The evangelical leadership has been sabre-rattling for a while now, threatening to pull support and either stay home or go third party, which would inevitably hand the 2008 election over to Hillary.   Those threats have been escalating.

Hotair has been covering this, Slublog has been writing about this too, most of this chastisement has been toward the religious right leadership for threatening to walk.  While before I thought it was 50/50 it was theatrics to drive the GOP candidates right, I'm now guessing its 65% that they'll bail, at least the leadership, I'm not convinced that a huge number of popular religious right will follow suit...yet.  I could be convinced of it, but I'm not sure yet. 

That said, I firmly believe that the anger at the religious right is misdirected.  While I think their tactic is a mistake, I understand it, and in some odd way, I respect it.  That said, there is a fury amongst the non-social conservatives at the social cons over this threat to walk.  Conventional wisdom among most says the religious right are being unreasonable, that they're acting like a bunch of spoiled children who are threatening to take their ball and go home. 

There's a grain of truth to that, but there is something deeper, and nobody is asking this question, what prompted this sudden need for absolute loyalty? 

The answer, I believe, is that this is a result of years of selling out of conservative principles that we've experienced from the GOP leadership.  The GOP leadership has betrayed nearly every conservative principle in recent years, through its insane overspending, its squishiness in resisting the left, large growth of government, and in my mind, what really set this off, the attempted GOP betrayal during the Amnesty Debacle.  

Lets focus on the first issues, spending and gov't growth, and go back to Amnesty later.  These issues came up early in the Bush years, while the tax cuts were great, they only do so much when you're not reducing spending at all, and in the case of Bush and the Congress in the past few years, spending like drunken sailors and growing government. 

But the combination of Bush's popularity boost as a result of 9/11, the distraction that 9/11 caused, and the newfound love affair with Values Voters, those conservatives either found themselves pushed to the back, or kept quiet while we focused on the response to the jihadis and let Bush and Congress slide.  That anger has been festering, and may have contributed to losses in '06.

Now to Amnesty, which was the last straw. The regular people that make up the party are overwhelmingly opposed to amnesty, but the elite favor a wink/nudge "security" policy, amnesty and open borders, they will do whatever they can to make that the default position in the GOP platform, and will sell out as necessary to make it happen. 

Placing Mel Martinez as the chair of the RNC was just one strong indication of this, and a big fuck you message to the popular conservative movement, beyond that, the vicious attacks on those who opposed this summers' Amnesty bill. 

As a result, principled conservatives OF ALL STRIPES are at war with our own GOP leadership. 


The social cons see this eager selling out by the GOP leadership on spending, on immigration(and all the other issues that follow), and many other issues, and they know they're the last group that hasn't been totally sold out, and they aren't gonna get screwed like everyone else.

Which is where this fixation on loyalty comes from, nobody trusts anyone anymore.

The other conservatives had to take a backseat while the social cons and the issues and political aftermath of 9/11 took priority, they had to sacrifice. From their perspective, they sacrificed, turned a blind eye to the selling out of their principles to keep the Dems out, now its the social cons turn.

 Except that isn't what happened. Oh, the fiscal/libertarian cons sacrificed, but this wasn't about temporary sacrifice so that they could get what they wanted later(that's what they thought they were getting), this was about the corrupt GOP elite trying to fundamentally change conservatism. 

So now we have a situation like the ending of Reservoir Dogs.  The 2006 elections were botched, and now we're seeing the aftermath.  Mr. Orange is the GOP elite, they got hit in the ensuing chaos of 2006, and laid out in the warehouse.  We have a standoff between the different factions of the GOP coalition, pissed off, on edge, blaming each other for everything that went wrong, and their fingers are on the triggers, Hillary, playing Mr. Pink, is ready to run off with the diamonds.  I think that's the situation we could be facing, and if you've heard about or seen the movie, you know where I'm going with this.  Video of the ending below the jump...
* I should note, language and violence warning!

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 12:09 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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