Ron Fournier On The Secret Culture War Behind The Convention

[DrFunkenstein]

NEW YORK - Moviemaker Michael Moore is the "anti-Christ." Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter is a selfish hedonist. Cultural wars need fighters from here to Oklahoma. These are the views of President Bush's political core here — delivered quietly and mostly offstage so GOP convention cameras don't see and swing voters don't hear.

Prime-time speeches are reserved for poll-tested words about Bush's wartime leadership and "compassionate conservative" agenda. Cultural conservatism is shunted to the sidelines. The right gets to wing it, but only when the network cameras are turned off or the media are banned.

"Underneath a thin veneer of compassionate slogans, there's a divisive, negative agenda that is driving the Republican Party and has controlled this White House and their policies for the past four years," said Mary Beth Cahill, campaign manager for Bush rival John Kerry. "The Republican Party has miscalculated again if they thought they could keep their true extreme agenda under wraps while middle class families have been suffering from it all along."

Inside the convention hall, conservatives dulled their rhetorical knives.

"The key to a richer culture is strong families, and the key to strong families is strong marriages," said Rep. Rick Santorum. Pretty tame for a lawmaker who once compared homosexual acts to bigamy and incest.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040901/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_cultural_wars_1

Worth reading for the details Fournier actually provides.

[delete_bush]

1. the true heart of the party speaks....

"The left wing hates George Bush the most because he believes in God," said Youngstown Mayor George McKelvey, a conservative Democrat who drew applause from Ohio delegates.

As when Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas told an invitation-only Bush rally for Christian conservatives, "We must win this cultural war." He offered an agenda strikingly different from anything voters will hear from the convention platform, including a proposed requirement that pregnant women considering abortions be offered anesthesia for their fetuses.

What a bunch of whack-jobs.

[DemDogs]

2. Any chance you'd have seen that picture

if the Edwards' kids hadn't won over the press at the DNC?