{"id":1369,"date":"2006-10-14T21:08:51","date_gmt":"2006-10-14T21:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1369"},"modified":"2006-10-14T21:08:51","modified_gmt":"2006-10-14T21:08:51","slug":"tools_of_power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1369","title":{"rendered":"Tools Of Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

October is turning into a disastrous month for Republicans.  The charnel house that is Iraq, ongoing corruption and sex scandals, and now the latest salvo: a new book called Tempting Faith<\/i><\/a>, penned by former Bush administration official David Kuo, charges that Bush and his advisors have exploited evangelical Christians for political gain<\/a> without demonstrating any real commitment to the issues that are important to many evangelicals (e.g. banning abortion and gay marriage).  Kuo writes:<\/p>\n

National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then
were dismissed behind their backs and described as \u2018ridiculous,\u2019 \u2018out
of control,\u2019 and just plain \u2018goofy’.<\/p>\n

Kuo also writes that Karl Rove referred to evangelical leaders as “the nuts.”<\/p>\n

The notion that Republican elites cynically pander to religious conservatives–while giving them little in the way of substantive policy or political victories–is not new.  Thomas Frank posited a similar thesis in his book What’s the Matter with Kansas?<\/i><\/a>  And at least some evangelicals are beginning to reconsider their allegiance to the GOP<\/a>.  In some ways, the Republicans’ much vaunted Southern Strategy–which has relied heavily on appeals to traditional moral values (not to mention xenophobia)–may now be fomenting an ideological civil war within the party.  The big-business, monied classes of the Republican Party have never had much patience for the fire-and-brimstone fervor of their evangelical brethren.  If November 7th goes badly for them (a distinct possibility), those tensions will bubble to the surface and the knives will come out.  <\/p>\n

Of course, Democrats have their own internecine conflicts, but we are more suited to tolerating ideological dissent within our ranks.  Remember Will Roger’s eminently quotable line: “I am not a member of any organized<\/i> party \u2014 I am a Democrat.<\/a>”  The Republicans’ insistence on identifying itself as the party of conservative Christianity may lead to its downfall as much as it contributed to its ascendancy.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October is turning into a disastrous month for Republicans.  The charnel house that is Iraq, ongoing corruption and sex scandals, and now the latest salvo: a new book called Tempting Faith, penned by former Bush administration official David Kuo, charges that Bush and his advisors have exploited evangelical Christians for political gain without demonstrating any […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-m5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}