Schaeffer doesn't go in for all that flowery talk.
The Republican Party has lost the hearts and minds of reasonable Americans of all faiths and ideologies. Independent voters, young people, black people, Hispanics... the list goes on, and now includes even most white men (like me), most white women, in fact most everybody has left the Republicans. Who stayed? The sorts of people who believe that the Earth is 6000 years old, that dinosaurs roamed the Earth with men, that Senator Obama is "a Arab," that President Bush was correct in thinking that it was "God's will" that we go to war with Iraq, that torture of prisoners is OK, that Senator Obama is a Muslim, that the problem with the American economy is what little remains of government regulation of our banking and financial institutions, that freedom equals being allowed to go to gun shows where an eight-year-old is allowed to fire an Uzi submachine gun and shoot himself in the head...
I can't decide if I just like this article because the writing is so powerful or because his thoughts mirror my own. But when I encountered that last sentence, I actually read it twice just so I could enjoy it again. Well, I enjoyed everything but the kid shooting himself in the head. But you know what I mean.
But the Party is in tatters and a period of reflection and rebuilding is in order. Schaeffer has some suggestions.
The choice for the Republicans, in the face of their impending overwhelming defeat, is clear: is the Republican Party going to become the permanent refuge for stupid people or will it change and stop catering to the village idiots?
In becoming a party of rubes, the party of eternal war (and therefore eternal debt!), the party that despises the big cities, hates the universities, says that one part of America is more patriotic than other parts, in fact hates (and fears) anyone not like them or worse yet, is suspicious of anyone smarter or more educated than they are, the Republicans have doomed themselves to be the party of stupid, fearful and close-minded bigots.
I enjoyed the hell out of this article, but I don't know whether I should be honored or afraid for having an insider from the religious fundamentalist movement agree with me.
Hmmmmmmmm.
Some more interesting tidbits from Schaeffer. He talks about his father's treasonous statements from the pulpit that make Jeremiah Wright look not so bad after all. And I don't know how I missed this, but he wrote an open letter to McCain and Palin about inciting their rally participants to violence.
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