First on our list is Tom DeLay
Get Tom DeLay to the Church on Time
The more I hear about this and the somewhat related rule changes for the Senate Ethics committee, the more I want to get a bible and beat some people upside the head.
But sooner or later, conservatives will have to change course or see their movement wither away.
The issues that have been winners for conservatives are fading. White resentment of federal civil rights laws is the ur-conservative issue, the engine that drove the right's rise. Barry Goldwater, by reluctantly voting against the Civil Rights Act, permanently realigned the South and paved the way for Nixon's "Southern strategy." More recently, right-wing strategists successfully mobilized resentment over "values" issues like the "three Gs" -- gays, God and guns. These issues still mobilize some conservative voters, but they aren't nearly as effective as they used to be. Studies show that the electorate, especially younger voters, are moving left on these issues.
Support among voters for conservatism's powerful no-more-taxes wing is dwindling as well. As Bush found out recently, Americans will do anything to save the nation's two largest entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare, including paying higher taxes.
The fall of communism was another heavy blow to the conservative movement. It was fear of communism, added to white backlash, that handed conservatives control of the country in the Reagan years. Although Bush won reelection in 2004 by convincing enough frightened Americans that a nonexistent entity called "Islamofascism" was the second coming of the Evil Empire, that fear-mongering comparison will not work anymore. The Iraq debacle, and Bush's misguided "war on terror," have made it only too clear that moralistic militarism and disdain for diplomacy only makes the problem worse.
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