"We'll keep our God, our guns, our Constitution, our TEA Party and Chick-fil-A."
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Posted on 08/02/2012 11:47:38 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
For two days, the surprise victory of Ted Cruz was all anybody could talk about. The Tea Party upstart who beat back establishment candidate David Dewhurst for the Texas Senate was the biggest sign yet of the enduring — and growing — political strength of the religious right.
It was the best example until yesterday anyway, when thousands of Americans swarmed Chick-Fil-A restaurants across the country, buying chicken sandwiches, waffle fries and large helpings of spite.
It all started about a week ago, when Chick-Fil-A President Dan Cathy said the nation was “inviting God’s judgment” by trying to “redefine” marriage as anything but a union between a man and a woman. The restaurant chain famously closes every Sunday and has donated millions of dollars to anti-gay groups, some of which fund controversial therapies that attempt to “free” people of their gayness.
A handful of liberal mayors quickly pounced on Cathy’s remarks, including Rahm Emanuel in Chicago, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, and San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee. Washington, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray called the food “hate chicken” in a Tweet, and the others made vague, hollow threats about keeping the company out of their cities. This was, of course, stupid.
Their attacks fueled a predictably pointless cycle of over-the-top outrage, with religious conservatives like Tea Party star Mike Huckabee coming to the business’ defense and organizing a “Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day” to support freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
That was yesterday, one of the most ridiculously ironic moments in recent American political history, when a corporate peddler of factory-farmed chicken became a victim and religious conservatives its heroic saviors.
You can’t make this stuff up.
The coterie of gay marriage-supporting mayors couldn’t have been dumber. Maybe they drummed up some political points with their liberal base, but the biggest effect of their Tweeting idiocy was to give the religious right exactly what they have long sought: evidence that gay marriage has victims.
That’s always been part of this debate. During Chris Krok’s talk show on WBAP 96.7 last night, North Texas residents repeatedly called in to boast about waiting in line for an hour at a local Chick-Fil-A only to buy a gift card because the place was already sold out.
Krok ranted about how gays are “taking away our rights.” It’s never made clear what rights, exactly, are being taken away, but now a couple of liberal mayors pushing for marriage equality gave Tea Party and friends the persecuted martyr they are always looking for.
“I think people underestimate the Christian community,” one Chick-Fil-A pilgrim told a Star-Telegram reporter. “We stand together better than people think.”
Actually, no. Anyone who underestimates Christian activism doesn’t last long in American politics. It’s the underlying currents of self-victimization that make the religious right such a powerful voting block. They are always the underdogs in a righteous battle, even when they are clearly the majority.
To be fair, several local callers on WBAP also expressed support for the small group of gay activists who protested the company. One caller said a lesbian couple walked through the crowd to make their own purchases at Chick-Fil-A while wearing t-shirts defending freedom of speech.
“I respect that,” he said.
All in all, the mayors got exactly what they deserved for such senseless provocation. It’s impossible to argue with what these chicken-toting activists were defending, though one wonders how many of these same people boycotted the Dixie Chicks for speaking out against the Iraq War in 2003.
Yesterday was the kind of sprawling, useless spectacle that now constitutes political debate in this country. Everyone protesting and no one listening. Let’s be honest, there was nothing at stake here. Those mayors were never going to forcibly close down a Chick-Fil-A. It was cheap grandstanding. And whatever the Fox News heads say, a bunch of people showing up to buy chicken sandwiches isn’t exactly a referendum on gay marriage.
Inevitably, people fight for freedom of speech only when they support the message being censored. The more simple and ineffectual the protest, the more it appeals to a public exhausted by jug-headed, polarizing debates. Our government is gridlocked, what else are we supposed to do?
Chick-Fil-A isn’t complaining. The location at Montgomery Plaza usually makes about $12,000 on a normal Wednesday. The restaurant pulled in $20,000 yesterday, a supervisor said this morning. Corporate managers are already calling it the company’s best-ever sales day. Jealous competitors like Wendy’s are putting up signs that they “Stand With Chick-Fil-A.”
It turns out this debate has a winner after all.
Huckabee? LOL.
Wow, that article is so vapid it could have come directly from the White House...
Exactly! If they think Gomer Huckleberry is the standard-bearer of the Tea Party movement, I don’t think we should correct them in their mistake.
What a steaming load that is. Correct me if I am wrong but didn't Huckabee endorse the non-TEA Party candidate Dewhurst?
I’m still laughing over THAT one!
Good night. God bless and keep you.
But he’s a heavy-set hick Baptist preacher with a Southern drawl who used to eat fried squirrel ... he must be a Tea Partier, right? After all, wasn’t Elmer Gantry a proto-Tea Bagger?
Palin should have run. Who was it that told her not to run ,Bristol? Thanks Bristol for destroying the U.S.A.
I recall when Huckabee was considering a run this time around I wrote him and tried to discourage him from doing so. He eventually announced he would not run and I know it was because of that letter. :-)
Those on the outside trying to see in do not have the slightest clue who the TEA Party is. They take wild guesses at what we stand for because they have no core values of their own and stand for nothing. They don’t understand independent thought because all they do is follow.
Without intending to invoke tim mcveigh, Invictus pretty much covers it. We have our souls.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
********************************
This, they cannot destroy no matter how hard they try and their lack of understanding is our greatest weapon.
Free men will die to remain free.
She’s only in her forties! President Reagan was nearly 70 when he took office!!
Correct me if I am wrong but didn’t Huckabee endorse the non-TEA Party candidate Dewhurst?
####
Yep, Tax Hike Mike backed Dewhurst rather than the tea party candidate. Not that it should surprise anyone familiar with his record.
Thousands? More like thousands PER LOCATION. Try "millions".
The problem for the author who is attempting to trivialize yesterday's spontaneous outpouring of grassroots sentiment is that we have had referendum after referendum on gay marriage and the results of those referenda have been consistent, indeed they have been unanimous in their overall results opposing gay marriage. We have heard the voice of the people expressed at the polls. We now see "those mayors" speaking out against the will of the people who, just as state legislators and state and federal judges, have not only ignored the will of the people but legislated and ruled contrary to the "exact" will of the people expressed in referenda.
The author denies that gay marriage causes harm to advocates of the status quo:
the biggest effect of their [The coterie of gay marriage-supporting mayors] Tweeting idiocy was to give the religious right exactly what they have long sought: evidence that gay marriage has victims.
The point is that the victim of the gay marriage movement is democracy itself, its component rule of law, and its ultimate reliance on the rules of the game which we call the Constitution. The public is spontaneously reacting to an overreach, as much a Bolshevik overreach as a fascistic overreach, which threatens the very system of law upon which our civil society depends.
I would say that is a very real harm indeed.
“Let’s be honest, there was nothing at stake here. Those mayors were never going to forcibly close down a Chick-Fil-A. It was cheap grandstanding.”
The author is quite naive and has obviously never had a business.
I agree with you that Bristol has a lot to answer for, and really threw a monkey wrench into her mother’s vp campaign.
Why would I eat at this time of night?
Oh wait! No! it’s not Friday, I might be eating leftover chicken or pizza cuz eyes bored....
Yeah, funny... but it was a good point.
No telling if they actually believe that, or just want others to believe it. I’d like to hope they are that dumb, but that’s probably not the way to bet. It’s what they want people to believe. The question is why.
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