Go and read the whole thing….it’s frightening.
Yet, while the Tea Party’s inchoate sense that liberty is dying is distinct from the evangelicals’ perception that they are on the losing end of a culture war, both groups echo Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Randian rhetoric about a culture of “dependency” fueled by government programs. And both groups warn that this dependency places conservatives on the losing end of American democracy.
Obamacare and similar programs are akin to bribes that Democrats offer to get “the votes for the next time.” according to one evangelical voter. A Tea Party voter draws an even crisper line between social welfare and Democratic success at the polls — “we’ll give you insurance, we’ll give you money. That’s why he got elected,” she says of President Obama. And if Obamacare is fully implemented, both wings believe that the Democratic Party could become a permanent majority party. Once Obama adds the newly insured to his base, evangelicals and Tea Partiers will be cut out of Congress and the White House forever.
This is why so much of the Republican base rallied behind Cruz’s shutdown-or-defund-Obamacare strategy, despite the fact that most GOP leaders viewed it as a suicide mission. And this is why conservatives in Congress refuse to abort this mission even as it becomes increasingly clear that Americans at large resent the GOP’s decision to shut down the government. There is a common perception among Democrats that, as more and more polls show the Cruz-inspired shutdown cutting into the Republican Party’s brand, Republicans will step back from the brink and renounce Cruz’s extortionist tactics — and recent signs of progress in the Senate give some credence to this perception. So long as religious conservatives and the Tea Party hold the GOP’s reins, however, key Republican players in the House are unlikely to agree to a truce.
It is one thing to ask Republicans to execute a tactical retreat when they believe they can regroup and rise again to fight another day. But it is another thing to demand a retreat from men and women who have beheld the Great Red Dragon standing upon America’s shores, a crown perched on each of its seven heads.
Joshua Holland wrote a nice summary on Cruz, Palin, the Shutdown and the absurdity of Right Wing Tea Party conscience:
http://billmoyers.com/2013/10/15/tea-partys-war-memorial-rally-was-another-let-him-die-moment/
Elizabeth Stoker and Matt Bruenig with a really good angle on the the religious right; a nice dovetail with Paul Ryan’s “culture of dependency” meme:
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/15/the_religious_right_is_a_fraud_nothing_christian_about_michele_bachmanns_values/
Their conclusion:
“No principled reason can be given for the distinction the Christian Right draws between harnessing the state to pursue social objectives and harnessing it to pursue economic objectives. It is a uniquely American distinction as far as Christian politicking goes. What the distinction reveals is that so-called values voters are just a particular flavor of right-wing political culture, one that opts for Christian language and rhetoric when communicating its message. But in that case, it is their freestanding political commitments that inform their Christianity, not the other way around.
The answer to this riddle is therefore not so mysterious. Although nominally interested in harnessing the state to pursue Christian social objectives, the American Christian Right is not detached from the culture it has developed within. Their politics is not one that is Christian in origin; rather, it originates from the same place all other right-wing politics originates, but mobilizes Christian rhetoric and meanings post-hoc to justify its goals.”
Not exactly. Probably the biggest reaction, almost subconscious, is against the liberal taboo (now law) to referring to God or religion as a moral basis. “For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.”
More here: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_radical_christian_right_and_the_war_on_government_20131006