Conservatives: all grown up now

According to noted columnist Cal Brown, conservative voters may be becoming more tolerant of non-traditional sexual lifestyle choices. His latest column, entitled "The Maturing of the Right", opens thusly:

Conservative Evangelical Christian voters have come a long way in a short time. From their nearly unanimous condemnation of Bill Clinton for his extramarital affairs, a growing number of these "pro-family" voters appear ready to accept several Republican presidential candidates who do not share their ideal of marriage and faith.

Thomas then goes on to detail a virtual phone directory of potential Republican Presidential nominees who aren't exactly modern day avatars of Ward Cleaver-like family values, such as Rudy Guliani and Newt Gingrich, both of whom had extramarital affairs with their current wives while married to their previous ones, and Mitt Romney, who is, after all, a goddam hellbound Mormon, not to mention a former governor of Faggachusetts.

Thomas goes on to pontificate:

That substantial numbers of conservative evangelical voters are even considering these candidates as presidential prospects is a sign of their political maturation and of their more pragmatic view of what can be expected from politics and politicians. It is also evidence that many of them are awakening to at least two other realities - (1) they are not electing a church deacon; and (2) government has limited power to rebuild a crumbling social construct.

Now, some of my very small readership may be at this point snidely snorting something along the lines of "Bullshit, fucko, the only reason Christian conservative voters are 'even considering these candidates as presidential prospects' is because conservative voters are all dumbasses and hypocrites who only hold people outside their tribe accountable to their bullshit values, while allowing the most ridiculously false facades and charades of moral living to pass entirely unquestioned in their own annointed tribal leaders." Except, of course, given that my readers are all smarter than I am, nearly any of you might have found a more elegant and concise way of putting it. Nonetheless, I can see the suspicion in your eyes -- you're thinking, well, sure, they'll give Rudy and Newt a free pass, because they loooooove those guys, but if the Democrats were to put up someone who'd been divorced twice as their Presidential candidate, the wingnuts would fall all over themselves screaming 'adulterer, adulterer, adulterer'.

But I want to say, I simply don't think this is true. Thomas makes a persuasive point, and, frankly, I'm sick to death of people hating on the right wing simply because they still adhere to the kind of traditional values that made America strong. Those who say the right wing is full of two faced lying hypocrites are simply demeaning their fellow Americans without foundation. If Thomas says the right wing is maturing as regards tolerance of non-traditional lifestyle choices, well, then, I am willing to take him at his word. And I'll prove it. I'm certain that, given this new maturity on the right, nobody in the conservative blogosphere is continuing to obsess on The Clenis --

There was always a kind of primitive Golden Bowl fertility cult aspect to the Clintons' popularity in the 1990s: So long as the divine king was boffing maidens in the Oval Office, the harvest would come in healthy and rich. Then the king departed to his great tower in the sky, and since then we have had nothing but trouble. Can Hillary tap into this great primeval instinct? Might she subtly suggest that she would restore the orgiastic rituals that brought affluence in the past? Rationalists might doubt that presidential sexual hijinks really enrich the nation. But believers can retort: They sure didn't hurt!

Uh... okay, that's David Frum, in a post dated Wednesday, March 14, 2007. And, um, well, he sure doesn't seem to have gotten to a point where he's willing to accept "presidential candidates who do not share [his] ideal of marriage and faith". But hey, he must be an anomaly, because Cal Brown wouldn't bullshit me! He insists that "Conservative evangelicals have grown up". So while David Frum may still be hatin' on Billy's willie, I'm sure there's no one else on the right wing who is going on and on and on about other people's sex lives --

Uh...

How To Bomb A Gay Bath House, by Mike S. Adams

But enough about what Ann [Coulter] ought not to do. Here’s what she should do immediately:

1. Start a website called “Global War on Fags” today.

2. Begin writing essays calling for the cleansing and purification of society via the mass murder of homosexuals.

3. Distribute videos on the website showing the actual murders of homosexuals.

4. Circulate instructions on how to bomb gay bath houses in San Francisco.

5. Circulate a “battle dispatch” to give people specific information on America’s most notorious bath houses.

6. Apply for a job at Kent State University.

It... I... but...

Okay, fine, I admit, it doesn't seem like the right has matured any, in terms of becoming more tolerant of other people doing things they might not approve of, that aren't any of their business anyway. But appearances could be deceiving! After all, if indeed the whole conservative movement can get behind someone as permissive towards things like the gay lifestyle as Rudy Guliani is, then, indeed, there are promising signs of personal growth across the entire --

In addition, Giuliani is not in a position to defend family values, given his history of defending special rights for people who actively engage in a homosexual lifestyle. As Michael Long of the New York state Conservative Party said in 2004, “I just don’t see Rudy Giuliani being able to sway conservatives within the Republican Party. The gay marriage issue draws a line down the middle of the street, and Rudy Giuliani is something of a champion of gay rights.” As mayor of New York, Giuliani signed a “domestic partnership” bill; he has supported civil unions for homosexuals; and he lived with two homosexual men.

Is Giuliani the most liberal candidate running for the White House? Hillary and Barack could certainly give him a run for his liberal money. But the hero of 9/11 is no conservative, and it would be a mistake for the mainstream media to count out conservatives this Presidential election season — even if it would cause them trouble meeting their deadlines.

Who wrote that? Certainly not one of the "pro family" "maturing right" conservative voters that Cal Brown is extolling so glowingly. I mean, that would be crazy. That would mean that Brown might have been wrong, and, in fact, conservatives are still the same provincial, pissy ass, tiny-minded, intolerant, joy hating xenophobes they've always been. So whoever wrote that, it couldn't be a conservative...

Nathan Tabor is a conservative political activist based in Kernersville, North Carolina, where he owns a successful small business and was recently a candidate for Congress. He has his Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the Robertson School of Government at Regent University.

No, no, it's not true! He must be a liberal plant! Because that would mean that all you guys were right all along, and in fact, Cal is only Brown because he's so full of crap, and conservatives aren't becoming more mature or tolerant, they're just, you know, doing the same fucked up shit they've always been into... ignoring the reality (bungling cokeheaded drunken dumbass bullshit slinging draft dodging power hungry control freak scion of privilege and wealth with no work ethic) in favor of the carefully constructed image (down to earth straight talking flightsuit wearing good ol' boy who will defeat the Terrorists with his bare hands) while insisting that only the people they don't like must somehow live up to their insane medieval moral strictures.

Jesus. It's getting so you can't even trust a conservative columnist these days.