The Base

Tony Perkins loses it:

Perkins, via Andrew Sullivan:

This raises yet another plausible question for values voters: has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members and or staffers?

No, Tony, it's people who really do hold American values turning up their noses at your anti-American, completely-out-of-touch-with-reality agenda.

In that vein, see this wonderful OpEd by Eugene Robinson from WaPo.

The culture war is supposed to be about morality, but really it's a crusade to compel Americans to follow certain norms of private behavior that some social and religious conservatives believe are mandated by sociology, nature or God. Republican officeholders have paid lip service to this crusade, all the while knowing that the human family is diverse and fallible. They know that the gravest threat to marriage is the heterosexual divorce rate. They know that Republicans drink, swear, carouse and have affairs, just like Democrats. They know that homosexuals aren't devils.

Most Americans know all of this, too, by the way. Main Street hasn't been Hicksville for a long time.

Just in case anyone was wondering, this exchange between Chris Matthews and Tucker Carlson should clarify things. (It's all over the Internet this morning. This version's from Andrew Sullivan -- who got linked from AmericaBlog, if you can imagine such a thing.)

CARLSON: It goes deeper than that though. The deep truth is that the elites in the Republican Party have pure contempt for the evangelicals who put their party in power. Everybody in ...

MATTHEWS: How do you know that? How do you know that?

CARLSON: Because I know them. Because I grew up with them. Because I live with them. they live on my street. Because I live in Washington, and I know that everybody in our world has contempt for the evangelicals. And the evangelicals know that, and they're beginning to learn that their own leaders sort of look askance at them and don't share their values.

MATTHEWS: So this gay marriage issue and other issues related to the gay lifestyle are simply tools to get elected?

CARLSON: That's exactly right. It's pandering to the base in the most cynical way, and the base is beginning to figure it out.

I've sort of hesitated to spell it out, but it's been my feeling that those who follow people like Dobson, Reed, Bauer, Sheldon, Wildmon and the rest of those sewer crocodiles aren't really the brightest porch lights on the block.

I mean, it only took them twelve years to get it?