Skip to main content

Lipstick on a Pig

By


Recently, GOProud founder Jimmy LaSalvia announced he was leaving the GOP because he considered it "brain dead."  He now joins the approximately 40 per cent of "independent" voters in America who no longer choose to affiliate themselves with either party, reflecting the growing unrest in this country with the two-party system, and the Republican Party in particular.

Certainly, we have seen many cases over the last five years to bolster LaSalvia's claim, which makes one wonder why he has waited this long to leave a party that obviously has shown no accommodation toward gays, or women or just about anyone else who doesn't fit its very narrowly defined vision of America.  I suppose like many Americans he wanted to oust Obama, as it was easier to project all his insecurities on Barry rather than admit the basic structural problems with the GOP that he was previously so proud of.

Like many conservatives, LaSalvia seems to live in a delusional world.  In his case, it is particularly amazing since at no time has the Republcan Party ever stood up for gay rights, despite its professed Libertarian views.  It was Reagan who ushered in this "moral majority" led by Jerry Falwell, which has now taken over the GOP and made it into a tent revival of highly bigoted religious conservative views.

The Republican bigotry extends far beyond gays, as we heard former GOP presidential contender Mike Huckabee lash out at women (Democratic ones anyway) and their promiscuous way in his harangue against including birth control in Obamacare.  Of course, Huck has been trying to backpedal on these outrageous comments since.  But, clearly this is a political party that no longer weighs its choice of words before spouting them.  True of Jimmy LaSalvia as well.

It seems the GOP has given up on its experiment with accommodation after its awful 2012 results.  Not only did the GOP fail to win the White House, but it lost seats in both chambers of Congress, even with many Senate Democrats particularly vulnerable.  The GOP didn't fair well in 2013 special elections either, as well as the highly contentious gubernatorial race in Virginia, which has swung back to the Blue column in its legislature as well.

The Republicans seem too worried about losing their religious conservative base to deal with the likes of LaSalvia and other fringe groups within the party, much less reach out to broader minority groups, which turn national and broad state elections.  What you hear are calls to improve the "tone," like this one from Reince Priebus, rather than address the basic structural problems that underlies the GOP.  It is simply an exclusionary party, and no amount of lipstick is going to disguise the matter.

Comments

  1. Rick DiguetteJanuary 25, 2014 at 3:18 PM

    Republicans can always count on 40% of the electorate wallowing in negativity. That's their base.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more