Even conservatives want to leave the God stuff out of government.
Hmmm...
FreedomWorks commissioned a national survey of registered voters last month, shared first with POLITICO, that finds 78 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents self-identify as fiscally conservative and socially moderate [...]
The poll asked Republican voters what they are most interested in: 40 percent said “individual freedom through lower taxes and reducing the size and scope of government,” 27 percent picked “traditional values” and 18 percent chose a “strong national defense."
Freedomworks is pushing this poll in support of its "defund the government if Obamacare isn't killed" effort. Per their telling, Republicans want their elected officials to "stick to their principles" and not compromise with Democrats. But on social issues? Forty-one percent of Republicans don't rank gay marriage as a top-10 issue, and only a third rank abortion as a top-3 issue (another third ranks it top-10, and the last third doesn't give a shit).
It's one poll, but it seems to confirm trends inside the GOP's strife-torn tent. The neocons are on the outs. We first saw it with the sequester—where the $800 billion in defense cuts was supposed to prod the GOP to negotiate in good faith for a grand bargain. Instead, the bulk of the GOP nodded in approval and left the military-industrial complex slack-jawed, abandoned despite the mounds of campaign cash they shipped into GOP coffers. But their irrelevance has only been confirmed with the Syria debate, with war hawks grossly outnumbered even inside their own caucus. (Sure, support would be higher with a Republican administration, but that's cold comfort for a crew who exist to bomb shit in the Middle East.)
The Theocons are being marginalized by a society that left them behind a long time ago. And while the 2013 "rebranding" efforts have failed, they'll be back the next time Republicans lose a national election. And fact is, they're not going to get single women and youth voters without chucking the Religious Right's agenda overboard. It's inevitable. And if Freedomwork's poll is to be believed, doing so would actually be popular within the GOP.
The "Jesus rode a dinosaur" nuts may be loud but not loved, not even by their supposed allies.