53 percent say they wish the GOP had a better field of presidential candidates. Is that an outlier produced by the Paulnut contingent too, or genuine proof that there’s room for a dark horse?

A little of each, I’d wager, considering that Paul didn’t get 53% of the straw poll.

To you maybe it is about here and now, but social conservatives have a long history of silly laws to control private behavior. I just with both sides would quit it, and leave people to live their own lives.

I do not want the social liberals trying to put their social engineering crap into schools, nor do I want social conservatives/evangelicals trying to have Genesis as a part of Geology and Biology class either.

Why should social conservatives allow social liberals to use laws to change culture without a fight? Why should we allow scum like Kevin Jennings determine what our children and grandchildren learn about sex in our public schools? It is the social liberal segment that has started this fight, not us, but we have every right to fight back.

Rose

Social Liberals did it first? While I disagree with them just as much as I do social conservatives, lets not think that Social Conservatives using the law to legislate their beliefs, is anything recent. Blue laws, dry countries, cohabitation laws, prohibition, sodomy laws, etc have went on for a long time.

Go tell that to the liberals suing to ORDER it legal, then.

Chris_Balsz on February 22, 2010

This brings up what some of us have been saying. Both the Social Liberals, and Social Conservatives, try to fight their cultural battles via legislation. A lot of us think its just not the federal governments business at all to been a part of either one of that. Just because Social Liberals do it, doesnt mean Social Conservatives have to do it either.

And could maybe just at least one of you social conservatives, realize that just because those of us who do not want the government in the cultural war business, that does not mean we are leftists or social liberals. We just do not want the government telling people how to live, and we find the idea of a cultural nanny state abhorrent, whether of the social liberals or social conservatives

Obviously, they didn’t ask us conservative peons what we think is important.

Oh well. This is why they’re going to lose again.

Yet you support or are at least indifferent to your churches rules on the Holy Communion, to wit, a strict adherence to something that is not even scriptural. Color me confused.

The Catholic Church is quite clear that if you don’t accept it relays the oral history of the Apostolic Church, don’t consider yourself Catholic. That would also be a reason to hold back from taking the Eucharist. Also if you stole something and won’t return it. Or if you’re still upset at the boring sermon you just sat through. The doctrine isn’t “hey, keep the riffraff out of the Communion line”. Baptised and confirmed Catholics, who aren’t pure before the Lord, at that moment, shouldn’t take the Eucharist. The pastor doesn’t read names out before Mass anymore, since we got touchy-feely. But that’s still the rule, if you care about our rules.

Last thing, what is your church’s position on same sex marriages?

Marriage is union between one man and one woman.

Fighting any cultural battles through government is a mistake. Governments needn’t concern themselves with trivial sh*t like gays getting married. Drop this social engineering. You wanna socially engineer? Open a school. Don’t use our elected representation for it. If any party is going to carry any sort of constitutional banner it has to let these things go.

ernesto on February 22, 2010 at 1:25 AM

Go tell that to the liberals suing to ORDER it legal, then.

Over and over, I hear from my liberal friends how homophobic conservatives are. They don’t want gay people protected in hate crimes laws. (Might this be because many think that hate crime laws in general are ill conceived?) They aren’t……

Keene must be thrown out of the CPAC. He couldn’t even deliver a STRAW POLL victory to his Master Romney.

So, CPAC is now infiltrated by the Paultards?

BWA HA HA HA HA HA!

CPAC has lost its significance a long long time ago.

Palin/DeMint 2012!

I agree with Mitch Berg’s blog of a few days ago, that the tea party movement has been an educational one in which a lot of one-issue conservatives have come together, read books, debated one another, and come to a better understanding of conservatism as a whole. The majority of people putting their priorities in the right order is the symptom of a healthy party.

Allah’s recent posts have been hitting a theme of “the social conservatives are getting fewer and fewer”. He still lives in the world in which economic libertarianism, national security conservatism, and “social conservatism” are three distinct and unrelated philosophies. The data shows that that world is changing.

I know mine have. I’ve come to appreciate much more how important social values are. I have come to conclude that traditional marriage is one of the best anti-poverty programs around. And it has nothing to do with the government handing out some kind of approval sticker for a couple’s love.

The reason marriage is so effective at fighting poverty is because traditionally it sets forth obligations that a man has towards a woman and their children. Gender is built into it. It’s intrinsic to what makes marriage effective- so removing that element will be extremely harmful to the poor. Of course, middle class, college educated America won’t be badly harmed, we don’t need strong social institutions because of our wealth and because we usually come from stable families already. But if you’re white trailer trash trying to decide whether you should marry your knocked up girlfriend, or an inner city black woman trying to decide what qualifies a man as a good partner- an institution that is highly valued and approved of by society like marriage that says “a good man marries the mother of his children, is faithful to her, and provides for their children” makes a huge difference.

Now I’m willing to form something like civil unions to provide gay couples with legal rights that they want, but marriage is far too important to society to change just to fit their needs at the expense of the rest of society.

Gay couples are not the same as mixed gender couples- for the simple reason that men and women can create children together- because surprise, men and women have intrinsic differences.

That’s why I think the gay marriage debate isn’t really gays vs straights. It’s feminists vs traditionalists, with gays serving as a proxy for the feminists.