Why I am not a Republican

I coulda been a Republican.

Contra what some commenters might think, I do not consider myself a liberal. I consider myself a moderate. I am usually in favor of incrememntal, rather than vast, change and am Burkeanly nervous about the ability of top-down planners to know what they are doing. I am in favor of pragmatic policies. I think burdensome taxation is a problem, as is taking away incentives for business. Etc. etc.

I was in favor of the war in Iraq, initially. I was disturbed by Democrats' unwillingness to take terrorism seriously enough. My vote for Kerry in 2004 was not without some inner turmoil and serious consideration of Bush. I refused to say I was a Democrat, and only registered as such to vote in closed primaries.

Can I just say, that the only way I would vote for a Republican now is if the candidate was so distanced from the Republican party that he or she would solidly fail the recent purity test? I think the Republicans lost far more potential votes than they realize. I was never counted as a Republican or Independent, but they could have had me, with a sane center-pragmatic approach.

Andrew Sullivan has a post on why he's leaving the right wing. Much of it lists the exact reasons why I, a former independent-leaning Democrat, would never now vote Republican. Here, below, are the reasons that he gives that also motivate my revulsion with the current Republican party.

I cannot support a movement that so abandoned government's minimal and vital role to police markets and address natural disasters that it gave us Katrina and the financial meltdown of 2008.

I cannot support a movement that holds torture as a core value.

I cannot support a movement that holds that purely religious doctrine should govern civil political decisions and that uses the sacredness of religious faith for the pursuit of worldly power.

I cannot support a movement that is deeply homophobic, cynically deploys fear of homosexuals to win votes, and gives off such a racist vibe that its share of the minority vote remains pitiful.

I cannot support a movement which has no real respect for the institutions of government and is prepared to use any tactic and any means to fight political warfare rather than conduct a political conversation...

I cannot support a movement that would back a vice-presidential candidate manifestly unqualified and duplicitous because of identity politics and electoral cynicism.

I cannot support a movement that regards gay people as threats to their own families.

I cannot support a movement that does not accept evolution as a fact...

I cannot support a movement that refuses to distance itself from a demagogue like Rush Limbaugh or a nutjob like Glenn Beck.

This last reason really gets to me. And I include the tendency of those on the right who do not restrict themselves to forcefully criticizing Obama and his policies (which is, indeed, a welcome part of a functioning, healthy democracy), but who accuse him of treason, as Cheney did today. As much as I used to hate the inability of many on the far left to fully decry the intolerance of other cultures, I hate the inability of the right to cut off these crazies - indeed, instead, to cater to them.