Influential secularists in American government and the media continue their drumbeat attempt to convince Americans that their conservative neighbors don't care about hot-button social issues.For background read Will GOP Call 'Truce' in Culture War? [as proposed by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels] and also read Christians 'Hold Rudder' in Conservative Politics-- From "
Daniels’s ‘Truce’ Call Finds Strong Support in WSJ Poll" by Neil King Jr., Wall Street Journal 3/2/11
The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll appears to vindicate Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels‘s repeated insistence that the country needs a “truce” on fights over social issues while it grapples with its mounting economic challenges.
Nearly two thirds of Republican primary voters said they would be “more likely” to vote for a GOP primary candidate who says the party should focus more on the economy and the deficit and less on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion. Only 8% said they would be less likely to vote for such a candidate. The rest said they were unsure.
Many Republicans have said privately that they considered Mr. Daniels’ position politically unwise. But the WSJ/NBC poll would seem to prove them wrong.
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From "A Second Look at the WSJ's Poll on the 'Truce'" by John McCormack, The Weekly Standard 3/4/11The problem with the WSJ poll is that it didn't really poll "the truce" as Daniels has described it. The poll posed the following question to 282 adults (not likely or even registered voters, mind you, but adults who say they'll vote in the GOP primary):
Suppose a candidate running in the 2012 Republican primary for president says the party should focus MORE on issues such as the economy and federal budget deficit and focus LESS on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion. Would you be (ROTATE) -- more likely or less likely -- to vote for a Republican Presidential candidate who says this, or would this make no difference in how you might vote one way or the other?
Here's the thing: Daniels' "truce" isn't about simply "focusing more" on fiscal issues than social issues. He thinks social issues should be "set aside" until our fiscal house is in order. Though Daniels hasn't been entirely clear on what a truce would mean in practice, he has suggested that it is not simply a matter of de-emphasis, but a matter of inaction (i.e. accepting the status quo while the president deals with the debt).
If Daniels' truce were simply about focusing more on fiscal issues, then few social conservatives would be criticizing him.
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From "Right grapples with social 'truce'" by Alexander Burns, Politico 3/2/11. . . in the heavily socially conservative GOP, voters are more focused on the pocketbook than the Good Book.
A host of leaders on the cultural right told POLITICO they don’t intend to fight it. Instead, they hope to protect their role in the campaign by ensuring that social issues are part of a larger conservative message.
So even if the economy is at the top of the agenda, candidates still need to cross a “threshold” of credibility on social issues, said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser, whose group is dedicated to fighting abortion.
“We’re not saying this has to be the only issue,” Dannenfelser said. “There’s not an insistence that it has to be No. 1, that it has to be made No. 1, when it defies the reality of the moment.”
“We’re saying it has to be part of the issue set that is vital,” she continued. “It has to be communicated as a set of issues — fiscal issues, foreign policy, social issues.”
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From "Santorum slams social issues 'truce'" by Andy Barr, Politico 2/24/11Rick Santorum is so eager to ding Mitch Daniels over his proposed "truce" on social issues that the former Pennsylvania senator steered a question about the president's decision on the Defense of Marriage Act to hit Daniels.
"If we do not, as a party and as a people, stand behind the institution of marriage and understand its essential role as the glue that holds the family together, the family, the building block of society, the first economy, the first school, the first place where children's character is formed we are going to destine our children and destine the future of this country for a lower standard of living and less free and prosperous country," Santorum told a small group of reporters . . . in Iowa.
When Santorum was then asked if he'd like to hear more about Obama's decision from the rest of the 2012 field, he said the silence from some candidates was showing their true stripes.
"It shows that there are some people who are willing to stand up and fight for the family and others who would rather, to use the comment of one potential candidate, call a truce on these things," he said. "Well, a truce, in this case, means ceding ground to the other side."
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From "Jindal, Santorum Denounce Truce on Abortion, Social Issues" by Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com 2/25/11[Tom Minnery, the senior vice president of government and public policy at CitizenLink, the public policy arm of Focus on the Family, said,] “In this age of the Tea Party, some believe that conservatives should place all their emphasis on tax and economic issues, and push those pesky social issues — such as the right to life, and the definition of marriage — to the back burner. Some are just plain tired of us social conservatives,” he writes. “But the fact is, any consistent conservative is a social conservative.”
Minnery explains: “Some conservatives, because they lean Libertarian, believe that matters of faith should be mostly private because public religion threatens individual liberty. Actually, moral principles preserve our freedoms, and here is why that is true: All conservatives believe in the concept of ordered liberty — that is, the freedom to do what one wants to do, within the limits of what one ought to do. And from where does that “oughtness” come? It derives from the shared moral principles that must inhabit each heart, as a kind of internal moral gyroscope that tells each of us what is right and what is wrong.”
“In the West, these principles find their source in the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, and if we lose that collective sense of “oughtness,” then individual liberty degenerates into selfishness, and eventually into social chaos. And, at that point, it is only the loaded gun and the barbed wire fence that can preserve order,” he concludes.
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From "Americans Don't Want a 'Truce' on Social Issues" by Richard Land, President, Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission 3/4/11Consider recent polls from the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). They reveal that tea party supporters, while motivated by the fiscal crisis, are also overwhelmingly socially conservative: Sixty-three percent oppose abortion, found PRRI, and 64% oppose same-sex marriage, found Pew.
PRRI also found that 22% of voters identify with "the conservative Christian movement" but only 11% identify with the tea party. This dovetails nicely with the fact that 32% of voters in the 2010 election described themselves in exit polls as pro-life, pro-family conservatives. They voted 78% for Republican candidates, delivering House Republicans their new majority.
For Republicans to do anything to de-energize this voting bloc would amount to political suicide.
The millions of social conservatives and tea party voters firmly believe that Congress can walk and chew gum at the same time. They expect pro-life, pro-family legislation and they want deep cuts in federal spending, including an end to ObamaCare and its replacement with pro-life, free-market health-care reform. They expect commitments to this effect from their presidential candidates.
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Click headlines below to read previous articles:'Teavangelical Party' Emerges from 2010 Election PollingTea Party Energy is Christian
Tea Party = Religious Right, says Liberal Media
Liberal Media Paint Tea Party as Christian
'Catholic Tea Party' Smeared by Liberals
GOP Ignores Social Conservatives at Own PerilChristian Tea Party Congressman Keynotes CPAC
Who Cares About Same-Sex Marriage Anymore?
America Turns Against Abortion on Demand
As usual, American television will feature a series (by the producer of “Sex and the City”) intended to mock Christians and paint the womenfolk as back-biting hypocrites. Think Desperate Housewives conducting Bible study.
