The Republican Party has morphed into an organization so corrupt that it needs to be completely repudiated at the polls. Only then will true conservatives, who hold honorable and intellectually defensible positions, be able to retake their party.
I’ve lost track of exactly how many party officials have been indicted. Just last week we learned of illegal GOP practices in the Justice Department. Monica Goodling, an incompetent sycophant, was put in charge of hiring DOJ attorneys. She put political loyalty over national security, refusing to hire a highly-qualified terrorism expert because he was married to a Democrat. In addition, she blacklisted gay staff workers and ran her office more like a crony front for the Bush Administration than the nation’s top legal department.
This same week, a man broke into a Unitarian Church and started shooting people with a shotgun, killing two, because he was angry with liberals. Books by Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage were found in his home. Imagine what the media, especially the rightwing media, would’ve done with this story if the person had been a liberal who owned books by Michael Moore and Richard Dawkins. For all the talk about leftwing radicals and extremists, it is the far right that routinely resorts to violence, fueled by the non-stop hatred coming from rightwing talk radio and Fox News.
Some may argue that it is neither fair nor balanced to lump the far right with the Republican Party. I beg to differ; it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Fox News is essentially a talk shop for the Republican Party and the White House; Scott McClellan has confirmed this. Karl Rove, whose politics of division helped Bush get to the White House twice (and who has just been held in contempt by the House), is now advising McCain’s campaign. Rush Limbaugh and rightwing talk radio are probably the biggest “get out the vote” operations for the Republican Party.
In addition, senior members of the GOP are on record over the past decade routinely making asinine and inflammatory statements: they have bashed gays, openly threatened the judiciary, called global warming a hoax, lied about oil drilling and gas prices, etc., ad infinitum. All this on top of the epic incompetence of the Bush Administration, which will take decades to fully document and comprehend.
There is a historical parallel here. Until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, the Democratic Party was dominated by Southern racists who exercised a stranglehold on party policies. They clung to segregation and overt racism, creating a culture of fear and violence that led to the deaths of hundreds of blacks and numerous white supporters. When Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, racist whites almost instantly began to desert the Democrats. This weakened their power base in the once-Democratic “Solid South,” ultimately leading to the ascension of the conservative movement and the election of Ronald Reagan.
While the loss of the South dealt a political blow to the Democrats, it has worked to the party’s long-term benefit. The party is far from perfect, but excising its bigoted and reactionary members was the right thing to do. Now, in 2008, it is on the brink of nominating America’s first black candidate for president.
Hopefully, the Republican Party will be thoroughly discredited in this election. The far right will descend into the dustbin of history, where it belongs. Only then can the Republican Party jettison its association with religious extremists, bigots, and hate-mongers, regain its tradition of true conservative principles, and once again be a strong voice for American values.
Until then, I am officially ending my commitment to non-partisanship. The modern GOP must be defeated at the polls, and begin its long-overdue renewal.
This does not mean, however, that from now on I will only sing the praises of Democrats. Next week I’ll be looking into free trade—an issue where by and large the Republicans have it right and the Democrats have it wrong.
P.S. Coincidentally, Paul Krugman seemed to be thinking the same thing this week.
Jason Scorse