The Truth

The Republican Party's secret contempt for the religious fundamentalists it uses to gain power has been obvious for years, but now the base is finally starting to catch on. Here's what Tucker Carlson said to Chris Matthews this weekend-

CARLSON: It goes deeper than that though. The deep truth is that the elites in the Republican Party have pure contempt for the evangelicals who put their party in power. Everybody in ...

MATTHEWS: How do you know that? How do you know that?

CARLSON: Because I know them. Because I grew up with them. Because I live with them. they live on my street. Because I live in Washington, and I know that everybody in our world has contempt for the evangelicals. And the evangelicals know that, and they're beginning to learn that their own leaders sort of look askance at them and don't share their values.

MATTHEWS: So this gay marriage issue and other issues related to the gay lifestyle are simply tools to get elected?

CARLSON: That's exactly right. It's pandering to the base in the most cynical way, and the base is beginning to figure it out.

The Foley scandal and subsequent coverup only further revealed the GOP's hypocrisy.

A new book- 'Tempting Faith'- further explores this reality-

More than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, the former second-in-command of that office is going public with an insider’s tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities...

...Kuo, who has complained publicly in the past about the funding shortfalls, goes several steps further in his new book.

He says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as “the nuts.”...

...More seriously, Kuo alleges that then-White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly “nonpartisan” events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races...

Will these revelations translate at the ballot box? We'll find out in a couple of weeks.

In his excellent book, "What's The Matter With Kansas?: How Conservatives Won The Heart of America", Thomas Frank notes how the Republicans bring up these tired 'culture war' issues at every election and yet they never do anything about it... because if they did, they wouldn't have the issue to use a boogeyman in the next election cycle. And they keep doing it because the base falls for it every time.

Conservatives in the heartland- Don't like watching your jobs get shipped off to Asia or destroyed by the Walmart corporate culture? Want better access to affordable healthcare? Want cleaner air and drinking water? Want the government's focus to be on rebuilding this country rather than Mideast nation building? Apparently not, because many of you are too busy worrying about queers, flags, and abortion to notice that your elected officials are destroying the American way of life.

We need your help here people. Trust me, your votes are better spent elsewhere.

As Frank notes in his introduction-

In fact, backlash leaders systematically downplay the politics of economics. The movement's basic premise is that culture outweighs economics as a matter of public concern- that Values Matter Most, as one backlash title has it. On these grounds it rallies citizens who would once have been reliable partisans of the New Deal to the standard of conservatism. Old-fashioned values may count when conservatives appear on the stump, but once conservatives are in office the only old-fashioned situation they care to revive is an economic regimen of low wages and lax regulations. Over the last three decades they have smashed the welfare state, reduced the tax burden on corporations and the wealthy, and generally facilitated the country's return to a nineteenth-century pattern of wealth distribution. Thus the primary contradiction of the backlash: it is a working-class movement that has done incalculable, historic harm to working-class people.

The leaders of the backlash may talk Christ, but they walk corporate. Values may 'matter most' to voters, but they always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won....

Bingo.

Bottom line- Liberals and queers don't seem that important when you're collecting unemployment at age 37.