Appalling

Senator Lindsay Graham is very conservative; however, he is not one of the extremist know-nothings currently attempting to turn the GOP into a religious/nationalist cult of some sort. And that fact–the fact that he is occasionally willing to work with–gasp!–Democrats–has led the S. Carolina Republican Party to censure him! 

As many who read this blog know, I was an active and visible Republican for thirty-plus years. I ran for Congress as a Republican. As the party moved further and further away from the fiscal responsibility and social liberalism/libertarianism that had attracted me–I left. Millions of others did likewise. Today the party is the mirror image of what it was when we belonged–rather than being fiscally conservative and socially liberal, it is socially conservative and fiscally liberal. And since most Americans do not agree that government should tax the poor to benefit the rich, or that it should intervene to keep people like Terry Schaivo “alive,” or that efforts to extend healthcare (whether one likes the bill or not) are comparable to the holocaust, the “true believers” are making the party’s candidates increasingly un-electable. 

When people as conservative as Lindsay Graham are no longer “pure” enough, you have a party intent upon destroying itself.