What's So Weird About a Conservative Atheist?
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/whats-so-weird-about-a-conservative-atheist/284092/The American Atheists were invited—and then uninvited—from the Conservative Political Action Conference. Why?
EMMA GREEN
FEB 26 2014, 1:48 PM ET
Old Sarge/flickr
"It is an attack on God Himself."
This was how Brent Bozell, founder of the conservative Media Research Center, felt about the prospect of representatives from the American Atheists attending the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of conservative leaders and organizations in Washington, D.C. On Tuesday, the Atheists announced they would host a booth at the conference next week; within hours, they had been disinvited. The group "misrepresented itself about their willingness to engage in positive dialogue and work together to promote limited government," a CPAC spokesperson told the Washington Post yesterday.
The American Atheists disagree. "America’s religious conservatives can deny it all they want, but soon they’re going to realize that ignoring the growing number of atheist constituents is a losing proposition,” the organization's president, David Silverman, said in a press release. He says his group had been in conversation with conference's planning committee about 2015, offering up ideas for future atheist keynoters. Despite this year's snub, the Atheists are willing to reopen dialogue with CPAC about "the importance of religious equality," Silverman said.
All this back-and-forth over a booth at a convention has a touch of farce. The American Atheists are losing out on the chance to hand out keychains and fliers to a massive group of conservative Christians—it seems unlikely that the group would have successfully un-saved any souls in attendance. The stakes seem to be symbolic: If the most religious, far-right conservatives can open their arms to people with a fundamentally different worldview, that would signal big changes to come in GOP politics. The lightning-quick withdrawal of CPAC's invitation suggests that the Republican Party isn't quite there yet, though.
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Its that they are wrong on all the issues other than whether or not they believe there is a god 
But the MODERN republican party of the US is simply incompatible with atheism. It has signed a pact with the devil (pun intended) and can no longer be alienated from its involvement with the religious right or vice versa.
The only option that secular conservatives have is to look toward a third party (im thinking the libertarian party) to save them (pun intended again). If anything, this is probably the best bet for them as the republican party seems hellbent (again pun intended) on doubling down on their bigoted positions on minorities and social policy that is driving their party on the road to irrelevancy.
By moving to the LP party they can at least get themselves into leadership position for the distant future when non-extremist conservatives realize the rethugs are a lost cause and look for a new party to replace it with. Im hoping that when this happens it leaves the Religious Right marginalized.
But no matter what happens, its bad for conservatives and the religious right and im going to laugh and laugh and laugh at their misfortune
