Juicy piece in Politico Monday morning about how social conservatives aren't about to roll over and accept gay marriage. Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum chimed in with the usual "we lost because McCain and Romney were moderates" nonsense, but buried in the piece was this nugget from Gary Bauer.

Social conservatives are particularly — and understandably — bothered that the elites rarely want to discuss the elephant in the room: that the party’s economic policies don’t necessarily appeal to the the rank and file, who vote Republican because it is the party of traditional values.

“If we gave our voters an accurate portrayal of our ideas, that we want to cut the rate of growth on Social Security, give tax cuts to billionaires and then the values issues, the values issues would be more popular than the economic agenda of the current Republican Party,” said Bauer, citing particularly those Mass-attending Roman Catholics who have fled the Democrats.

Bauer added, “I would caution the donor wing of the Republican Party that is driving a lot of this: If they think social conservatives are the only thing preventing Republicans from winning, they’ll learn that their economic agenda will go down the tubes along with the Republican Party’s prospects.”

Couple of interesting things here.

One, Bauer is accusing the Republican Party of basically lying about it's economic agenda. They've tried to gut social programs under the ridiculous guise of "saving them." Well, Bauer just said, no: they want to cut those programs to shovel free money at billionaires, and that's exactly what the Ryan budgets do.

The second thing is Bauer is right on the unpopularity of this agenda. Most voters don't want Social Security cut, or Medicare for that matter, but they overwhelmingly favor raising taxes on rich people.

Beltway Republicans have convinced themselves that all they need to do is stop bashing gays, immigrants, and women -- and that will fix all their problems. But this analysis totally ignores the fact, as Bauer pointed out, that Americans just aren't buying trickle-down anymore.

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It cannot be repeated enough: He who frames the argument wins the debate.

And so it is telling how the networks wish to frame the debate for marriage equality. Who do they book?

• Meet the Press: Ralph Reed, head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, and who narrowly missed conviction for his role in the Jack Abramoff scandal.
• Face the Nation: Tony Perkins, whose Family Research Council is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for their persistent and ongoing hate speech against the gay community.
• and Austin Nimocks of the Alliance Defending Freedom, who also showed up on CNN’s State of the Union.
• Fox News Sunday: Gary Bauer, president of American Values

With the exception of Hilary Rosen on Meet the Press, did the news shows bother to book a gay person whose life and rights are directly affected? Pffftt...silly liberal!

What really matters is how conservative Christians who are out of step with the majority of Americans (no matter how much they want to deny it and not have that challenged), doncha know?

Monday night Rachel Maddow expanded on her Friday report about the weird ad running in opposition to Chuck Hagel's nomination. The group running the ad calls themselves "Use Your Mandate" and claims to be a group of liberals -- gay liberals, even -- who are afraid to come out into the light for fear of White House retribution.

Because this White House has been so bitterly retributive, don't you know? When I first heard about it I thought it was bull too, because liberals tend to oppose nominations loudly and without any guise of secrecy. In fact, I can't think of a time where any liberal group I've had contact with has been secretive about who they are and why they're running an ad. That seems to be the province of the US Chamber of Commerce and Koch-funded front groups..

Rachel's instinct seems to be right on the money. As she reports, "Use Your Mandate" used a media buyer in San Diego to place the ad by the name of Del Cielo Media, LLC*. Del Cielo Media is the company name for Sarah Linden, who is the west coast media director for Smart Media Group.

On Smart Media Group's resumé: Official media buyers for the McCain-Palin campaign, Republican National Committee, NRSC, and the US Chamber of Commerce, among others.

DelCielo Media's website is a splash page and a link to a map now, but as Rachel reports, one of Linden's clients is the Emergency Committee for Israel, a relatively new neocon group whose directors include Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer, and Michael Goldfarb. Michael Goldfarb is an advisor to Liz Cheney's neocon message machine, Keep America Safe, where Kristol also serves as a director.

The other firm Rachel mentions is Tusk Strategies. Michael Tusk was Michael Bloomberg's campaign director in 2009 and now has his own New York PR firm. Tusk's client list boasts of relationships with Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst and Education Reform Now, two groups which call themselves liberal but which are not, by any stretch of the imagination, liberal.

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The flood of notes contained words like "gutless," "ridiculous" and "outraged." We thought you might enjoy sharing in some of those comments:

"I immediately emailed my senator, John Warner," wrote KM of Virginia. "I sent him a two word messsage: 'start packing.' " She continued, "Yes, this was a great disappointment and loss. 'Defeat,' however, seems too strong a word. We know God is sovereign and the earth is the Lord’s. I am praying for His will to be done on earth as in heaven."

Gary Bauer, president of American Values, called the agreement "a sad day for America." Bauer said, "it is now more likely that radical social change will continue to be forced on the American people by liberal courts committed to same-sex marriage, abortion on demand and hostility to religious expression."

Please share with C&L your feelings as well.

"The communications director for Bush-Cheney, Nicolle Devenish, said Kerry miscalculated the impact of his remarks and now is "backpedaling from what is a crass, below-the-belt political strategy to attack the vice president's daughter."

"We're all God's children," he said. "And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was. She's being who she was born as. I think if you talk to anybody, it's not a choice." -- John Kerry, 3rd Pres. debate.

Andrew Sullivan (here and elsewhere) and his correspondent, Marshall Wittman (here), say what needs to be said about the GOP's odd treatment of Mary Cheney's sexual orientation as something to be ashamed of, and its hilarious offensive against John Kerry as an apparent homophobe.

Sullivan's site also has a wonderful run-down of all the conservatives who have suddenly become charter members, so to speak, of the Human Rights Campaign. It's obvious what's going on here: The only way to salvage a "win" out of Wednesday's debate is to recast it as an occasion where Kerry made a horrendous gaffe. And the Bush surrogates in the right-wing press are doing everything they can to make that happen.

Alas, they seem to be doing a very effective job of it. Not one reporter writing a story about this blow-up seems willing to ask the Bush campaign or the Cheneys why it's offensive of Kerry to describe Mary Cheney -- in a positive sense -- as a lesbian. At least Gary Bauer is honest enough to admit that it will hurt Bush among rural conservatives for them to know a member of the Republican ticket fathered a daughter who plays for the other team.

I'm sure most of this is bluster -- conservatives don't seem to have much left beyond self-promotion -- but regardless, there is going to be a lot of money floating around on the right during the nomination fight, and it's going to be spent on stupid ads like these, from the Judicial Confirmation Network.

That name seems a bit dated now, by the way. But it was already a misnomer back in October, when they were running Ayers and Wright ads.

The NYT reported Monday on the right's organizing. The cast of misanthropes and zealots sees the fight as a chance to restore their former glory:

While conservatives say they know they have little chance of defeating Mr. Obama’s choice because Democrats control the Senate, they say they hope to mount a fight that could help refill depleted coffers and galvanize a movement demoralized by Republican electoral defeats.

“It’s an immense opportunity to build the conservative movement and identify the troops out there,” said Richard A. Viguerie, a conservative fund-raiser. “It’s a massive teaching moment for America. We’ve got the packages written. We’re waiting right now to put a name in.”

Though, as with the tea parties, the real target of their ire will be the moderate GOP remnant:

Still, some conservatives worry about how the confirmation process will play out. Gary Bauer, a social conservative advocate, said the battle could backfire if Republicans did not fight hard enough.

“The risk for the Republican Party is they will be tempted to be more gentlemanly than Democrats are when a conservative is nominated,” Mr. Bauer said. “By doing that, they will not only lose an educational moment with the public, but they will risk driving the base of the Republican Party to once again be frustrated.”

Bauer is working side-by-side with a man who hacked Senate Democratic servers and stole internal strategy documents.

In this the season of their discontent, Republican leaders are pointing the finger of blame, all the while positioning themselves to take over their battered and bruised party in 2012. So it is with Mike Huckabee. In his new book, the former Arkansas Governor, Baptist minister and Fox News host skewers presidential rival Mitt Romney and castigates leaders of the religious right who cast their lot with someone else. But while Huckabee looks forward to the future battle for the soul of the Republican Party in his latest book, it is worth remembering the culture war he advocated in past ones. And apparently, he will have soon have company in author Sarah Palin.

As Time describes, Huckabee's tome (Do The Right Thing: Inside the Movement That's Bringing Common Sense Back to America) is part political memoir, part policy prescription - and part payback. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, his rival in courting the GOP's religious right base during the primaries, is mocked as "anything but conservative until he changed the light bulbs in his chandelier in time to run for president." Aggravating matters still, Huckabee "took as a sign of total disrespect" Mitt's refusal to call and congratulate him on his victory in the Iowa caucus which ultimately derailed Romney's campaign.

According to Time, much of Huckabee's venom is directed at his ersatz Christian conservative allies who backed other candidates during the Republican primaries. He blasts Pat Robertson and Bob Jones for backing Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, respectively. Huckabee pans Gary Bauer for his "ever-changing reason to deny me his support." Lamenting "that so many people of faith had moved from being prophetic voices," Governor Huckabee unleashed his fury at the End Times Pastor John Hagee who ultimately backed McCain:

"I asked if he had prayed about this and believed this was what the Lord wanted him to do," Huckabee writes of his conversation with Hagee. "I didn't get a straight answer."

Huckabee's evident feelings of betrayal towards his fellow culture warriors on display in this new book are understandable. After all, among the first of his six books was everything they could have asked for.

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