GOP Social Conservatives Fight Back

I have often lamented the foolish short sightedness of those in the GOP establishment who for short term gain and expediency welcomed the Christofascists and then their Tea Party cousins into the Republican Party.  Worse yet, they allowed these reality untethered individuals to infiltrate and in many cases take over the local party committees and caucuses.  Now, having created a veritable Frankenstein monster that is taking over the GOP at all levels, the Politico looks at the efforts of the far right knuckle draggers to fight back against efforts to sideline them and their culture war issues.  Here are highlights:

GOP establishment id finding out that the Christofascists and Neanderthals will not go easily or quietly.  A piece in

The preferred plot line for many in the GOP establishment for revitalizing their party goes something like this: They move to a more libertarian stance on key social issues — particularly same-sex marriage — and the Bible-thumping, evangelical wing of the party meekly complies, realizing times have changed.   One problem with that scenario, however: The Christian Right, while a diminished force, doesn’t like how that story ends at all.

Leading cultural conservatives, including the movement’s standard-bearers from the past two presidential campaigns, have had it with Republican elites faulting them for the party’s losses and are finally ready point a finger back at the establishment.

Huckabee and Santorum are reacting to the conventional wisdom that has swept through much of the Republican political class since the party’s latest presidential thumping last November: We’re getting our hats handed to us because young voters, minorities and women are turned off by our social stances and rhetoric.

[D]uring this season of Republican soul-searching, comparatively little has been heard from the party’s social conservatives. It has been the would-be reformers — citing gay marriage, politically damaging comments on abortion and the need for immigration reform — who have dominated the discussion. Given the makeup of the modern Republican coalition, the social conservatives’ relative absence has been striking.

Yet as some party intellectuals openly wonder if the heyday of the religious right has come and gone, social conservatives are responding with ferocity, indicting John McCain and Mitt Romney for their losses and bluntly warning that the GOP will cease to exist if the party abandons those voters who are in the party because of, not despite, its platform on values. If cultural conservatives are headed toward extinction, they are making clear they won’t go away without a fight.
“You win in politics by broadening your appeal, not narrowing it to white guys over 60,” said longtime Republican strategist Mike Murphy, who supports same-sex marriage rights. “And gay marriage is becoming a litmus test issue for voters under 35.”

“If the party elites think we can win by getting across the idea that we’re no different on values issues, they are really clueless to the fact that they’re going to lose voters that they only get because of those issues,” said social conservative leader Gary Bauer, who ran for president in 2000.

To the likes of Murphy and other reformers, though, the we’ll-stay-at-home threat is as stale and empty as the plea for social moderation is to the Christian conservatives. After all, liberals dismayed by Clinton’s moves to the center and right ultimately swallowed hard and supported him, at least most of the time.  “Will some drop out? Maybe,” said Murphy. “But will most of those who agree with us on economic issues stay with us? I think so.”

Social conservatives are particularly — and understandably — bothered that the elites rarely want to discuss the elephant in the room: that the party’s economic policies don’t necessarily appeal to the the rank and file, who vote Republican because it is the party of traditional values.

There is more that is worth a read.  The bottom line is that some of us in the GOP quite a few years back - myself included - warned against allowing the Christofascists into the party and against allowing them to transform the GOP into a  de facto religious party.  Our protests fell on deaf ears.  Now, the party know it alls are reaping what they sowed.  All I can say is "I told you so."