If moderate Republicans don't like the direction of the GOP, they should try and change it instead of complaining to liberals
Dan Savage receives a lot of feedback when he posts a blog article or video or gives a speech. As with anyone who is outspoken and sarcastic, he gets a lot of hate “mail,” but what he also gets are a lot of messages from liberal Christians. Dan Savage calls us “NALTs” or “Not All Like Them Christians”.
Liberal Christians often gently remind Dan that we’re not hateful, that we support marriage equality, we don’t think the LGBT community causes hurricanes or terrorist attacks and we do not believe allowing men to marry men and women to marry women will lead to our spouses suddenly falling madly in love with a poodle or the lawn tractor.
I received a lot of feedback from my letter to the conservative man and my letter to the conservative woman. I knew I would, and I knew exactly what kind of feedback that would be. Conservatives accused me of stereotyping, of lumping them all together and of attributing to all of them beliefs that some of them do not have. And much like NALT’s sending messages to Dan Savage is sort of counter productive, so too is commenting on my pieces that all conservatives do not ascribe to the tenets promoted by the pundits and politicians on the right.
If you read either or both of those letters and you said to yourself “Hey! I’m not like them!” why are you telling me? If your party no longer represents you, tell your party. Yelling at me won’t do anything.
It won’t stop me from pointing out (correctly) that the new GOP/Tea Party/far right allows people like Ted Nugent, Jodie Laubenberg, Louie Gohmert, Michele Bachmann and Sean Hannity to speak for the entire conservative party. It won’t stop me, or any other writer worth their salt from musing on the basic hypocrisy of stating you are “pro-life” and believing cutting food stamps for children is a grand idea.
When you attack me or any other writer who uses links and quotes from Republicans to prove their point, you’re not helping yourself at all. What you need to do is go after the people who, if you’ll pardon the word, make you look stupid. Didn’t Bobby Jindal say, out loud, that the GOP needs to stop being the stupid party? What the hell happened?
Let’s take Jodie Laubenberg. She is a Republican from Texas, she was the author of the new anti choice bill that will close all but 3-5 clinics in the entire state… and she believes a rape kit is the same thing as an abortion. Come on. I don’t recall one conservative screaming out at the top of their lungs “OH MY GOD IT’S NOT THE SAME THING, HOW DID YOU GET INTO OFFICE?!?” because the only people who picked up on Ms. Laubenberg’s insanity and published it were liberals.
You’ve got Steve Stockman with his “give a fetus a gun” bumper sticker and of course, Darrell “Of Course That’s My Car, Officer, What Fire?” Issa and his make believe scandals. And yes, I am making fun of Darrell Issa because he reminds me a lot of Ken Starr, just with better hair.
One of the most conservative judges in America told NPR that the Republican party is now “goofy.” I’ve seen Republicans at rallies holding signs that read “I’m ashamed of my party.” There’s an online group called Republicans for Obama.
You are not the party of Eisenhower any more, nor the party of Lincoln. Hell, you’re barely the party of Reagan. Nixon wouldn’t even be allowed in the back door at the next CPAC convention. And only you conservatives can fix that. Do you wince every single time Ann Coulter opens her mouth? Did you throw up a bit when you learned Ted Nugent gave a speech on military heroism at the NRA convention?
Speaking of the NRA, do you understand that they represent gun manufacturers, not the average, responsible American gun owner? When Newt Gingrich said he was unfaithful to TWO seriously ill wives because he loves America so much, did you have to go outside and scream for a few minutes? Then guess what? This isn’t your party anymore!
Take it back. Start your own blog or Facebook page, call it I Remember Eisenhower, or Moderate Republicans Unite. Something that shows you do remember when the GOP was truly Grand, not Goofy. Find like-minded people who are also embarrassed to admit they’re Republican and meet in cafes, diners, basements. Write letters to local and national papers. Stand up and be counted, because if you remain silent and ignore what’s going on in the GOP, you will forever be tainted, you will be guilty by association.
There is nothing wrong with being an actual Republican. But if you’ve hitched your ride to the clown car the GOP has become, you can’t yell at me. I’m just pointing out the facts, the rhetoric and the horror that is the new and vastly unimproved GOP. Yell at the yahoos who did this.
Nice writeup. The only problem I see with your approach is that a little moderation means the GOP will move *just* far enough to the left to get elected, and Michelle Bachmann will still have 90% of the power she has today. And seeing as how the Democratic party is now to the right of where Reagan was in 1985, that’s a real problem for me. We didn’t even try single payer, even though the math shows that’s the best approach. We didn’t really try actual stimulus (ask any decent economist how big the stimulus should have been), and we’ve been putting up with all these budget stunts over the years. Simply moderating the GOP a little won’t really help; I’d much rather they stay crazy and let the Democrats run the show unmolested for a while.
The GOP has gotten on the crazy train because:
1. The Tea Party candidates are the Koch Brothers chosen ones. The Kochs organized all those nationwide Tea Party meetings and told the people to vote for those Tea Party Republicans and they will help you take your government back. Instead, the Koch’s gave the government to themselves. They own a huge oil and coal firm. So naturally all of their Tea Party Republicans in Congress won’t pass any greenhouse gas regulations to combat global warming. And they publicly say it’s all a hoax. Meanwhile they rake in Koch money and other oil money. The environmental group Greenpeace has called the Kochs the kingpins of climate science denial. They have spent the most out of any energy company on climate science denial. Just Google Koch brothers climate denial and read as much as you have time for. Also Google climate change accelerating and see how much trouble we are in. The GOP is well paid to keep it’s heads in the sand on climate change.
2. The GOP is on the crazy train because their religious right constituents are on it. Since they Christian right is a huge constituency of the GOP, they are willing to parrot the insane crap the religious right has to say about gays and gay marriage, abortion, etc. And they try and pass laws that rob people of their freedom to choose how they want to live and conduct their lives without any religious control freak nut cases telling them what to do. It’s Ironic how The hard right Republicans say they want government out of their lives and at the same time the religious right Republicans are trying and sometimes succeeding to get the government in our lives to make us do what the religious right says we ought to do, not what we want to do and the freedom to do it.
3. The GOP is on the hate Obama crazy train largely because of the Koch Brothers hate for Obama and their cash distributed out to the conservative media which is well paid to do Obama bashing. Google New Yorker Magazine billionaires war on Obama.
4. The GOP is on the no single payer crazy train because the insurance companies didn’t want to be cut loose from Obamacare. They wanted in on it so they could make a lot of money off of it. They didn’t want it to be a totally government run medical insurance plan like Medicare. Hell, they’ve even taken a piece of the pie out of Medicare. They offer Medicare supplemental insurance and charge premiums to Medicare recipients. The insurance companies, like big oil and coal, have money to burn to bribe the Congress. Even the Dems are bought off by big money, Wall Street and maybe other corporate interests as well. I doubt that Obama or any other President could get elected without taking money from Wall Street and the bankers.
All of this is such a big tragic mess. We should have a government free of corporate influence. But such is not the case. I say we should give the Congress over to the Green Party. Then we’d see government free of a lot of corporate influence. And then the climate change problem could be seriously addressed along with other pollution problems. The Crazy GOP’ers are always talking about what our forefathers said. Well, I believe it was Jefferson who said something like if corporations control the government then the Republic is lost. I’ll have to look up an exact quote and you can do the same.
Rational republicans should stand up to these wackos making these stupid insane statements. It should embarrass any moderate republican to be associated with these idiots. We need a functioning two party system in this country and at present we most certainly don’t have that. Republicans would do well to stop blaming the President for all the ills and take a good look at how dysfunctional their party has become. They seem to create distractions so they don’t have to deal with the real problems facing us all.
I am a 50 year registered Republican… It’s just that I have been unable to find one at the state or national level to vote for in 20 years. I won’t leave the Republican party, the Republican party left me.