Why Are We Shocked That the Conservatives Have a Tea Party Agenda?

If you go to the Tea Party Patriot's website, you will find an item on their perception of Planned Parenthood:

The growing body of evidence in an ongoing investigation reveals that Planned Parenthood unequivocally covers up the sex abuse of young (female) victims and is willing to work with the (mostly male) abusers. Sex-trafficking is a serious crime that comes with very serious consequences and Planned Parenthood, the world’s largest abortion-for-profit business, has been caught red-handed aiding the sex-traffickers.

None of this is true of course, but it doesn't matter. What matters is that they believe it, and that they have the power to do something about it.

The Planned Parenthood issue was one that held up the budget and almost brought the U.S. government to its knees.

Sarah Posner, author of God's profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, wrote recently: Tea Party's Planned Parenthood Attack Should Not Have Been a Surprise

The social agenda was not, however, hard to see. It was the way reporters covered the Tea Party that made the agenda hard to see. In covering Glenn Beck's inaugural 9/12 March in 2009, I found plenty of anti-abortion rhetoric, activists, and signage, expressed as opposition to "ObamaCare" and its supposed expansion of abortion. At the Values Voters Summit a week later, I met Tea Party activists who had received their political training with religious right groups, and in March 2010, reported on how a resurrected fallen mega-star of the religious right, Ralph Reed, was looking to transform the withering Christian Coalition infrastructure in the states into Tea Party/religious right powerhouses.

Ah yes, Ralph Reed. The man Jason Kenney sought out in his Canadian branch of the Christian Coalition.

So should we be surprised that the Conservatives are spouting the same Tea Party nonsense?

Harper MP, Brad Trost, from Saskatchewan, recently told a pro-life group that:

... he and “many” other MPs helped spearhead efforts to round up petitions “to defund Planned Parenthood.” “Let me just tell you, and I cannot tell you specifically how we used it, but those petitions were very, very useful and they were part of what we used to defund Planned Parenthood because it has been absolute disgrace that that organization and several others like it have been receiving one penny of Canadian taxpayers dollars,” Trost said.

I can't believe that the media is just picking up on this now. I wrote of it months ago.

Harper has sent Dimitri Soudas, that bastion of honesty, out to control the fallout, saying that they have no plans to reopen the abortion debate.

But Tom Flanagan in his book, Harper's Team, speaks of how they get around that. Private Members Bills.

Just one more battle in Harper's war on women.