Jewish World Review Dec. 23, 2004 / 11 Teves, 5765

Michael Medved

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Did ‘wily Republicans’ invent cultural issues?

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Author Thomas Frank feels frustrated by conservative success in using cultural issues to win elections.


In the New York Times he wrote: "The Democrats are today a party that has trouble rallying its historical working class constituency, losing more and more of its base every four years to some novel culture-war issue invented by the wily Republicans: blasphemous art, Ten Commandments monuments in courthouses, the dire threat of gay marriage."


In debating Mr. Frank on my radio show, I pointed out that it wasn't "wily Republicans" who placed the issue of gay marriage on the national agenda: it was homosexual activists, arrogant judges, and the arch-liberal Mayor of San Francisco.


As with federal funding for blasphemous art, conservatives would prefer to drop such debates, but liberals won't pull back from their relentless efforts to remake America.


Far from "inventing" such controversies, Republicans would love rebuilding cultural consensus and putting them to rest forever.

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