"Social Conservatives" Could Doom the Republican Party

Speaking of religious extremism in follow up to the last post, we can see the evils of fundamentalist religious belief in the circumstances facing the Republican Party.  Years back the GOP, in a short sighted, cynical ploy to win elections, welcomed Christofascists into the party.  Not only that, they allowed them to infiltrate and largely take over the party grassroots.  These extremists were actually knowingly voted onto city and county committees and a Frankenstein monster was created.  As Christofascists became ever more numerous, sane, rational Republicans fled - I and my entire family left the GOP - the insanity which intertwines a toxic form of Christianity with the nations civil laws took a tighter hold over the GOP.  As a piece in Salon explores, the GOP may be getting closer to paying a much deserved price for getting in bed with evil (and not just the evil of the Koch brothers).  Here are excerpts from the piece:

I wrote a piece earlier about the GOP’s “three-legged stool” that stands for “family values, small government and strong national defense” in light of the recent resurgence of jingoistic fear-mongering in the 2014 campaign ads. The commentary on the right has been shifting perceptibly day by day as the threat of ISIS and our renewed military involvement in the Middle East tickled the martial lizard brain into action. But what of the other legs on the stool? The Christian Right is very likely to be on board with whatever military adventures the Republicans push (they usually are) but they are also likely to be agitated at the loss of prestige within the party and what they see as a defeatist attitude toward such issues a gay marriage and contraception.

The right wing firebrands’ reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision not to make a decision on marriage equality this week is instructive.

Christian Right leader and possible presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said:

“It is shocking that many elected officials, attorneys and judges think that a court ruling is the ‘final word,’” Huckabee said. “It most certainly is not. . . . It is NOT the ‘law of the land’ as is often heralded.”

[H]e probably spoke for many members of the religious right in his anger that the Court didn’t take the opportunity to strike down the abomination of marriage equality, especially since they’d been led to believe that they finally achieved their goal of a conservative majority that would give them everything they want when they want it.

[T]he last few years have left the social conservatives feeling a bit bereft. Their candidates have been marginalized for believing odd myths like the one which says a woman’s body “shuts down” and won’t allow pregnancy as a result of rape or making impolitic statements about the sexual habits of the 97% of women who use birth control. 

Ed Kilgore sees a new wrinkle in all this that’s bound to tie the GOP up in knots if it comes to pass:

[A]s the “religious liberty” movement continues to develop, you could see it morph into the theoretical foundation for a parallel society in which the painful diversity of contemporary life, and its disturbing clatter of demands for “equality” and “non-discrimination” and “rights” (other than religious rights and the Right To Life, of course) is simply excluded, along with “government schools” and secular news and entertainment.

But there’s danger in too much reliance on liberating conservatives from “judicial activism” via an ever-expanding zone of “religious liberty:” opponents of same-sex marriage and abortion/contraception could become complacent and lose the spiritual muscle-tone provided by fighting to restore godly norms for all Americans. There’s a long history of conservative evangelicals retreating into apolitical and interior lives; that’s where they largely existed for many decades prior to the 1970s.

Wouldn’t it be something if the Republican Party ended up kicking out one of the legs of its famous stool through the “judicial activism” of the most conservative Supreme Court in memory? It’s a distinct possibility. Stay tuned.

With the country's demographics changing rapidly and societal acceptance of gays and contraception surging,  if the GOP continues to embrace the Christofascists and allows these extremists to dictate the GOP's platform, the party runs the risk of becoming a permanent minority party - especially after the 2020 census and redrawing of what for now are safe gerrymandered GOP districts.  If the GOP doesn't do something soon, it will be akin to the passengers and crew of the Titanic as they sped toward disaster.