Praying For Realignment
by digby
I’ve been writing for a long time about the Religious Industrial Complex and how they hope to end the culture war by marginalizing pro-choice and pro gay rights voices within both parties. They’ve entirely succeeded with the Republicans and have now turned their attention to the Democrats. It just took a giant step forward with the announcement that Obama has invited Christian Right leader Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration.
There are those who feel this is a very savvy political move on Obama’s part — by inviting Warren to give the invocation at the most watched inauguration in history, Obama is validating the views of the Christian Right and they may very well be moved enough by that to become Democrats. But it naturally follows that in order to keep their votes, the Democrats would have to honor their agenda and views — the evangelicals are big voting bloc and if the Democrats become the social conservative party, they could count on their votes for sure. (If they don’t make substantial moves toward social conservatism, this won’t work, obviously.) It doesn’t leave much room for liberals, but perhaps that’s a good thing. They are nothing but trouble, defending women’s civil liberties, agitating for gay rights and hectoring the government about not torturing and starting wars and all that. It would be a big relief if they didn’t need them.
It occurs to me that this may have been one of the lessons the political establishment took from the Clinton years. Gore had the presidency denied him in 2000 largely because the Democrats had alienated a significant enough slice of the left that it defected to a third party, making the outcome much closer than it should have been. They may see the way to permanent realignment to be the replacement of liberals (who are universally loathed among their friends) with the salt-of-the-earth, well organized and easy to appease social conservatives. It makes some sense. It would keep liberals rootless and powerless but they could continue to serve as the useful punching bag for the political establishment.
Aside from the bigot part, Rick Warren is, you know, a liar.
Warren claimed he supported Proposition 8 because of a free-speech issue — asserting that “any pastor could be considered doing hate speech . . . if he shared his views that homosexuality wasn’t the most natural way for relationships.” That’s some lying we can believe in, my friends.
…more complete quote:
And the reason I supported Prop 8 really, was a free speech issue. Because if it had…. First, the court overid the will of the people. But second, is, there were all kinds of threats that if you… that did not pass, then any pastor could be considered doing hate speech if he shared his views that he didn’t think homosexuality was the most natural way for relationships. And that would be hate speech. To me, we should have freedom of speech. And you should be able to have freedom of speech to make your position, and I should be able to have freedom of speech to make my position. And can we do this in a civil way?
More Atrios
Who would Jesus assassinate?
…it should be obvious, but in case it isn’t, imagine the headlines here if a prominent cleric who had called for the assassination of Bush spoke at an equivalent Iranian event? That’s some diplomacy we can believe in, my friends!