The End Of The Religious Right?

11:32 pm EST March 15th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Well, they’ll never completely go away (sadly) but Frank Rich’s Sunday column does a good job of going through the culture war b.s. that’s supposed to whip people into a frenzy but doesn’t anymore.

In our own hard times, the former moral “majority” has been downsized to more of a minority than ever. Polling shows that nearly 60 percent of Americans agree with ending Bush restrictions on stem-cell research (a Washington Post/ABC News survey in January); that 55 percent endorse either gay civil unions or same-sex marriage (Newsweek, December 2008); and that 75 percent believe openly gay Americans should serve in the military (Post/ABC, July 2008). Even the old indecency wars have subsided. When a federal court last year struck down the F.C.C. fine against CBS for Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl, few Americans either noticed or cared about the latest twist in what had once been a national cause célèbre.

Without people being driven to outrage over that kind of swill, the Republican party has very little tools in its arsenal to get people out to vote.

Topic:

Related Posts

«
»

5 Responses to “The End Of The Religious Right?”

  1. Jaim says:
    March 15, 2009 at 11:50 pm

    I was always frustrated by the false notion that Republicans were the party of leaving you alone, when in fact a number of their planks have been about regulating your personal life with regards to sex and health, not to mention demonizing gays.

    Rich makes good points about how nobody can afford the culture wars right now when the economy is in peril. And IMO, libertarian independents are simply sick and tired of going along with all the Evangelical bullshit they had to stomach for years in the coalition between them and the truly crazy fundies like Palin. (A woman who is for abstinence only education, but whose daughter had a baby out of wedlock. And yes, if a politician is going to try and tell us how to live our lives, it’s completely fair game to point out that her own skills as an abstinence-only mom have been complete FAIL.)

    The religious right will still be around, but the critical coalition between them and the independents and Rockefeller Republicans is now dead. Just ask Arlen Specter, who is rumored to be thinking about switching to the Democratic party simply so he can win his primary and not have to deal with another insane Jesus-freak Republican.

  2. jr says:
    March 16, 2009 at 12:53 am

    Flintstoneianity is dead

  3. ed says:
    March 16, 2009 at 8:35 am

    The end of the Religious Right would mean the end of the modern Republican party. They’re to heavily invested in each other, too often the same person. And the David Frum’s of the world who are having some second thoughts should keep in mind that little has changed in the past 30 years. Dutch Reagan was deeply stupid and kowtowed to the fundamentalist whackos as much as George Bush, Jr. or any of ‘em. Look it up, man.

  4. ed says:
    March 16, 2009 at 10:05 am

    I mean, just look at your garden variety Republican dildo troll like Dennis. He can’t even bring himself to disavow even the worst of the Religious Right (or anyone on the far right). That’s how they roll.

  5. revenantive says:
    March 16, 2009 at 2:08 pm

    As long as religion continues to exist as we know it, there will be a Religious Right branch in every single major political party.

    The only thing that will change this may be the slow but steady advancement of the Atheist & Agnostic demographics. It won’t happen in my lifetime, but perhaps my children may be able to live in a world free from religious tyranny.

    The unholy union of the Religious Right and Big Business corruption of the Republican Party has done far too much damage to our democracy. It’s going to take several generations of a Reality Based Coalition to undue all the twisted wreckage and set our country back towards the Secular path that our Founding Fathers fought and gave their lives for.

    Every single Religious Righter who puts the bible before the constitution, their country and their fellow citizens needs to be rounded up and charged with treason.