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Things are so bad in Dreher’s mind that he writes that he can’t believe he’s saying this, “but I hope the House flips to the Democrats in 2014, so we can be rid of these nuts. Let Ted Cruz sit in the Senate stewing in his precious bodily fluids, and let Washington get back to the business of governing.”

There’s more. The conservative pundit was less than impressed that his party was destroying the portfolios of hard working Americans who have been saving their money all because they refused to pay our debt.

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Yes, Dreher has the intellectual honesty to admit that it is not conservative to refuse to pay your bills. He also correctly notes that standing against food stamps for the poor is not a Christian value. I note that he has suggested that people who want to live traditional moral values might want to live in “intentional communities”, which sound a lot like the kind of communities raging liberals endorse where resources are shared, so that would be an interesting debate – maybe “traditional” values are actually close to the values Jesus advocated for, after all, and are not actually determined by the amount of gay hate one spouts. Huh.

But Dreher was most appalled by the fact that House Republicans sang Amazing Grace yesterday as they stood firm against fiscal responsibility and the American people:

From the American Conservative:

The Republican Party has driven the country to the brink, and this morning, House Republicans bolstered their ranks by … standing together and singing Amazing Grace. It’s Strangelovian. Maybe there won’t be a long-term fallout from this, but I tell you, it’s very hard to see entrusting power to a party that behaves this way, that manufactures crises like this for its own short-term political gain. The Republicans, having lost their mind, have destroyed their brand.

Amazing Grace. They cause this looming disaster — which, make no mistake, would be a global disaster — and then stand there singing a freaking hymn amid the ruins of their party, and the potential crash of our economy! Raving loonies, the lot.

A new PPP poll shows that Mr. Dreher is not alone among conservative Republicans, “(V)oters strongly opposed to the shutdown in every state we polled, even though most of them voted for Mitt Romney last year.”

Dreher’s column makes clear a point that’s been driving me nuts. We are not debating ideology here. We are at war with a corporate coup attempt over our Government masquerading as the GOP.

Their agenda has nothing to do with traditional “conservatism”. They’ve allied themselves with racists and bigots because it’s hard to sell corporate policies that hurt the very people they need to vote for them unless the policies are disguised well. It’s hard to keep things disguised among the informed, who tend to be less bigoted because they know that power tries to divide the people against one another for a reason.

Have I been unrelenting in my criticism of the modern day Republican Party? Yes. But it’s not because I don’t appreciate the value of a good debate with a real conservative. I personally value fiscal conservatism. But I don’t see that in the GOP. In fact, for fiscal responsibility, President Obama wins.

I know that hurts Republicans, but if they face it, they can start the process of getting better.

I criticize because Republicans have let their party be taken over by corporations and big money, which is why their messages are so ridiculous and contradictory, and why they are represented by people like Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin – sociopathic con artists of the highest order, taking advantage of the misinformed and vulnerable.

The Republican Party should listen to criticism from conservatives like Rod Dreher if they want to save their party. Traditionalism and conservatism have an important role to play in our national debate. But bigotry and corporate whoredom dressed up as “traditional values” do not.

In the end, though, what’s really happening is a realignment of values and labels for those values. What Dreher describes as conservative is, in many ways, the modern day Democratic Party. A party based on the values of tolerance and taking care of our most vulnerable, fiscal conservatism (paying for “social” programs passed), and upholding American values like equal opportunities for all who are willing to work hard.