Earlier this week we noted that Dick Armey, after having spent the last several years calling the Religious Right a bunch of stupid demagogues and bullies for trying to make their social issues the center of the GOP agenda, was suddenly talking about the fighting abortion if Tea Party candidates help the Republicans regain control of the House.
Alan Colmes had Armey on his program Tuesday night and asked about this seeming change of heart:
Everybody needs to deal with this, but you do not deal with it by expanding the power and control of the state to impose your point of view.
When the social conservatives and the economic conservatives work well together is when they work with a common resistance to the growth of the power of the state. And what happened was there was a small cadre of very strongly assertive people on the social issues side that were saying “let’s expand the power of the state” in order to impose our values on the community.
And you do not … my point is very simple: you live a righteous life, you’re an encouragement to other people; [but] use the state to impose it and you’re a tyrant.
So I am guessing that whatever thawing of tensions between Armey and the Religious Right there may have been after his first statement was all but undone by the fact that he’s accusing them of trying to impose their will through tyranny.
