Far-right Christians Mad As Hell That Obama Acts Like He Lives In A Secular Society

WASHINGTON (AP) — Leading Republicans on Thursday insisted that America's leaders must do more to defend Christian values at home and abroad, blaming President Barack Obama for attacks on religious freedom as they courted social conservatives expected to play a critical role in the next presidential contest.

Those of us inspired by Judeo-Christian values...have an obligation to our country and to our fellow man to use our positions of influence to highlight those values," Florida's Sen. Marco Rubio said at a conference hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a group led by long-time Christian political activist Ralph Reed.

Rubio, the first of several prospective Republican presidential candidates scheduled to speak, charged that Obama's policies "completely ignore the importance of families and values on our society, thinking that instead those things can be replaced by laws and government programs."

Click to expand...

"You can ignore them, but you do so at our own peril," said Republican operative Hogan Gidley, who has worked for former presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee.

Click to expand...

"The Republican Party has given up on even trying to change. They're not even pretending anymore," Democratic National Committee chairman Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz said in a conference call shortly before the conference began. "They've given up on any attempt to rebrand or reach out to new voters — and in many cases they've moved in the opposite direction."

"It's clear that the GOP has redefined the far right," she continued.

Click to expand...

Cruz highlighted what he called failures in the Obama administration that allowed attacks on Christians abroad, particularly in the escalating violence across Iraq.

"Christians are being persecuted in stunning numbers. They are being stoned. They are being tortured," Cruz said, calling for Obama to stand up for Christians in prison in Iran and Sudan. "We need leadership in America."

Click to expand...

BvBPL said:

Just switch "Republican" for "Democrat" and vice versa on an alternate day basis and you've got headlines forever!

Click to expand...

WASHINGTON– Sen. Ted Cruz chastised the Obama administration Thursday for attacking religious liberties and for failing to help free an American imprisoned in Iran because of his Christian faith.

“At no time in our nation’s history have we seen threats to religious liberty, and every one of the Bill of Rights, more dire than they are right now,” he told a crowd at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s policy conference lunch.

“We have an IRS who is asking citizen groups, ‘Tell me what books you are reading, tell me the content of your prayers.’ Let me tell you something, the American government has no business asking any American that,” Cruz said, repeating one of his standard lines of attack on the administration.

Cruz also railed against the “intrusions against religious liberty that are reflected in Obamacare,” walking around the stage as he spoke. The Supreme Court is expected to rule next week on a lawsuit by Hobby Lobby stores, whose conservative Christian owners assert that because of their religious beliefs, the company should not have to provide birth control coverage to employees.

Cruz said the administration is also failing to protect American religious freedom abroad and called for the release of an American pastor held in an Iranian prison, and the wife of a New Hampshire resident held in Sudan.

The first term senator received a warm reception from a crowd of around 150. A man dressed as an early American settler, complete with a canteen at his side, yelled “Texas, Texas” as Cruz took to the stage and waved a yellow Gadsen flag, a popular tea party symbol.

Held in a hotel a few miles from the Capitol, the three-day conference features a number of conservative darlings, and two Texans besides Cruz: Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, and state Sen. Dan Patrick, the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor.

Former presidential candidates Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Rep. Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain, as well as potential 2016 candidates Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan will also speak. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio spoke immediately before Cruz.

Click to expand...

Monica Crowley of Fox News served as the emcee for a “legislative luncheon” that kicked off the “Road to Majority” conference sponsored by Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition.

The speakers’ lineup – Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Allen West, and John Bolton – promised a butcher shop’s worth of red meat for right-wing activists, and Crowley must have decided she didn’t want to be overshadowed.

She complained that she has both a Marxist president and mayor (New York’s Bill de Blasio) and asserted that “we are in a war…the left is waging a 24/7 war against this country.” She said the fight is not only against leftism and statism, but against “the ideology of control.” Health care reform was not about health care, but about government power and control. “Every day of this presidency has been an impeachable offense – every day.”

Crowley could be unintentionally funny, as when she railed, without any apparent sense of irony, that the left relies on divisiveness and “manufactured” crises, then a few moments later ticked off a set of the right wing’s favorite manufactured crises. Or when she complained that the mainstream media is too partisan, saying that the Obama administration has gotten away with ravaging the Constitution because of “the protection racket of a corrupt and supine press.” Or when she called people like Ralph Reed and Ted Cruz “truth tellers.”

She managed to hit on just about every current right-wing meme, from Benghazi to the IRS, from illegal immigration to “the removal of God from public life.” The Obama administration, she says, is engaged in “the deliberate takedown of America.”

In introducing the “brilliant” and “beautiful” Crowley, Ralph Reed noted that she has recently been named online opinion editor for the Washington Times, a major sponsor of the anti-marriage-equality rally that the National Organization for Marriage was holding at that very moment in front of the US Capitol.

Click to expand...

BvBPL said:

I can disrupt the journalism business by creating a cheap, ready-made headline that is reusable any day of the year:

Republicans Blasts Democrats for Having Different Value Structure, Using Alternate Ethical Calculus

Democrats Respond by Citing Difference on Core Principles

Just switch "Republican" for "Democrat" and vice versa on an alternate day basis and you've got headlines forever!

Click to expand...

Tarquelne said:

Next, after some bickering, perhaps we can have an example of a lefty person who, mostly likely, happens to more or less be a nut.

Click to expand...

JollyRoger said:

Obama should implore other countries to Waterford their Christians.

Click to expand...

really said:

Waterboard?
Sending them to Waterford would be very cruel.

Click to expand...