The Teavangelicals: The Inside Story of How the Evangelicals and the Tea Party are Taking Back America

by David Brody

The Teavangelicals is a one-of-a-kind book chock-full of original reporting from the 2012 presidential race with an up-close look at how evangelicals and the Tea Party are plotting strategy to reclaim America. In his trademark breezy, funny, and engaging style, David Brody takes you inside the blossoming Teavangelical movement and describes how it is having a major effect on today's politics with an eye on dominating the political affairs of tomorrow. The author takes his niche for getting interviews and inside access with all the big-name political and evangelical newsmakers and now shares that exclusive access with readers. The author offers a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse along the campaign trail within the three key factions working tirelessly to overcome President Obama and his political machine: evangelicals, the Tea Party and the GOP presidential contenders. Brody, embedded with leading Tea Party and evangelical groups, shares what he learned from private emails, memos, and conversations that shed light on campaign strategy and voter mobilization efforts. In addition, this book highlights Brody's exclusive interviews, stories, and travels with all the 2012 GOP presidential candidates as they try to be the candidate that takes on President Obama and ultimately change the course of direction in America. The author travels to the key early Primary states of Iowa and South Carolina where Evangelicals will have a major say in who the GOP nominates for President. The author gives readers the inside scoop on the power of evangelical groups and how they're making a difference early on in the process. Additionally, how will these GOP candidates appeal to evangelicals and how well will it work out? At the same time, the candidates are catering to the Tea Party crowd. We'll go inside the living rooms of major Tea Party organizers to get inside access on the chatter. Are these presidential candidates passing the Tea Party "smell test"?

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published June 12, 2012

About the author

David^^^Brody, Evangelical journalist

Reviews

[Terri Lynn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have some strange friends. They hand me bizarre books that they know will make me shake my head and say "What the fuck?" while sweetly asking me for an opinion when they already know me well enough to know what that opinion is going to be.

We've been forced to stay in Nashville to help one dying relative, one relative with cancer, and a good friend with cancer. We normally live in San Francisco so this is like the Nightmare in Nashville. This is purely Tea Party territory. The right wing extremist conservative christian Republican Taliban- also fondly referred to as the Tea Party Evangelicals or Teavangelicals (I have a few other names for them but I won't print them here.) reigns supreme here. The Tennessee legislature, in the past 12 months have passed laws that:
(1) Demand that any doctor who performs any abortion, including a pill abortion in the first 9 weeks where a woman takes a pill, goes home and has her period and passes a 1/2 inch clot of tissue, list each "incident" and it be posted on a public website with the description of the patient and the doctor's name, photo and address (the better to come murder you and your family when the anti-choicers go on a rampage).

(2) Forbid teachers to "say gay". The "Don't say gay" law forbids teachers and counselors from saying anything positive about gay families, gay kids, gay teens, or gay moms/dads. In other words, gays are taboo. This teaches the other kids that these are subhumans to be abused.

(3) No mention of homosexuality or gay families in any sex ed classes, even 18 year old seniors because don't we just know that if we ignore it, it doesn't exist. I once had a cat that would do that. If two other cats would growl or hiss at each other, he'd go hide his head behind the draperies. We could see his hind end sticking out but he reasoned that if he couldn't see the other kitties then he must be invisible to them. The Tennessee Legislature is like that cat.

(4) Sex ed must only consist of telling kids to be abstinent until heterosexual marriage (and whatever you do, don't say gay).

(5) Kids have the right to stick their religion into their school work. In science class, for example, if the teacher is teaching the theory of evolution, a kid can insist that the world is 6,000 years old and made in 6 days by a supernatural creature whose existence can't be explained. The teacher must then seriously lead a class discussion where this is considered equally scientifically valid. Kids also have the right, under the law, to stop and pray in people's faces if they so desire and to not have questions marked as incorrect if the answers reflect their christian beliefs.

(6) Christian kids may bully gays (while not saying anything positive about gays) as long as they are speaking from their deeply felt bigoted beliefs and proselytizing while beating the crap out of the kid.

(7) Attacked a private university (Vanderbilt University) with a law that would try to force the university to abandon its all comers rule about student organizations. Vandy's rule is that since all students pay activity fees and tuition that funds student groups, all groups must allow any student to join and run for office . You might not win the office but you have to be allowed to run. This is for the privilege of getting free meeting space and school funds for your club. Out of over 100 clubs, it was only maybe 10 christian ones who cried foul, whined that they were being persecuted, and made a fuss the legislature tried to get involved in. Since they can't control a private university (and were too stupid to realize that) they settled for making it the right of clubs at the public colleges to discriminate all they want to. The issue at Vandy revolved around gay students being thrown out of a christian club run by the denomination they belonged to.

(8) The city of Nashville had passed a law that any business contracting to do business with the city could not discriminate against gays. The state wrote a special law over riding it.

(9) Passed a law allowing guns in bars.

This is just a sample of what happens when the Teavangelicals take back America. And it actually IS a red state movement. While these freaks have crept into blue states, they do not predominate there. This is a movement of ignorant, bigoted, religious fanatics. Let's just say they'll never get off the ground in San Francisco.

There is more that the Teavangelicals stand for that is seriously disturbing to normal people. There is the Personhood movement. Mitt Romney has signed on as have all of the others who are running for office on the Republican ticket. They want to pass it in each state and then get a Personhood amendment to the US Constitution. This would declare the fertilized egg a citizen the second of conception.

This would result in the birth control pill and the IUD, the most effective forms of birth control being outlawed outright. Anyone who tried to prescribe it, manufacture it, sell it, or take it would be subject to being charged with murder. There would be no exceptions for incest, rape, or the life of the mother so an 11 year old pregnant by her father or a woman who has an ectopic pregnancy (lodged in the Fallopian tube instead of the uterus so that when it gets a little larger, the tube will burst and kill the woman) gets to suffer and maybe die. Women who miscarry would be subject to a criminal investigation to see if they drank a soda or ate a candy bar and can be blamed.

That is how the Teavangelicals want to take America back. In Wisconsin, the governor was jubilant to sign a law that allows men to be paid more than women for the same job. If those single moms need more money, let them sell themselves in marriage to some guy, he says. The Teavangelicals want to harken back to the Dark Ages where blacks rode at the back of the bus (or were slaves), gays stayed in the closet (or got killed) and women stayed barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen as obedient dogs to the husband who owned them.

I am seeing the Tea Party close up and they are not taking MY America to the dark ages without one hell of a fight. This book is their battle cry for one last stand of racism, sexism, and homophobia but America has come too far to go back now.

[Jill · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is ridiculous, and I'm not just saying that because it disagrees with my politics. David Brody cannot write, and it's downright embarrassing how bad it is sometimes.

Here's an example (from pages 20-21):
"We often hear about how the Republican Party is made up of social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and national security conservatives, as if somehow these are three distinct groups. Hogwash! Just like the symbol of the Olympic rings, they are intertwined. This really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, yet it does. Just because social conservatives might put more emphasis on social issues doesn't mean they don't care deeply about fiscal issues. To use a food analogy, ice cream may be my favorite desert, but I like apple pie too!"

Oy vey. What professional writes like that? And what professional thinks his readership is so slow-witted that they need food analogies to understand his point?
The whole damn book is like this.

Setting the ridiculous writing style aside, I thought this book had a lot of promise in its topic. I'm quite interested in the uneasy relationship between the evangelicals and libertarians in the Tea Party movement, so I was initially looking forward to reading about it. I figured that, if I could get past the book's partisan nature, I would learn a lot about how these two groups interact within the Tea Party.
Nope. This book is astoundingly short on analysis and concrete information. I don't think I learned anything new at all about the movement, and I was constantly frustrated by the fact that Brody writes as if his audience is a bunch of 7 year-olds who will lose interest if there's not an amusing anecdote and four exclamation points on every page.

Skip it.

[G · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the Chief Polical Correspondent at CBN News, David Brody has a close up and personal view of the makings of the Tea Party and all the players involved. He uses his connections and knowledge to give those of us concerned with the path of the United States today the benefit of his knowledge. He opens the doors to the grassroots beginnings of the Tea Party giving small biographies of the people who helped make the politicians realize that mainstream America will not allow themselves to be taxes into obscurity. If you have wondered how the Tea Party began to have political power in just a few years, you need to read this book.

Received Galley from NetGalley.com

[Fenixbird SandS]

Saw David Brody interviewed today by Tavis Smiley. Insightful