GOP Spending Goals Show Launch of New Culture War

It should come as no surprise to anyone who follows the GOP and its delusional party base that the now GOP controlled House of Representatives is about to launch a new culture war to curry favor with the Christianists who ultimately control the party while trying to dress up their attack as deficit cutting. You can put a cheap whore in a fancy dress, but she's still a whore and that's what the GOP is in terms of the Christian Right. No amount of shameless prostitution to Christianist demands is too much - especially when the Tea Party crowd is factored in since once again the Christianists are deeply involved in that movement no matter what pretenses might be put forward. Job creation and reviving the economy mean nothing to the likes of Family Research Council and similar conservative hate groups that try to wrap their poison in the cloak of religion. Those who were duped into voting Republican in the hope that jobs and the economy would be the first priority are in for an unpleasant surprise even though it should have been foreseeable. Dana Milbank has a column in the Washington Post that looks at the coming assault on all things deemed liberal and/or not in keeping with Christian fundamentalists beliefs. Here are highlights:
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Mr. Speaker, 63 percent of voters said the economy was the most important issue, according to exit polls for the November election. Voters asked for jobs - and you're giving them a culture war.
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About 30 minutes after Boehner left the studio, leaders of the Republican Study Committee, a group that claims most House Republicans as members, walked into the same room to announce its new spending bill. Among the items the group proposes to eliminate or decimate: the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Title X birth control and family planning, AmeriCorps, the Energy Star program and work on fuel efficient cars, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
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Ostensibly, their cuts were about reducing the deficit, but their list clearly had more to do with settling old scores. Many of the items - including the renewed targeting of Big Bird and the rest of PBS - were holdovers from Newt Gingrich's '95 wish list.
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Also coming in for special cuts would be labor (the bill would repeal rules requiring federal contractors to pay the prevailing wage); international relations (funds for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development would be slashed); the poor (housing and other anti-poverty programs that fund soup kitchens and the like would take big hits); and federal workers (a halving of the federal travel budget could mean half as many food safety, mine safety and immigration inspections).
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It's going to be a long two years until the 2012 elections when one can only hope that moderates and independents wake the hell up and realize that regardless what the GOP may promise, the real GOP agenda is not that of moderates and independents - or rational thinking Americans.