Obama and Big Government vs. ‘God’s America’? - Newsweek
This article notices that the religious right has shifted at least on surface to fiscal issues and capitalist patriotism taking priority over many other previously leading social issues.
Even prior to election 2008 Charles, KT, Reine and others here were pointing out how the new Social conservative came in Faux Capitalist and FisCon garb, and how they arrived carrying Tea Party signs. Sometimes this took persistence against many critics so kudos for the dogged pursuit of truth these past two years. It’s good that media in general has finally noted this momentous shift.
Gay marriage and abortion used to predictably drive religious-right voters to the polls. As recently as 2004, when evangelicals were credited with the reelection of George W. Bush, sex and sexual mores defined the sides in the culture wars. But no longer. As the economy has become the political priority for liberals and conservatives alike, the traditional family-values issues have been blunted—not in their importance to individuals but as weapons in the political theater. What’s motivating religious conservatives now, says Campolo, is a vision of America as God’s own special country, and free-market capitalism as crucial to the nation’s flourishing. Everyone who doesn’t see things this way, according to this perspective, is a socialist or a communist—“Pinkos who are subverting America under the auspices of the president of the United States,” he says. “The marriage between evangelicalism and patriotic nationalism is so strong that anybody who is raising questions about loyalty to the old, laissez-faire capitalist system is ex post facto unpatriotic, un-American, and by association non-Christian.” Support for Obama, in other words, equals an abandonment of American principles equals godlessness. And the spokesman for this movement, adds Campolo, is the Fox News commentator Glenn Beck. “There’s no question in our minds about that.”