Teabaggers and Republicans

How is it that "small government" Tea Party conservatives have so much overlap with the religious right, which wants a sniffer for every woman's panty drawer and a bureaucrat digging around in your sex life to see if you should be denied your full human rights?

Interestingly, the religious right has long had a theory that ties together their desire for a more theocratic state and the rhetoric of "small government" – or at least, ties together their anti-feminism with the small government rhetoric. The idea is that God has set gender roles for men and women, where women stay at home dependent on men. Feminists, the thinking goes, use social spending and reproductive rights to keep women from becoming dependent on men, which upsets God's plan for women. So, in order to return to the natural order of male dominance – which they currently call "complementary roles" – the government should not only deny women reproductive rights, but also cut off social spending in order to force women become dependent on men. No healthcare, no welfare, no spending on education that gets kids out of the home and allows women to work outside of it. And now, of course, no spending on contraception that allows women to delay marriage and limit family size, preserving their independence.

That cutting these programmes wouldn't do anything really to reduce spending doesn't seem to matter. All that matters is that this idea weds fiscal and social conservatism, breaking down any meaningful division between the two. The Republicans get this, which is why they are using spending cuts as a cover to give social conservatives what they want in terms of restricting contraception and abortion.

Now, if only the mainstream media would wake up and see the massive overlap between the Tea Party and the Christian right that the Republicans have always understood.