{"id":8025,"date":"2006-07-25T12:30:24","date_gmt":"2006-07-25T16:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8025.html"},"modified":"2006-07-25T12:30:24","modified_gmt":"2006-07-25T16:30:24","slug":"values-voters-are-a-cheap-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/values-voters-are-a-cheap-date\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Values voters’ are a cheap date"},"content":{"rendered":"

Desperate congressional [tag]Republicans[\/tag] have been working overtime to impress the party’s far-right base. An article<\/a> in the Washington Times today suggests the effort is working.<\/p>\n

The Republican base is being rejuvenated, some conservative [tag]activists[\/tag] say, by a flurry of congressional action on “[tag]values[\/tag]” issues such as marriage safeguards, flag protection and abortion restrictions, as well as President Bush’s veto last week of stem-cell legislation. […]<\/p>\n

In the past few months, Mr. [tag]Bush[\/tag] signed legislation against broadcast indecency, both chambers of Congress voted on a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and woman, and the House voted to retain the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.<\/p>\n

Conservative leaders are encouraged. They say their key issues were sidelined after conservatives helped President Bush win re-election and the Republican Party keep control of Congress in 2004.<\/p>\n

“Prior to this, there wasn’t much to show for a lot of hard work,” said Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But that’s just it — there still<\/i> isn’t much to show for their work. Jim Backlin, vice president of legislative affairs at the flailing Christian Coalition, said the spate of “values” votes “really, really helps rejuvenate our base — especially Bush vetoing the stem-cell bill.”<\/p>\n

In other words, right-wing activists, who believed after the 2004 election that [tag]GOP[\/tag] lawmakers would finally advance a religious right-style agenda, are now “rejuvenated” despite Republicans failing to actually accomplish anything.
\n
\nWhat is there for the far-right to be so excited about? After ignoring the Dobson crowd for the better part of two years, Republicans have recently:<\/p>\n

* held unsuccessful votes on [tag]gay marriage[\/tag], flag burning, and the estate tax;<\/p>\n

* ignored the base’s demands and passed a popular stem-cell research bill that sparked a presidential veto;<\/p>\n

* passed a court-stripping measure in the House that almost certainly won’t even come up for a vote in the Senate;<\/p>\n

* and successfully increased fines on broadcast indecency.<\/p>\n

That’s it. Stiffer FCC penalties and a bunch of failed measures are enough to “rejuvenate” the [tag]base[\/tag]?<\/p>\n

Talk about your soft bigotry of low expectations….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Desperate congressional [tag]Republicans[\/tag] have been working overtime to impress the party’s far-right base. An article in the Washington Times today suggests the effort is working. The Republican base is being rejuvenated, some conservative [tag]activists[\/tag] say, by a flurry of congressional action on “[tag]values[\/tag]” issues such as marriage safeguards, flag protection and abortion restrictions, as well […]<\/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-8025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8025","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=8025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}