Aristotle–Mr. Moderation
I heard from a friend today–a “moderate” Republican who wanted to talk about the possible rise of a moderate presidential candidate from his side of the fence. He had a candidate in mind, and wrote a nice remembrance of the first time he’d met this candidate and where the candidate came from and why the candidate would be a good one.
He wondered if The Rake would be interested in such a remembrance/conditional endorsement for someone from “The Party of Lincoln.”
Since I’d eaten Chinese for lunch and my fortune cookie told me, “A man of discretion thinks twice before he keeps his mouth shut,” I didn’t send him a reply. But, if I had, it would have gone something like this:
Dear Friend,
I don’t think this piece is right for us, not that we wouldn’t like to be the first to endorse almost anyone if it would in anyway hurt the current bunch of yahoos the Republicans have infected America with. Personally, I think the chances of a moderate Republican being the nominee are remote. Why change when you can win by moving way to the right and convincing the morons who populate the middle and south of this country that Democrats are coming into your homes to make your sons gay and your daughters have abortions…oh, and it’s ok to tap your phones and search your homes without your knowledge to make sure you aren’t doing any of that?
Don’t you think Lincoln spins in his grave every time someone refers to the party of Rove, Frist and DeLay as his? Do you think he cringes at the denigration of the very eloquence that characterized his discourse? I do, and hell, I’ve even voted for Republicans like Arne Carlson, and even Coleman for Governor…but that was before he started wearing the armband.
Now if you wanted to write something that says what you really feel about the current state of your party, that would be interesting. Maybe you could just answer the question of my father, a life long Republican, who says that Bush is the worst president of his lifetime…”and I was alive when Hoover was president. How did this happen?”
Maybe you could start by explaining why one of your state party big shots, whose Daddy was a Fortune 500 CEO, and who parlayed his access to capital and his Harvard education into a fortune for himself, can’t understand the difference between him, who got rich, and some checker at Wal-Mart who is giving up 10 percent of her meager income every week just to get her check cashed.
Until the real Republicans stand up and say stuff like that, like Elmer Anderson did before the election, you are doomed to be just another pile of right wing road kill–just like the Democrats who can’t come up with a coherent reason why they lost.
Of course, perhaps one has to look no further for that than the fact that surveys show that over 50 percent of Americans still believe in a literal interpretation of the creation story and realize that, if as a people, we are that gullible, hell, we’ll believe almost anything, including fables about WMD in Iraq, global warming is a myth, and that metallic taste in your tuna is not mercury.
So, if you agree with any of that screed, have at it. If you wrote something like that, that would be news. Otherwise, I’m afraid what you’ve got doesn’t rise above the “dog bites man” threshold.
Sincerely,
Oliver
Boy, I’m sure glad I didn’t send that response.
Leave a Reply