George Scialabba wrote:
>the hallmarks of contemporary Republicanism -- corruption, cronyism,
>voting fraud, punitive reductions in
>social spending, extremely regressive tax policy, fantastically bloated
>defense budget, environmental irresponsibility, gutting of regulatory
>agencies, etc,
You've got the hallmarks wrong. It's money, guns, church, and kids. I was just reading this long new interview with Grover Norquist that MaxSpeak led me to. Norquist says:
>the right, in the conservative movement and the Republican Party,
>we're able to have evangelical Protestants, fundamentalists, and
>Pentecostals, who don't agree theologically, and conservative
>Catholics and orthodox Jews and Muslims and Mormons who don't agree
>on who's going to Heaven and why, but understand that if they're
>gong to be able to raise their kids and go to Heaven, the pagans
>over there have got to have the same political freedom to go to Hades.
>
>on the vote-moving primary issue, everybody's got their foot in the
>center and they're not in conflict on anything. The guy who wants to
>spend all day counting his money, the guy who wants to spend all day
>fondling his weaponry, and the guy who wants to go to church all day
>may look at each other and say, "That's pretty weird, that's not
>what I would do with my spare time, but that does not threaten my
>ability to go to church, have my guns, have my money, have my
>properties, run by my business, home-school my kids."
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11699