Tag Archives: GOP

I Think We Need Truth in Labeling

My best friend called me yesterday, fuming about a solicitation call she’d just received.

The woman caller identified herself as a volunteer for the Republican Party. She began by thanking my friend for her past, generous support of the GOP–and indeed, my friend was an active Republican voter and donor for many years. Her husband served two terms in the General Assembly as a Republican State Senator. However, like so many of my friends and family, she no longer supports the party, and when the woman at the other end of the phone asked whether she would consider a contribution, she said so.

“I’m a Democrat now,” she informed the volunteer. The volunteer (predictably) asked if she would share why she had left the GOP; my friend responded that she strongly disagreed with the party’s positions on social issues, especially abortion and homosexuality. It is not government’s job to decide whether you procreate, or who you love; the party used to understand that “limited” government meant limited to matters that are properly the province of the state.

There was a pause. The woman on the phone then asked “Don’t you think we should consider the will of god?  Shouldn’t the government have a role in ensuring that we live by what’s written in the bible?” to which my friend responded “Whose bible? Whose god?” Another pause, then the question: “are you a Christian?”  When my friend said she was not, the woman evidently had an “ah ha” moment, because she ended the conversation by saying “Oh, that explains it.” According to my friend, she might just as well have said, “Now I understand–you are not one of us.”

The conversation made it quite clear that, to this volunteer (and presumably others like her), the Republican party is no longer a political enterprise. It’s a religious movement, a party by and for Christians. Not just any Christian, either–it’s the party for what they call “bible-believing” Christians, the party of Rick Santorum and Mike Pence. If there are still those in the party who take a more traditional approach, who understand the purpose of politics to be participation in secular governance and political outreach to be the building of a bigger, more inclusive tent, they presumably hadn’t communicated that to this particular foot soldier.

The conversation simply confirmed the reality of today’s Republican party–a party consisting of what has been described as “a shrinking base of aging, ethnically monolithic, and geographically isolated voters.” Christian voters. Perhaps we could achieve more clarity in our political discourse if the GOP stopped trying to be coy, and just renamed itself the Christian Party. In its current iteration, it certainly isn’t the Republican Party that my friend and I used to support. That party disappeared a long time ago.

The volunteer on the other end of line simply confirmed its transformation.

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Revisiting…Everything

Random thoughts for a Sunday morning….

The Sunday morning interview shows are focused on the GOP’s “identity crisis.” The New York Times has an article by the Public Editor about a not-dissimilar debate occurring within journalism over the meaning and possibility of “objectivity.” An academic listserv I participate in has a recurring discussion about the advisability of holding a new Constitutional Convention, or at least seriously considering significant constitutional changes. Various religious denominations are grappling with challenges to settled theological positions, including their beliefs about the role of women, homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Educators are struggling to redefine both ends and means. Technology is changing everything from how we live to how we define friendship.

I could go on, but you get the picture. We live in an era when–as the poet put it– “the center will not hold.”

The existential question, of course, is: what will emerge from all this confusion and change? Will we take this opportunity to think about the “big” questions–what kind of society do we want to inhabit? What would a more just system look like? Aristotle was among the first to suggest that an ideal society would facilitate human flourishing; what would such a society look like?

Unfortunately, there’s not much evidence that these “big” questions are being asked. Instead, we seem to be surrounded by quarrelsome adolescents, desperately trying to game the system and retain–or obtain–relative advantage.

I wonder what it would take to change the conversation?

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Cliff Notes

Unbelievable.

I actually feel sorry for John Boehner. He presides over a Caucus that isn’t simply stubborn or contentious–thanks to its most ideological members, it is simply ungovernable. These members are unwilling to move an inch for the good of the country or even their own party. It’s stunning.

What I don’t get is the fanatical refusal to raise taxes even a small amount for even a few of the very richest Americans. Boehner’s “Plan B”–which crashed and burned thanks to that refusal–allowed the Bush tax cuts to expire only for those making more than a million dollars a year. Protecting those few Americans from a slight raise in the marginal rate was evidently so important to the Tea Party fanatics that they were willing to knock the props from under their own party’s leader and reinforce a growing public perception that the GOP has become far too extreme. (A recent poll found that 52% of Americans hold that view of the party–and that was before this latest embarrassment.)

Presumably, Boehner’s inability to get what he wanted from his caucus will strengthen the President’s hand as the fiscal “cliff” nears, although it’s increasingly difficult to predict anything in the Never Never Land that is Washington, D.C. The only thing that seems certain is that we’ve elected a lot of people who haven’t the faintest idea what governing is all about.

If I could explain why they are willing to go down with the ship rather than raise taxes on anyone, I’d be delighted to share that explanation in this space, but I can’t. I’m baffled.

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What is WRONG with these People?

The embarrassments just keep coming, and the continued descent into self-parody of a once-rational political party is painful to watch. It seems that every day brings a new “WTF moment,” another occasion to shake one’s head and contemplate the GOP’s penchant for self-destruction.

A couple of days ago, the U.S. Senate failed to ratify a United Nations treaty on the rights of the disabled–a treaty modeled after the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Treaty would not have required a single change to current U.S. law; its ratification was, in a sense, a formality, intended to bring the rest of the member nations up to the standard set by the United States. Bob Dole came in his wheelchair to urge Republican Senators to ratify it. Dick Lugar and John McCain were among the eight GOP “defectors” who joined all of the Democratic Senators voting for ratification.

According to media reports, ultra-conservatives associated with the Tea Party, led by former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, opposed the treaty on the grounds that it threatened U.S. sovereignty and parental rights. Santorum, who has a daughter with special needs, argued that the treaty would effectively put the United States under international law and give the U.N. discretion over decisions about how special needs children are educated.

This, of course, is nonsense–part and parcel of the paranoia that characterizes the Right’s frantic rejection of anything connected to the United Nations and increasingly, Europe. Even Bob Dole and Dick Lugar couldn’t shame them--but then, how do you shame crazy? So–add the disabled to the growing group of constituencies–women, immigrants, gays, young people–that the party has infuriated.

Washington is hardly the only habitat of the legislative loon, of course. Here in Indiana, we breed dozens of them.

The Northwest Indiana Times captured a quintessential example, under a headline that deserves some sort of prize: “Indiana Senator’s Plan to Teach Creationism Evolves.”

State Senator Denise Kruse has sponsored some of the Senate’s most constitutionally-suspect measures. Most recently, he’s been trying to pass legislation that would require the teaching of creationism in public school classrooms. Last session, his measure passed the (overwhelmingly Republican) Senate, but House Speaker Brian Bosma killed it in the House. Bosma is a lawyer, and obviously is aware that the courts have settled this debate, holding that creationism is religion, not science, and cannot be taught as science.

Kruse told the Times that he would not submit a similar bill this time. No, he said, he “wants to empower students to challenge their teachers” and “to make sure what is being taught is true.” He will sponsor a bill require teachers to justify and support their lessons.

I don’t know what Kruse thinks happens in a classroom. Given his public pronouncements, it’s fair to assume he hasn’t been in many. But I can’t imagine a classroom where students don’t challenge their teachers, or a classroom where teachers aren’t absolutely ecstatic when they can share with students the evidence and research underlying the substance of their subject-matter. Does he think students come into the classroom for indoctrination sessions? That teachers hypnotize children, or pour pre-packaged lessons into the tops of their heads?

Since conspiracy theories seem to be the order of the day, here’s mine: someone is putting hallucinogenic substances in the food of Republican elected officials. And baby, those substances are strong.

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