The Fundamentalist 11.19.08 - Religious cons plan to start anew outside the GOP, Huckabee & more

[Shallah Kali]

The Fundamentalist
This week in the religious right: Religious conservatives plan to start new organizing efforts outside the Republican Party and Mike Huckabee settles some scores from the 2008 campaign.

Sarah Posner | November 19, 2008 |
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_fundamentalist_111908

2. Can the Republican Party Rebuild on the Religious Right?

Although the CNP's meetings are closed to the press, Smith filled me in on some details: Conservative direct-mail entrepreneur Richard Viguerie, a patriarch of the modern conservative movement, rallied the troops by pointing to prior comebacks, from Reagan to Gingrich to Bush. Viguerie, Smith told me, "is saying that we need to fight for conservative ideas and conservative values and not worry about who embraces them." Smith added that the group talked "about changing the culture, entertainment, media, TV" -- a longtime goal of the religious right's dominionism that it seeks to achieve by taking over social, cultural, and government institutions, much like religious-right figures are now plotting their new takeover of the Republican National Committee.

"What I'm hearing is that there is no loyalty to the Republican Party," said Smith, meaning no loyalty to the party as constituted but loyalty to one purged of insufficiently conservative members. "What Richard Viguerie talks about is not a third party but a third wave. Basically there needs to be a flowering of grass-roots conservative activism and local groups, local PACs. He's basically saying you've got a Republican county commissioner in Buzzard's Breath, Texas, and he's not a conservative? Run a conservative against him."

That is exactly what has excised moderates from the Republican Party and led to its losses in 2006 and 2008. Of course, there aren't really that many new ideas to run with if you believe that the Bible is God's literal word that should dictate policy, and that government should be starved of funding and required to do as little as possible, unless it involves using military might to combat perceived threats to Western Civilization As We Know It. But the religious right is still steering the Republican ship, and the strategy of the emerging governors -- Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, and Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who was just installed at the helm of the Republican Governors' Association -- will be to figure out a way to continue to endear themselves to the religious right while expanding the base. A tall order in the current political environment.

[elleng]

1. Outside the Rep party ok with me;

let Reps return to 'honorable' role of yore. Have to discard neocons too.

[Wapsie B]

2. Nothing much new under the sun.

Pandering to the conservative fundies has won them elections for a period of time. But long term it's a losing strategy. How can they "rebrand" themselves with the fundies in their midst? This grass-roots stuff was all part and parcel of the Christian Coalition, putting fundies on school boards, city councils and many offices on the local and state level. But it has cost the party dearly with support from the mainstream moderates.

[TWiley]

3. TAX THE BASTARDS.

Why should my tax dollars support this vile group?