Conservative activists continue to pile on Gov. Mitch Daniels for suggesting a “truce” in the culture wars, with Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council citing this statement from Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values:
Unless he knows something we don’t, using the word “truce” when family values are under increasing attack can only mean surrender. Does he have knowledge that the other side is going to stop performing abortions during this “truce”? Are homosexual activists going to stop promoting same-sex marriage during this “truce”? Is what Governor Daniels really wants is for the pro-family movement to stop talking about his record so he can run for President?
For his part, McClusky suggests that Daniels ought to be trying to address fiscal issues by defunding groups that support reproductive choice:
If a President Daniels were to cut funding to these organizations as long as they performed and promoted abortions he could save taxpayers millions of dollars, while also possibly saving hundreds of thousands of lives every year. If he is serious about a “truce” on social issues he needs to make sure that he doesn’t continue taxpayer funding of one side during this so called “truce.” That is something nearly a decade of Republican rule in DC failed to do and would make him a hero of social and fiscal conservatives alike.
Meanwhile, Frank Cannon, who is the President of American Principles Project and Treasurer of the Susan B. Anthony List, calls Daniels’ proposal a “profound insult to the public’s intelligence” and likens it to “asking the kid being pummeled by the schoolyard bully to stand down”:
The Hoosier governor’s truce talk is wrong on so many levels. It needlessly demeans one portion of the conservative coalition – the “ethnic, Catholic (and, more recently, evangelical) blue collar” vote that Ronald Reagan led into fealty with the GOP’s traditional hawks and economic conservatives. And social conservatives are not just a portion of that coalition – they hold views on issues like federal abortion funding and protecting the definition of marriage that represent a significant majority.
Second, calling for a truce on social issues is a little like asking the kid being pummeled by the schoolyard bully to stand down. All the kid is doing is holding his hands in front of his face to ward off the blows. Social conservatives did not launch campaigns to exploit the definition of marriage for their own gain, whatever that would mean. Instead, they have only fought to preserve the natural and perennial status of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. They have faced, and in most cases defeated, judicial elites who have sought to impose same-sex marriage on the populace.
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At the end of the day, Mitch Daniels’ truce talk is a profound insult to the public’s intelligence. Defenders of life in the womb and the marital bond cannot sit back while yet another administration tells them to take a pounding because “bigger issues” like excess government spending deserve all the attention.
