Republicans' 'last stand against ongoing racial, religious, cultural and sexual upheaval'
from Leonard Pitts Jr. at the Miami Herald: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2012/02/01/gesture-embodies-gops-grouchiness.html
____ Republicans are no longer about sunshine and can-do. These days, they simply seem cranky and dyspeptic. As in Herman Cain vowing to build a fence to electrocute Mexicans, Newt Gingrich verbally punching out the media and debate audiences cheering for record executions and the death of the uninsured. As in Jan Brewer poking her finger in the president’s face.
Under Reagan, optimism about the future was the Republican brand. But that brand has curdled in the ensuing 30 years, and the party that once sold hope has become instead the party of grouchy codgers yelling at the future to get off their lawn. More to the point, it has become a party of those unable to process the sense of dislocation, the loss of primacy and privilege our present demographic path portends. Thus, it has become the party of resentment and resistance, the last stand against ongoing racial, religious, cultural and sexual upheaval, the Alamo in the fight to forestall change.
This is why a Jan Brewer feels herself empowered to wag her finger in the face of the president. And why the charisma-challenged Mitt Romney spends long weeks out in the cold looking for love like a character in a country song while bomb-throwing zealots who would have been laughed out of previous elections take turns playing frontrunner.
They will likely settle for him, but what Romney offers is not what many in the Republican electorate evidently seek. At bottom, they seem less concerned with competence or a new economic plan than with finding a gunslinger for a showdown against the future . . .
read more: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2012/02/01/gesture-embodies-gops-grouchiness.html
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OMG this article hits the nail right squarely on the head!
K&R!!!!!!
