Tucker Carlson: Evangelicals got duped
Via Atrios. Tucker Carlson on this weekend's Chris Matthews show.
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
In a rare moment of intellectual honesty, Carlson is confirming the thesis of Thomas Frank's What's The Matter With Kansas. The GOP's electoral strategy is to run on moral issues (gays, abortion, evolution) that they don't necessarily even give a shit about, then once elected pursue a neo-con/freemarket agenda. Thus they get the working class to vote against their own interests.
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thanks for posting this. i'm sad i missed the original broadcast, looks like a great interview.
zing!
No friggin' kidding. Nice rare moment of honesty, Tucker.
Chalupa,
You're too funny!
Anyway, Mr. Carlson's comments are welcomed by me because as a highly visible Republican pundit; it is indeed honesty that doesn't serve his party's purpose.
I have long been saying for years that the vast majority of the "issues" important to Republicans during elections are ruses and wedge issues that are largely unimportant with regard to the ultimate purpose of the party namely: staying in power, making billions of dollars by maintaing the status quo of the overt and covert military/industrial complex; by any means neccessary.
We all know this; and so do the evangelicals who use the Republican party in the same way that they are used by the party.
The underlying constitutional crisis, that we are supposed to be granted separation of church and state, and that it's not happening; becomes largely ignored.
The underlying spiritual crisis, that is largely ignored by all Christians; is that in the 4th century Roman Empire the basement religion of Chritianity of the people, became the upstairs bascillica religion of the empire. Spirituality has been exchanged for politcal control in many ways. And not a lot has changed since then.
Ask any progressive Catholic.
What to do?
tom