How to revive the Republican Party--As If! Today's LA Times

[CaliforniaPeggy]

The party needs to reclaim the principles of honor, decency and morality, and connect with the extremely broad base of Americans who embrace those attributes.

By Douglas MacKinnon

July 16, 2009

I've found myself thinking lately about the tag-line for a 1974 horror movie: "If this doesn't make your skin crawl, it's on too tight."

What brought the saying to mind? Most recently, it was Nevada Sen. John Ensign. And before that it was South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana and former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig.

I am a former Republican and now an independent conservative, and what is going on with the GOP right now makes my skin crawl. What has happened to the party of morals, character and traditional beliefs?

Ensign, Sanford and Vitter should join Craig in the private sector and resign immediately. Not because they cheated on their wives but because of their hypocrisy and the sleazy things they've done in concert with their philandering.

Too many of my Republican friends offer excuses: "Democrats do the same thing," they say. But that won't play with the American people.

The Republican leadership -- especially any member of it who is thinking of running for president in 2012 -- needs to step back and acknowledge that the party is damaged, dysfunctional and coming across as hypocritical. There was a time when Republicans stood for something, but today it's no longer clear what the party's basic tenets are or who speaks for it.

More at link:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mackinnon16-2009jul16,0,1199394.story

[MisterP]

1. ha! "honor, decency and morality" were never the province of the GOP

not under the Gilded Age, nor the First Red Scare, nor the Business Coup, nor the fight against the New Deal, nor McCarthyism and PBSUCCESS, nor against the Great Society, against non-white-males, nor the Hard Hats, nor middle-class-eliminating Reaganomics, nor Iran-Contra, nor telling the American people that it had no business investigating Iran-Contra, nor the Clinton Impeachment, nor the reign of America's Mussolini, nor their pathetic opposition to the current HMO-friendly "reforms"
the real battle is not "decency" vs. "immorality," but left vs. right: can anybody think of an issue on which post-1900 conservatism was correct about, without resorting to fudged data or hypotheticals?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. I could not agree more!

My reaction to this editorial ranged between amusement and sorrow that he could see his party this way!

[MisterP]

5. but of course he WOULD see the party that way: nobody wants to be on the side of villainy

unless they're cynical money-grubbers (which most conservative and moderate politicos are), everyone paints themselves in the highest of terms: N is the most compassionate, or the most humanity-serving, or the most middle-of-the-road-against-the-extremist-bomb-throwers, or the most economically-uplifting.
Therefore (expect for the cynical money-grubbers), internal criticism alone can suffice: animal- and embryo-rights groups are both "zealous" and 1% or 0.001% of their memberships are involved in violence against property--similarities that are used to lump them together by the ever-comfortable middle (which equates democracy with centrism). However, the two groups advocate for entirely different forms of life, which can be distinguished by the sciences and humanities. Human embryos have been dissected and analyzed by science, and most abortions fall on fetuses showing all the complexity of a gummi bear. The only objection that (mainstream) theology and instinctual connections can raise about first-term abortions is that they're not "decent"--hardly enough to justify their outlawing. Many full-grown animals, from squid to shrews to whales, show interaction with their environment, focus on various things, go about their lives in complex and flexible fashions, make decisions, often communicate, cogitate (probably quite vaguely), and writhe in pain when gutted alive. Furthermore, they are not entirely dependent on humans, having been able to live in the billion or so years before we appeared. Therefore, because of these differences, one issue is justified, the other not--even if non-Consistent-Life-Ethic anti-abortionists were not stinking anti-school, -maternal-care, and -welfare hypocrites and AR was as wicked as the McDonalds- and Remington-funded PR machine said they were (I mean, the Palestinians deserve a homeland no matter what happens in an intifada). Each issue has to be judged scientifically and humanistically, not merely by the "sincerity"/"fanaticism" of its adherents.
"I we do it, it's not wrong": that's why so many moderates (and even anti-leftist liberals) can bray that the Cold War was Koestler's "half-wrong (US) vs. total lie (Moscow)"
As for the cynical money-grubbers also believe that everybody is like them: population-control or recycling advocates want to control their neighbors, McKinney or Sheehan want to get onto TV, vegetarians want to feel smug about themselves, reformist politicians really want to embezzle and cover-up, Soviet support for liberation movements is solely to provide Fleet ports, anti-neoliberals are aristocrats who want to be the ones exploiting the locals, anti-Confederates are so only because the Union won and imposed "victors' justice," etc.

[niyad]

3. WHEN did this party EVER have those attributes?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. That was MY thought...

Maybe when Abraham Lincoln was there?

I don't think there were any others...

[ShamelessHussy]

6. I think it is quite obvious what they stand for, the corporations over the people

and that apparently ain't sell'n in this market.

Here's a Video MSG to the reTHUGs & their enablers...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1P4_YCFtkQ
(a personal fav & new, too)

[CaliforniaPeggy]

7. That is one sharply funny video!

Thanks for sharing!

:rofl:

[ShamelessHussy]

9. My Pleasure, CaliforniaPeggy

That is my response to all the reTHUGs these days... like a new 'you've been rick rolled' but just for the freepers :evilgrin:

:hi:

[Marr]

10. That's exactly it.

The sordid scandals are a nice tabloidy answer that allows them to avoid thinking about it, but the real explanation cuts a lot deeper than that.

[Marr]

8. Not very bright.

They're in the pit partially *because* they chose to "claim the principles of honor, decency, and morality". People who say they're morally superior to their neighbors never-- ever-- are. You show me a man who brags about his morality and I'll show you a lech.

But all that was really only a minor element in the Republicans' decline anyway. Their real problem is something that cannot be uttered in the corporate media. That is, it slowly became obvious to almost everyone that the Republican Party is simply the political tool of the wealthy, and they serve that constituency exclusively.