For decades, the Republican Party has used conservative Christian evangelicals as their political ground troops, hoping that they won't notice that the party elite's priorities don't mesh with the religious right's. In promising year after year to force cultural change through politics, the Rethugs haven't delivered in nearly the way they've delivered for their wealthy patrons. Rabbi Jay Michaelson notes that as the wealth of the top one percent has grown to levels not seen since before the Great Depression, cultural change has moved in the direction of progressivism, as the Rethugs well know:
"They stir you up about social issues in order to get you to the polls, and then they don’t really do anything about them. Because, in fact, they can’t. These are cultural questions, not political ones, and they have to be solved in the cultural arena."He also points out that the harsh, "greed is good" rhetoric of those on the political far-right should disturb actual Christians:
"What happened to the Christian concern to 'love the least of these,' the most vulnerable, the most destitute? In my opinion, supply-side Republicans have convinced many Christians not merely that the welfare state is a bad idea, but that generosity itself is a vice, that public assistance equals dependence, and that giving the wealthy even more breaks is the way for benefits to 'trickle down' to the rest of us."In short, if evangelicals think the Republican / New Confederate / Stupid Party is looking out for them, as Rabbi Michaelson would say, they're being had.
BONUS: A good example of how the one-percenters try to argue their "up is down, black is white" position is this stinkeroo in (where else?) today's
BONUS II: Here's a meticulous take-down of the Saeman's tongue bath of the Kochs and of their attempt to lash them to Pope Francis.
