic recovery.
There’s a way to stay focused on the economy without giving up important principles like being pro-life and anti-gay marriage/armed forces.
Social issues? Life and liberty are social issues. Taxes are social issues. Murder is a social issue. War is a social issue. All issues which affect society are social issues. These people want special rights to do that which societies since the dawn of man have held to be criminal.
Taking social issues (whatever that means) off the table for the Tea Party is a sure way to abort the whole movement.
How many Tea Party candidates that were elected were pro-abortion or pro-homosexual rights?Actually, we don't know, because it was never brought up. Nor should it be.
He didn't address it in the Declaration of Independence, nor is it mentioned in the Constitution.
Quite frankly I'm fed up with the nanny state "social issues" that should be addressed in the home, not by legislators.
I'm fed up with people telling me, and others about: trans fats
salt
sugar
Happy Meals
obesity
over/under nourishment
smoking
lesbians
gays
I'm surprised Lindsey Graham and Barney Frank haven't proposed a Federal Commission on Mutual Masturbation and its effects on palm hair, blindness, and hemmorroids.
Since the election, the country has turned sharply to the right.
In our area, many people who once spent their time carousing are turning to family activities. Hard times force people to reevaluate their priorities.
A lot of people here are in churches for the first time in their lives.
Since affluence and wealth are often a lower priority for social conservatives than the spiritual and emotional health of their families, social liberals literally have nothing to put on the table right now to evoke a spirit of compromise.
My first of business is to throw as much sunlight as I can on “how the sausage is made” so we know what’s in the bill BEFORE it is enacted. What I will not accept our “law Maker not knowing what they are voting for and turning all the power over to some UNELECTED bureaucrat to make regulation that take away my freedoms. Then again, I may move to NY and sell salt to the tourist under the table.
Totally agree. For some this may sound like we are giving in but CONSERATIVES are social conservatives and fiscal conseratives. It just the way it is...but we have to fix this guv as a priority. We are facing some tough times.
Please note that these people do not speak for Tea Party Patriots; they just found a few in the organization that feel this way.
A couple centuries ago, the GOP formed itself on the bloated corpse of the Whig party. That previous party had intended to remain neutral concerning the core ethical issue of its day, and so had perished. The new party wasn’t just the anti-slavery party, they had a full platform touching on all the pertinent issues; but they didn’t compromise on their principles. A GOP that stays true to its basic commitment to the first freedom may or may not be successful, but one that doesn’t certainly won’t be.
So, we should just allow the radical homosexual lobby to deny Christians their civil rights?
Is there no protest allowed when our religious freedom is threatened?
This group sounds as if they assume that if Republicans do not “act on any social issue” that social issues will just lie dormant and no advocates of any persuasion, pro or con, will “act on any social issue”.
The whole thing sounds pretty nonsensical, and I’m confident that militant advocates of particular social change will be “acting on social issues” and Republicans would have to be suicidal to stand silently by.
The letter is a ham-handed attempt at some sort of preemptive strike to make Republicans reluctant to address some issues. Should be ignored.
Ah yes, the “We want liberty (as equated with depravity) but we don’t want to pay for the consequences” crowd.
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