Monday, August 27, 2012

RNC 2012: Evangelicals and the Real Party Agenda

In addition to the Romney-Ryan agenda of raping and pillaging the middle class to transfer wealth to the wealthiest Americans, the GOP has another agenda that it continues to try to keep under wraps: the de facto establishment of conservative Christianity as the nation's official religion.  While the Romney campaign works to create a smoke and mirrors show to dupe voters into thinking Mitt Romney is really a nice guy rather than an greed driven, out of touch arrogant ass, the Christofascists at the GOP Convention are busy gathering to push their agenda of religious extremism.  The Christianist version of Sharia law, if you will.  A piece in Politico looks at the gathering of extremists and hate merchants taking place in Tampa.  Here are excerpts:

Hundreds of evangelicals gathered in downtown Tampa, Fla., on Sunday afternoon to talk about exactly the things that Mitt Romney wants to avoid this week: abortion, birth control, gay marriage and religion.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition rally drew the expected rock stars of the evangelical movement — Mike Huckabee, Ralph Reed and even Newt Gingrich. Yet few of the speakers talked about Romney himself — the rally was designed to fire up the most red meat, anti-Obama crowd here in Tampa just a few days before Romney accepts the nomination.

[Ralph] Reed, chairman of the coalition, opened the two-hour event by calling the election “the most important election of our lifetime,” and he railed against the Obama administration for supporting gay marriage and issuing a mandate under the health care law that all employers must provide birth control in their health care plans.  “This is an injustice that we are not going to let stand,” he said. “And either in the courts or on Election Day, we are going to end it once and for all.”

Huckabee, a hero among the conservative base, did not mention Romney’s name during his brief remarks but called Obama’s birth control mandate “an assault” on people of faith.
He joked that he was disappointed the “faith community” didn’t pray away the hurricane, but “we will make sure that the hurricane of this administration is way, way away from us come January of next year. “
The event was briefly interrupted by protesters when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took the stage, but the crowd drowned them out with chants of “U.S.A!”

Of course, the ones who are launching an assault on religious freedom are in fact the Christofascists who believe they have the right to trample on the rights and liberties of others.  

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