Is the Tea Party Lining up With the Religious Right?

If either Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is going to be the host of the upcoming Christian event, "The Response," (and, who has also not yet declared his candidacy), or Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann manages to snare the Republican Party's presidential nomination, it will be in large part because a portion of the Tea Party movement has joined together with the Religious Right to plant themselves firmly upon the conservative movement's three-legged stool, recognizing that the combination of social, economic and national security issues are the way to the White House.

Since the advent of the Tea Party movement in February 2009, the mainstream media, and pundits of all political stripes have tried to deconstruct its goals and its membership. Although the American Family Association, a multi-million dollar Religious Right enterprise, sponsored some early Tea Party events, libertarians were also in the picture. Tea Party participants included Koch-minted corporatists, militia members, white supremacists, and constitutionalists.

Questions abounded: Was the Tea Party an independent movement or was it an appendage of the Republican Party? The answer to that question became pretty apparent early on. Although it has been a steady irritant to GOP leaders, Tea Partiers have pretty much supported Republican Parrty candidates and their issues.

Another question was: How was the Tea Party going to deal with/relate to the Religious Right's social agenda?

Rob Boston, senior policy analyst with Americans United, a Washington, D.C.-based church-state watchdog group, told me in an email that "...interplay between the Tea Party and the Religious Right continues to fascinate."

Boston pointed out that he has, "seen polls indicating that most self-identified Tea Party supporters agree with the Religious Right on social issues." Boston said that he is, "not sure the pure libertarian faction was ever terribly large. The more interesting question is one of priorities: Tea Party supporters may agree with the Religious Right on social concerns, but that doesn't mean those issues are among their top goals. I don't think they are, and I believe the Tea Party's rapid rise has succeeded, at least temporarily, in obscuring some of the social issues."

In February 2010, Judson Phillips' Tea Party Nation - one of the most important TP organizations - held a coming out party in Nashville, Tennessee, where a number of Religious Right leaders were in attendance. Dr. Rick Scarborough, who heads up a constellation of corporations that includes Vision America, Vision America Action and the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration, conducted a well-attended workshop. Judge Roy Moore, the Alabama Supreme Court justice who was impeached from office after he refused to enforce a court order mandating the removal of a statue of the Ten Commandments from within his courthouse, gave a lunchtime speech. Bishop E.W. Jackson, a noted African American conservative, declared the convention free of racists.

Out of the TPN gathering came Scarborough's "Mandate to Save America," a ten-point manifesto aimed at convincing Tea Party leaders to join forces with the Christian Right. Not about to be left behind, a number of Religious Right leaders immediately endorsed Scarborough's effort. These included Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council; Mat Staver, of the American Family Association's Liberty Council; Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America; Richard Viguerie, the "King of Right Wing Direct Mail" and chairman of ConservativeHQ.com; Gary Bauer, President of American Values; Phyllis Schlafly, the "Godmother" of the Religious Right and the founder of the Eagle Forum; and Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association.

Rick Scarborough's "Mandate" was followed by the issuing of "The Mount Vernon Statement: Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century," (http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/3007) which was signed onto by many of the same leaders that embraced the "Mandate." A press release issued by Perkins' Family Research Council, declared that "The Mount Vernon Statement" is "a new document that brings together the three legs of the conservative movement - social, economic, and national security."

Richard Viguerie signed on, saying: "This is an attempt to draft a document that conservatives -- whether they're Tea Party conservatives or social or economic or foreign policy conservatives -- can get behind and begin the process of reclaiming the Republican Party for small-government conservatives."

While the Religious Right was trying to join the party, Dick Armey's FreedomWorks appeared to have something else in mind. FreedomWorks, a major Tea Party organization, was cobbling together what it was calling a "Contract From America," which, for all intents and purposes would largely exclude such culture war issues as banning abortion and preventing same-sex marriage. According to a Politico report, Perkins complained that FreedomWorks and other groups, "bring a libertarian bias that doesn't represent the ‘true tea parties.'"

For the mainstream media, the commonly held wisdom was that the warp and woof of the tea party movement was more libertarian in its orientation and less concerned with the Religious Right's traditional family values issues.

That conclusion allowed for some in the mainstream media to break out its well-worn meme that with the Tea Party in ascendance, the Religious Right was dead. (Over the years, there have been so many burials of the Religious Right, yet so few actual corpses.)

Despite reports, including from Politico, that there was evidence of a schism between the tea party and the Religious Right, James Scaminaci III pointed out, at politicalchili.com, that the Religious Right had been involved with the Tea Party movement since its beginning in February 2009. Scaminaci wrote that "Following the Politico report, Tony Perkins teamed up with Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, and Tea Party Nation to join Representative Michele Bachmann and other far-right Republicans in a 300-person or so Tea Party protest in March 2010 to kill the health care reform bill."

In his April 2010 report on the "Origins of the Tea Party Movement" at politicalchili.com, Scaminaci suggested that "The Christian theocrats made their case for a totalitarian Christian theocracy and were rewarded with thunderous applause. The Christian theocrats bashed homosexuality and were answered with ‘amens' and thunderous applause. Anti-immigrant bashing was cheered enthusiastically. The birther conspiracy theory was enthusiastically supported." According to Scaminaci, the Tea Party Nation convention signified that this part of the movement was, "a Christian theocratic, homophobic, anti-immigrant movement totally aligned with the Republican Party and a front group for Wall Street."

An analysis by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life published in February of this year - two years after the Tea Party movement was founded and one year after Tea Party Nation's blowout in Nashville -- found "that Tea Party supporters tend to have conservative opinions not just about economic matters, but also about social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In addition, they are much more likely than registered voters as a whole to say that their religion is the most important factor in determining their opinions on these social issues. And, they draw disproportionate support from the ranks of white evangelical Protestants."

Rob Boston, who recently attended the meeting of Ralph Reed's newly founded Faith & Freedom Coalition, allowed that he was "surprise[d by] just how much of the conversation on the right these days is being driven by Tea Party obsessions.... [particularly] health care reform, federal spending, the deficit and taxes."

Boston added that "The social issues that motivate the Religious Right -- same-sex marriage, abortion, evolution, public education, etc. -- were certainly discussed, but they were not nearly as prominent as I would have expected."

According to Boston, the jury is still out on which sector of the conservative movement is driving the GOP agenda. "The Family Research Council's ‘Values Voter Summit' in October may provide some answers," Boston says. "FRC President Tony Perkins has been sending out a lot of e-mails lately on Tea Party economic themes, but it seems to me that this must be thin gruel for his core supporters. No one joins the FRC because they want lower taxes -- they join to promote Christian fundamentalist supremacy over the culture and to keep the gays, feminists and atheists in their place."

"Religious Right groups may have reached out to the Tea Party figuring that movement would make a nice adjunct to their efforts. But perhaps it's the Religious Right that has become the adjunct."

If Michelle Bachmann gets the nomination - and it is certainly a long shot -- it would be a merger for the ages. Picture Bachmann, the head of the Tea Party Congressional Caucus and the darling of the Religious Right, planted on that three-legged stool.

ENDS

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