12.01.2009

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.

5 comments:

  1. yeah, but in NJ the Republicans threw over the rightwinger in the primaries for a moderate, and the moderate won. In Va. the Gov. likewise repudiated his past and ran full bore to the center. Meanwhile, where the wingnuts held sway, an uberRepublican seat in NY went to a Democrat. I used to live in Jersey, and though I am a registered Democrat would have voted for Christie over that thug Corzine, who ran a reprehensible campaign mocking Christies weight. The talking heads on Fox are not the true Republican party, at least not yet.

    Charo

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

    If you remove the 'vice-' from the above sentence, that would explain why I couldn't support the Democratic party in '08.

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

    Much better to support a party that cynically exploits gays with promises they have no intention of fulfilling, isn't it?

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

    What's so special about evolution that it is a litmus test for you?

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

    You misspelled the names of Al Sharpton and Keith Olbermann.

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  3. Elizabeth I agree with you 100% and as usual GJ is out of touch with reality. However, I would like to add one more reason for not being a Republican and that is their approach to anything good for the middle calss and working persons in our country. The one point you omitted was health care and the Republican approach to defet anything that will cut corprate greed. They have pulled this shit before, Remember how the inheritance tax suddenly became the death tax?
    How pro -choice became pro-abortion? How we had to "fight them over there, so that we would not have to fight them here"? And of course risk death. This is how the GOP always frightens people into compliance. By threatening their lives, or the lives of their loved ones. These are the tactics of cowards and the morally bankrupt. I cannot imagine how anybody can feel proud of a party that resorts to this sort of manipulation. Health care reform is necessary and has been put off for too long by a group of people who have access to the best health care available in this country. Too bad hypocrisy is not a life threatening condition.

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  4. Sorry for the couple of spelling errors. Guilty of haste post.:)

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  5. I agree with charo. The practice of frightening people into compliance is the policy of cowards and the morally bankrupt. Those evil Rethuglicans passed bills claiming, and I quote, The decisions no parent should ever have to make -- how long to put off that doctors appointment, whether to fill that prescription, whether to let a child play outside, knowing that all it takes is one accident, one injury, to send your family into financial ruin, end quote. Oh, wait, sorry, my mistake, that was the Democratic party's position. Well, this was surely Republican scaremongering at its worst when the President claimed that the fiscal crisis would turn into a "catastrophe" if the stimulus wasn't passed immediately... oh, wait, my mistake, that was President Obama.

    Well, you get the idea. It's those Eeeevil Republicans who are the party of fearmongering. Vote Democratic (motto: This Time, For Sure")

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