132 posted on Wed May 09 2012 01:03:39 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by rogue yam: “You fail to understand the tea party. The tea party movement is centered on the understanding that massive deficits, excessive taxation and regulation, and cronyism will cause America's economy to collapse. Social conservatives who are wise will be glad for the tea party movement and will help pitch a big tent in the near term while seeking converts to the social conservative cause over the medium term. Foolish social conservatives with no wisdom and no game will demand that the tea party movement be anti-abortion and anti-gay from the start and in this way weaken and divide it. Obama, the leftists in general, and Satan are counting on the short-sighted social conservatives to save them from the tea party movement.”
135 posted on Wed May 09 2012 01:26:35 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by Waryone: “Both the democrats and the RINOs would love to kill off both the social conservatives and the TEA party. For all their talk about social conservatives being a problem, given what has happened all around tonight, I’d say those marxists and socialists are not having very much success.”
All of you raise **REALLY** important points.
I understand coalition politics. None of the three legs of the conservative stool — social, economic or national defense conservatives — have enough voters in many districts and most states to win elections on their own. If we don't get to 50 percent, we lose to a Democrat who in most cases will be worse than even the worst Republican candidate.
That means I have no problem supporting someone who is a political conservative whose primary interest is economics or the military but doesn't profess to be born again, provided, as muawiyah points out, that they're not pro-abortion. After all, punishing evildoers is one of the key tasks of civil government under Romans 13, and abortion is murder, plain and simple.
However, is it too much to ask that people who are not social issues conservatives refrain from attacking the Judeo-Christian principles on which this country was founded, or ridiculing the faith commitments of religious believers?
I cut my teeth in conservative politics long before I was converted to evangelical Christianity. I understand both sides of the fence on this, and things are much better today in the Republican Party for evangelicals and conservative Roman Catholics than they were in the 1980s.
The problem is it needs to be a two-way street.
I'm willing to support someone like Newt Gingrich if he's the best candidate (or in his case, was the best candidate left after others pulled out). After all, there's no doubt Gingrich is a historian and understands the roots of Western civilization. He wasn't my first choice, but he was **WAY** better than what we've got now.
Are people who don't share social conservative positions willing to support avowed evangelical Protestants or conservative Roman Catholics who are generally conservative on economic or national defense issues but maybe not perfect? Or do they expect us to stay at the back of the bus, waiting for some future date at which it will be the “right time” for our concerns about moral collapse to be addressed?
Coalitions can and do work, but they work only when the coalition partners understand that compromises can't be one-sided.
Nice to see the Tea Party hitting their stride again after failing to coalesce around a viable conservative presidential candidate. The only way Romney would have been defeated is if a concensus conservative candidate had been identified early in the process and was able to attract the funds necessary to take on the GOP-e’s favoured son. Unfortunately, all of the conservative crop this year were flawed. Cain would have won if the harassment issue hadn’t kneecapped him. Perry would have won if he hadn’t shot himself in the foot with the immigration issue (and proven to be so weak in the debates). Santorum would have won if he had shown some fire in his belly earlier in the campaign, instead of being every conservative’s second choice. Gingrich would have won if his conservative message hadn’t been mixed with bizarre attacks on Paul Ryan’s budget and his mixed messages on immigration. Michelle Bachmann is the only one I don’t think had a legitimate shot, as the media’s misogynistic attacks on conservative women (hello Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle).
I think the success at the State nomination level and failure on the national level, says more about the increased scrutiny candidates get at the national level and how difficult it is to find a candidate who is a combination of charisma, experience, good character, consistency in their conservative values. At the state level the charisma issue is much less important and candidates don’t have to deal with as many issues as a presidential candidate. The Tea Party will have learned a valuable lesson from 2012 and can now focus on repeating its 2010 success in the Senate and House races.
However, is it too much to ask that people who are not social issues conservatives refrain from attacking the Judeo-Christian principles on which this country was founded, or ridiculing the faith commitments of religious believers?
You believe abortion is murder. Others do not. The problem we have with respect to abortion is not that there are differing opinions regarding it. The problem we have is Roe v. Wade, which was nine justices deciding for everyone that abortion must be legal everywhere regardless of what the people think or the founders intended.
The solution to judicial activism is the Constitution, not the Bible.
If we can organize a strong majority of Americans behind the principle of fidelity to the Constitution as ratified, then specific social issues such as abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, etc. can be resolved through the legislative process at the state level as the Constitution intends.