Something's Gone Terribly Wrong With The Republican Party

A friend sent me this excellent essay. Being that I'm sometimes accused of not being what I say (a Republican), I thought I'd share this. For some reason, some folks seem to think that being a member of the GOP requires complete devotion to groupthink. If that is what the Republican party requires, I want no part of it.

By Garrison Keillor
August 26, 2004

Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once,
it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed
spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their
communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all
ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier
elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat
Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element.
The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought
the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System,
declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a
period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and
letters flourished and higher education burgeoned - and there was a
degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were
giants compared to today's. Richard Nixon was the last Republican
leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor.

In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated
southward down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea
of public service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great
Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of
pirates that diverted and fascinated the media by their sheer
chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who,
while George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a pass and
made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon moderate vanished like
the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry white men who rose
to power on pure punk politics. "Bipartisanship is another term for
date rape," says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the GOP. "I don't
want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size
where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
The boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy.
The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of
hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of
convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking
midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts
in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks,
Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk
was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the
rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a
dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of
secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured
body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of
the world thinks we're deaf, dumb and dangerous.

Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild
swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket
lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and
write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires!
Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where
art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated
gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine
Grace.

Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform
of tragedy - the single greatest failure of national defense in our
history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this
nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House
fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the
hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to
lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government
impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was
undertaken for the president's personal satisfaction but sold to the
American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose
purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking
place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working
beautifully.

The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the
death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has
survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what
happens to ours. The omens are not good.

Our beloved land has been fogged with fear - fear, the greatest
political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a
drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy
and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can
appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution,
eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a
standstill, stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich.
There is a stink drifting through this election year. It isn't the
Florida recount or the Supreme Court decision. No, it's 9/11 that we
keep coming back to. It wasn't the "end of innocence," or a turning
point in our history, or a cosmic occurrence, it was an event, a lapse
of security. And patriotism shouldn't prevent people from asking hard
questions of the man who was purportedly in charge of national
security at the time.

Whenever I think of those New Yorkers hurrying along Park Place or
getting off the No.1 Broadway local, hustling toward their office on
the 90th floor, the morning paper under their arms, I think of that
non-reader George W. Bush and how he hopes to exploit those people
with a little economic uptick, maybe the capture of Osama, cruise to
victory in November and proceed to get some serious nation-changing
done in his second term.

This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray us Democrats as
embittered academics, desiccated Unitarians, whacked-out hippies and
communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the party of the
Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow over and over the
footage of firemen in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and
bodies being carried out and they will lie about their economic
policies with astonishing enthusiasm.

The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and
by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what
Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii has
humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and
school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what
books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the town and
clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and mark up the constitution on
behalf of intolerance and promote the corporate takeover of the public
airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them.

This is a great country, and it wasn't made so by angry people. We
have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchildren in better shape
than however we found it. We have a long way to go and we're not
getting any younger.
Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in
time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank
you, dear reader. It's a beautiful world, rain or shine, and there is
more to life than winning.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Garrison Keillor is the host and writer of A Prairie Home Companion,
now in its 25th year on the air. This adapted excerpted from Keillor's
new book, Homegrown Democrat (c 2004) is reprinted by arrangement with
Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

It's unreal the crap I'm hearing from NYC! Check this out:

Unlike the tens of thousands of marchers who thronged the streets of Manhattan on Sunday, Rosario Dawson didn't come to protest against the Republican National Convention, but she was arrested anyway. According to the New York Daily News, the ''Men in Black II'' actress was filming a scene for a movie called ''This Revolution,'' shooting just a couple blocks away from the convention site at Madison Square Garden and using the ready-made cast of thousands as extras, when police detained her. She was reportedly wearing a black bandanna over her face, and officers cited a law against protesters using masks to hide their identities. The 25-year-old and her costar, Vija Brigita Grosgalvis, were herded into a police van, and when director Stephen Marshall protested their arrests and tried to show his valid film permits, he was arrested as well.
Dawson, who'll be seen this fall opposite Colin Farrell in ''Alexander,'' ''refused to be handcuffed,'' police told ''Entertainment Tonight.'' According to ''ET,'' police cited her for resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, blocking traffic, and obstruction of government administration.

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
It's unreal the crap I'm hearing from NYC! Check this out:

Unlike the tens of thousands of marchers who thronged the streets of Manhattan on Sunday, Rosario Dawson didn't come to protest against the Republican National Convention, but she was arrested anyway.

Your first post is the same as posted here (link for you):
www.inthesetimes.com...

And, of course she was arrested. LOOK!



Covering her face and being in a high alert zone?

I agree with you that the drama in NYC is tense. But to be honest, I dont think it has much about which party. Then RNC and the DNC both overstepped their bounds with the free speech zones.

People object to not only the current president, and the wanna-be, but more so the entire government.

Ill be first to admit that I dont know nearly as much about politics as you ECK, but I think its quite obvious that Americans hate their government, no matter whos in office.

Until someone comes along and changes things and gives us back our rights, then things will continue to escalate. And in my opinion, neither bush nor kerry have offered that.

Empty words. Shallow thoughts.

Howard Dean was the first Democrat I ever got jazzed about. He said what needed to be said, and for that, he would've had my vote.

I just can't believe the stupidity of the cops. They had freekin' permits, man! Down with tha man! Power to the people!

Free speech zones are ANTI-DEMOCRATIC!

Nixon actually engaged them in debate.

Reagan dis-armed them with his extraordinary wit.

Clinton put up with them.

Bush is terrified of them.

They are all afraid of them. The DNC will have almost nothing to do with the super-left right haters and I'm sure you won't see Bush doing much of anything. The less Bushisms the better.

The problem is the government.

This free speech zone Bu# is unreal, just like the way cops have gotten so brutal and quick to arrest anybody who even hints at NOT supporting Bush. It just shows BushCo. can't handle dissent in any way, shape or form. It's just plain weakness.

True, free speech zones are rediculous.

But I know that should the roles be reversed, and the Democrats come under heavy fire from conservatives in the same way the GOP is now, the same thing would happen.

It's the rich core of each party protecting their choices for president. All handpicked, polished, and presented to the US people on a silver platter.

Real Democracy. HA!

That's a real joke friends. Quit the bull#, both parties are corrupt, like minded, government enabling, self preserving, slandering thugs...

and I for one am shocked that people don't recognize this, but worse, they VOTE for them.

To be fair, something's gone terribly wrong with both the modern Republicans and the modern Democrats. Modern conservatives and modern liberals are a far cry from the classical conservatives and classical liberals we all allude to being.

In the U.S.'s past, when the Whigs and Federalists became this corrupt and delusional, they were replaced with... the Rebpublicans and Democrats. Now that the Republicans and Democrats are corrupt and delusional, how long is it going to take before both parties are replaced? (Hopefully with the Libertarian and Constitution parties. )

President Clinton endured massive hatred, so did Reagan and Nixon - as I mentioned before. Not one of them ever pulled this free speech zone crap. I guess they were intelligent men who were not afraid of opposing opinion.

We no longer live in a Democracy. It's now a PLUTOCRACY.

[edit on 19-09-2003 by EastCoastKid]

I'm still a registered republican, but after seeing McCain back Bush, I've realized the party has fallen. I'm going Independant after the election. And possibly leaving the country since the voice of rationality has been sucked out of politics almost completely.

I hearya Quest. I don't know why in the hell McCain would bother helping Dubya out after what Rove's goons did to him in SC.

Love that avatar, btw.

I think it has been a plutocracy for longer than a good number of us has been alive.

Let's look at the example someone already gave, McCain.

It's well known that if you want to make a run for the Oval Office, you have to be a "loyal" subject of the party masters. If this is true (and it is a we've seen just at the GOP convention) then we are all screwed.

But we still like to talk about swiftboats, the economy, gun laws, free speech zones, immagration, welfare, Affermative Action, and many other topics and think that they are the real definition of the problem in America.

They are not. The political parties, and the incorporated system is the primary problem in America today. Once THAT is addressed, we might get some reasonable candidates in the race (well, ones that get any media exposure).

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
A friend sent me this excellent essay. Being that I'm sometimes accused of not being what I say (a Republican), I thought I'd share this. For some reason, some folks seem to think that being a member of the GOP requires complete devotion to groupthink. If that is what the Republican party requires, I want no part of it.


OK, EastCoastKid, I don't now how many people fall for your "I was a republican" bs. I also don't know how many people really believe you where in the military...much less Airborne. You can settle the Airborne issue right now by answering one question. If you are not Airborne, what are you?




[edit on 31-8-2004 by Carseller4]

OK, EastCoastKid, I don't now how many people fall for your "I was a republican" bs. I also don't know how many people really believe you where in the military...much less Airborne. You can settle the Airborne issue right now by answering one question. If you are not Airborne, what are you?




[edit on 31-8-2004 by Carseller4]

EastCoastKid, maybe you're on vacation, maybe doing some parachuting? When you get a chance please answer this question to prove you earned your wings.

If you are not Airborne, what are you?

Originally posted by ThunderCloud
Now that the Republicans and Democrats are corrupt and delusional, how long is it going to take before both parties are replaced? (Hopefully with the Libertarian and Constitution parties.

)

No offense, but I truely hope the Constitution Party never makes it far enough to be able to be one of the major parties. That party is the most anti-Constitution party yet, and they would set us back 200-300 years if they had their way. I don't like Bush or Kerry, but I would gladly put up with 4 years of either one of them before I would ever allow the Constitution Party to come to power.

[edit on 1-9-2004 by Jazzerman]

Originally posted by Carseller4
OK, EastCoastKid, I don't now how many people fall for your "I was a republican" bs. I also don't know how many people really believe you where in the military...

I can assure you ECK is a long time established member of this community that has been similarly challenged and vetted time and again.

While I'm sure any Vet that speaks out against Bush is used to having their Patriotism, Service and Integrity questioned by now...the continued demands and accusations from Bush supporters simply amaze me.

Perhaps we are witnessing the end of and era and the beginning of a new type of government.

No, I don't believe in NWO but I believe that our nation has been bought a long time ago by the few and now they are powerful enough to pull the strings.

Presidents are going to become only figures while the governing is going to be by the hidden elite.

Just a though. Elections is turning me into a paranoid.

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
President Clinton endured massive hatred, so did Reagan and Nixon - as I mentioned before. Not one of them ever pulled this free speech zone crap.

I am not understanding the arguement here, how are 'free speech zones' different than what has gone before? Permits have been required for peaceful assembly for a long time no?

Is what is different now that the protestors can't get close to the buildings the conventions are being held at?

Is that an unreasonable and unnacceptable restriction, given that a single person can carry tremendous destructive power on their own bodies now?

I don't know about all that ms. Marg but perhaps the Reform party will become more popular in a decade or so. McCain tho, is obviously a Party loyalist (I don't mean that in a derogatory way). Buchanon was the Reform candidate in double naught right? Anyone know who the most likely nominee is now?

In double naught, by the way, the Reform party suffered a real, probably crippling setback. Ironically enough, it boiled down to politics. There was an old guard (you might say) and a new guard, which was basically buchannon and his supporters. The old guarders said that Buch. was illegaly stealing the nomination, and, when they couldn't do anything about it, split the party. They went over to the Natural Law Party, which, as I understand it, is popular in Europe, and very much new agey. Sorta like the Swami School of Busines, but a political party instead. Perhaps they are the next up and comers.

The 'big' question is what happens with the green party. I beleive right now they are technically split into two seperate 'green' parties. But they don't seem to be backing a candidate this year. One has to wonder, if they promote such radicalism normally, but then cave in now to support the dems, why would anyone not just stay in the dems? I mean, if all the green voters left that party and got as invovled in it as they are in teh green party, then the democratic party would probably have a different nominee or a different platform no? If a third party can overtake or even influence one of the major parties, then whats the sense in it?