Saturday, October 14, 2006

Dick Armey has a beef with the religious right

Another episode in the ongoing Republican crackup and former Majority Leader Dick Armey's in the middle of it. I'm with Armey -- make a deal with the big goverment left and you're a junior partner. The religious right is losing sight of the big picture: Freedom. This doesn't bode well for November.

I am a free market economist by training, and I believe that economic freedom is vitally important in the defense of the American family. Big issues like retirement security, tax reform, school choice and spending restraint will determine whether or not families will be dependent and subservient to government. Who owns your retirement? Who decides how you provide for your family?s future. Can you leave your estate to your grandchildren, or is it the government's? Will the government socially engineer your life through the tax code? Will liberal education bureaucrats determine your child?s education? These are all issues that used to matter to the political leadership of Christian conservative voters.

And while for most in the Christian conservative movement these issues still resonate, the same cannot be said for some of our Washington, D.C.-based religious leaders. Right after I had left Congress and joined FreedomWorks, we found ourselves embroiled in a major tax fight in Alabama. Oddly, an old friend, Bob Riley, had been elected governor only to immediately reverse course, cut a deal with the teachers union, and advocate a massive tax increase to prop up the failing government school system. It was "what Jesus would do," he said. I took personal offense to that, as did many of the voters who had just worked so hard to elect him Governor. Our activists had joined forces with local Christian conservatives, including the Alabama Christian Coalition, to fight both bad policy and a sense of personal betrayal.

We were blindsided when the national leadership of the Christian Coalition endorsed the Governor?s proposed tax increase, joining forces with liberal interests in the state that had actively worked against our values for a generation. In the end we won, thanks in no small part to the fact that members of the local Christian Coalition chapter parted ways with the national organization and stood with Alabama FreedomWorks, the Alabama Policy Institute, local taxpayer organizations, and a host of other small government advocates all united in the effort to stop a big government tax-hike scheme.

Today, the national Christian Coalition has joined forces with MoveOn.org in another government grab of private property dealing specifically with ownership of the Internet. They are wrong on the specifics of the issue, and they are wrong to ssociate with and comfort radical liberals who have demonstrated nothing but disdain for conservative values. Armey's Axiom: Make a deal with the Devil, and you are the junior partner.

Another Armey's Axiom says that if it is about power, you lose. And unfortunately when it comes to James Dobson, my personal experience has been that the man is most interested in political power.

Read the whole piece.

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