There is NOTHING more irritating than a reformed smoker

Poking around Huffington Post, I found this little gem written by Frank Schaeffer. Schaeffer is the son of an (apparently) famous evangelical minister who woke up, dropped out, and lived to tell the tale. Director and author now, he had a few words about the GOP I found interesting given my most recent political post. That is to say that he ponders the post-McCain Republican Party.

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.

The Future of the Two Party System: Food for Thought

A number of conservative pundits have claimed that Sarah Palin is the future of the Republican party. That will leave the GOP with a solid constituency centered around core conservative issues like abortion, head-in-the-sand approach to energy policy, prayer in public schools, and anti-gay marriage. They might also retain some hard-core gun enthusiasts. My belief is that in doing so, they are going to chase away the majority of the fiscal conservatives, the more educated of their base, and the slightly right of center moderates and progressives. In effect, owning Sarah Palin's brand of politics will make the GOP a fringe party.

My question is, if the GOP is willing to not just embrace but to own the far right (in effect make the far right its "center"), will the Democratic Party benefit? Will the Dems shift more toward the right? Will moderates and "near right" conservatives shift to the Democratic Party? I think that depends on how flexible the Democrats are willing to be. Are they willing to go more conservative on issues like gun control, limits to abortions, and more cowboy conservative with respect to the military? I think they are willing to be flexible enough to cause a major and lasting shift.

This also seems to open up the field for the emergence of a third party (I'm thinking Greens) to pick up the far left liberals that a more moderate Democratic Party is willing to sacrifice.

Any thoughts?

The Legacy of Nixon?

I was re-reading my earlier post (thank you OCD), and found this:

Even within the Republican Party (can you say Chris Buckley, Colin Powell, Susan Eisenhower) there is a growing list of Obamacans. The reason is precisely because of the racist element within the GOP that represents the last sad gasps of the old South.

And it occurred to me that the Southern Strategy that worked so well in the 60s may be responsible for the failure of the Republican party some 50 years later. Seems plausible.

However, just as I'm saying that, I find this. It reinforces my gut feeling, expressed in other posts, that, given a choice between supporting their racial prejudices or their economic prosperity, people will vote their pocketbooks.

However, by labeling the Southern Strategy a "myth", I think this article misses the larger truth, which is that the GOP gave racist white Americans a safe haven and a continued legitimacy and that has had lasting and negative impact on our national growth.