{"id":7988,"date":"2006-07-20T14:45:33","date_gmt":"2006-07-20T18:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/7988.html"},"modified":"2006-07-20T14:45:33","modified_gmt":"2006-07-20T18:45:33","slug":"appealing-to-the-taliban-wing-of-the-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/appealing-to-the-taliban-wing-of-the-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Appealing to the Taliban wing of the party"},"content":{"rendered":"

The House of Representatives, which hasn’t done much of anything of substance in months, has been surprisingly busy lately, debating and voting on a series of bills that are geared towards making the Republican base happy. Taken together, I think there’s a pattern.<\/p>\n

* The House approved a measure<\/a> to shield “under God” in the Pledge from any legal scrutiny.<\/p>\n

* The House voted to acquire<\/a> a 29-foot cross in San Diego so that it can remain on public property<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* The House will vote soon<\/a> on a measure to make it harder to challenge display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings.<\/p>\n

* Lawmakers unveiled a proposal to give $100 million<\/a> in taxpayer money to private religious schools.<\/p>\n

Of course, congressional Republicans don’t really expect any of these to become law; they’re pushing the measures to motivate the party’s most ardent activists in an election year. But therein lies the point — what does the GOP base want? They want more government support for, and interference in, matters of faith.<\/p>\n

Maybe I’m biased in light of my previous place of employment<\/a>, but when it comes to the most obvious targets of the far-right wing, it’s not just gays and abortion; it’s the separation of church and state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The House of Representatives, which hasn’t done much of anything of substance in months, has been surprisingly busy lately, debating and voting on a series of bills that are geared towards making the Republican base happy. Taken together, I think there’s a pattern. * The House approved a measure to shield “under God” in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}