Rush Limbaugh tells us that True Americans are being betrayed, and not just by the usual Antichrists:
Right talk radio is turning its focus this week to Arizona's controversial bill that would allow business owners to deny service to gay and lesbian customers, and Rush Limbaugh is leading with the charge that Gov. Jan Brewer is being "bullied" into vetoing the measure "in order to advance the gay agenda." ...(Emphasis added.)
"She's being bullied by the homosexual lobby in Arizona and elsewhere," he said. "She's being bullied by the nationwide drive-by media, she's being bullied by certain elements of corporate America in order to advance the gay agenda...."
Certain elements of corporate America? Actually, quite a few. Companies urging a veto of the bill include Apple, Intel, AT&T, Delta Air Lines, Yelp, PetSmart, American Airlines, and Marriott, not to mention Limbaugh's beloved NFL.
Remember how we used to be told years ago that the tea party movement was angry at big business as well as big government? Remember how, more recently, there's been a lot of discussion of the Chamber of Commerce's war against absolutist tea party types who are happy to shut down the government and cause government credit defaults in order to get their own way on taxes and spending?
Shouldn't this battle really be heating up now? After all, we know that there's really no point at which the tea party ends and the religious right begins. It's basically the same movement.
Where's the tea party/social conservative outrage against big business? Where are the boycotts? The threats to withdraw from the mega-economy and spend only on goods and services provided by small business people and family farmers?
I'm kidding, of course. Nothing like that is ever going to happen, any more than a wide-scale tea party/religious right rejection of the Republican Party is going to happen. It's not going to happen as a result of the Arizona situation, even though, as Politico notes, the GOP establishment wants the Arizona bill to die a quiet death:
As Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer weighs whether to sign a bill that would allow businesses to deny services to gay customers, top national Republicans just want the issue to go away.So the party will pressure Brewer to veto the bill, she'll probably veto it -- and social conservatives will still vote GOP in November. Where are they going to go? You've heard about a lot of right-wing insurgents running for established Republicans' seats this year, but how many of those insurgents are running third-party? There's no sign that any of the crazies are moving in that direction. So there'll be primaries, and establishment Republicans will win most of them and insurgents will win a few, and then these fiercely independent voters, many of whom claim to loathe the GOP, will dutifully vote for whoever's in the R column. Because that's what they are, first, last, and always: Republicans.
... many Washington Republicans see it as a political loser, giving the left another cudgel to attack conservatives as intolerant while motivating liberals and younger voters ahead of the midterm elections....
