Pope Francis is scaring the hell out of conservatives. Here’s the real reason why

[DaveT]

24. American conservatives

Stopped being conservative with Ronald Reagan and supply side economics. Instead of adhering to skepticism about all the various utopian schemes of dreamers, the GOP became the font of a new Utopian Dream -- the Free Market.

Get the government off America's back and we will have Morning in America forevermore.

Instead of a principled philosophy concerned with Original Sin and the baseness of human nature, today's "conservative" is a radical and a purist.

This change in right wing philosophy came about when clever political specialists realized that the Republicans never won a national election with their bitching about Deficit Spending. So they hoked up what David Stockman called a Trojan Horse -- the "theory" of tax cuts unleashing America from bonds if liberalism.

Bad economics and worse public policy -- but great politics for a generation.

Three decades later they have cut taxes and reduced regulation beyond any rational measure. The result has not been Utopia. More like hell.

The Pope, a spokesperson for getting into heaven himself, can spot a rival religion from a mile off. For whatever reservations one may have with The Papacy, at least the Catholics don't claim that you can live in heaven before you're dead.