John Boehner's Response Says It All: The GOP Has Used Evangelical Americans For Their Votes

Do you remember 2004? I sure do. We need to ban gay marriage by any means necessary was the GOP's battle cry of the day. States passed their own state constitutional amendments banning it, across the country. President Bush campaigned against gay-marriage, and said he'd support a constitutional amendment to define marriage as being one man, and one woman. That amendment never came. The GOP tried to gin the religious conservatives up again in 2005 with the Terry Shiavo case, but when that hit the floor with a loud thud, they stopped. By 2008, the religious conservatism wasn't a main argument in their election rhetoric, and in 2010, they purposely avoided it.

Square all of their past religion baiting with this statement from Speaker John Boehner today after President Obama decided to no longer defend the "Defense Of Marriage Act" in appeals court.

House Speaker John Boehner's spokesman Michael Steel questions the Obama administration's decision to halt its legal defense of DOMA.

"While Americans want Washington to focus on creating jobs and cutting spending, the President will have to explain why he thinks now is the appropriate time to stir up a controversial issue that sharply divides the nation," he said in a statement.

Ha... his spokesman's name is Michael Steel.

Ok, aside from that silly point: Where's the fire at? While the GOP has thrown some bones the way of the religious right-wing on abortion in this Congress, all "moral" issues now seem to be on the back-burner to fiscal ones. This attempt at re-branding by the GOP is clearly aimed at making them relevant with younger voters, most of whom really don't care who you go to bed with, provided they're a consenting adult. It's just not cool to be "gay bashing" now. And Boehner's response indicates that: he's saying this is a silly issue to be fighting over, and criticizing the President for bringing it up. Can anyone imagine a GOP leader doing that in 2004? Hell no you can't. They'd have relished the fight, and pushed it up a notch.

This sort of proves a bottom line point. Sure, many Republican Congressmen actually do agree with the right-wing religious folks, but they're not really committed to act. They only want to appease the religious right to the extent that it's popular, and if it's not, they won't even acknowledge it. Even more to the point, there never was a constitutional amendment voted on, nor have they overturned "Roe v. Wade" in nearly 40 years. Why is that? It's because they never really want to do that. Voting for the Republicans on cultural values is a total, and complete waste. You won't get anything tangible back in return.