There's no better way to describe a party taken over by neocons and the religious right
By ERIC MARGOLIS
NEW YORK -- My old pal Bob, a bigwig California Republican, is barely on speaking terms with me. Bob does macho Republican things such as shoot little birds, ride Harleys, and sneer at the French.
Bob says I'm picking on poor President George W. Bush and lack patriotism for not supporting W's wars of "liberation" in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Worse, Bob accuses me of becoming a ... gasp ... Democratic liberal! In America, "liberal" means a lefty. Them's fightin' words.
I've been called a lot of things, including "fascist hyena," "CIA agent," and "right-wing warmonger," but a leftist Democrat? I'm more likely to become a Hare Krishna than a liberal!
Actually, I'm a rogue Republican.
I've always been a moderate conservative Eisenhower Republican who believes in small government, low taxes, saving, hard work, individual freedoms, and avoiding overseas adventures.
I respect Sen. John McCain and believe he would make a fine president. But he showed terrible judgment in picking Sarah Palin as his v-p candidate, and surrounding himself with a coterie of extreme neocon advisers such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Randy Scheunemann, Elliot Abrams and other far rightists who played a major role in creating the frightful foreign affairs mess the U.S. now faces and making America hated around the globe.
IDEOLOGICAL BLACKSHIRTS
Equally bad, today's Republicans are no longer a party of the democratic centre. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush and Dick Cheney packed their administration with ideological blackshirts called "neocons" who drove the nation and Republican Party so far right it flirted at times with fascism.
When I hear "Republican" these days, the words that come to my mind are: Arrogance, ignorance, and just plain dumb. And now, add economic disaster caused by Enron-style fraud and allowing crooks to run the nation's finances.
Two of today's most regressive political movements, far right American Christian conservatives -- the Rush Limbaugh crowd -- and supporters of Israel's far right expansionist parties, joined forces to become the bedrock of the Bush presidency. Today, 44-50% of Republican voters call themselves born-again Christian fundamentalists who believe every word of the Bible is true.
The Grand Old Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan has been hijacked by America's rural heartland and the Southern Bible Belt -- what we nasty New Yorkers call "hicks and holy rollers."
McCain's choice of an evangelical ultra conservative, Gov. Sarah Palin, a woman of stunning vulgarity and ignorance, is testimony to the dumbing down of the party and its transformation into a populist religious movement.
LURCH TO THE RIGHT
I haven't changed my politics and remain firmly in the centre. But the Republican Party has lurched so far to the right that the old centre looks like the left to many Republicans.
Barack Obama is wrong to propose raising taxes but he is no socialist, as Palin charges. Nationalizing the nation's banks is socialist. Urging world domination is National Socialist.
Republicans disgraced the nation by endorsing torture, assassinations, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, secret prisons, kidnapping, kangaroo courts, spying on U.S. citizens and undermining America's Constitution. Too many cowardly Democrats joined this lynch mob.
Republicans now speak for rich fat cats, military-industrial-petroleum complex, the financial industry and some of the least educated, most backwards, most prejudiced Americans.
McCain and Palin have shamelessly stoked anti-black, anti-Muslim and anti-foreign hatred and fear among them during this campaign. So did Hillary Clinton. It's also dismaying that blacks will vote en masse for Obama because of his colour.
Gen. Colin Powell did the right thing by breaking with John McCain, denouncing racism and Islamophobia, and warning of the party's lurch to the far right. Powell commands my attention. I was always disappointed this fine man and soldier did not run for president.
America desperately needs a reborn, moderate Republican Party freed from narrow-minded religious ideology and ruralism that will return the nation to its former democratic values and decency.
This was the United States the world used to respect. When it happens, I will return to the fold.
Toronto Sun
Bang frickin on.
By ERIC MARGOLIS
NEW YORK -- My old pal Bob, a bigwig California Republican, is barely on speaking terms with me. Bob does macho Republican things such as shoot little birds, ride Harleys, and sneer at the French.
Bob says I'm picking on poor President George W. Bush and lack patriotism for not supporting W's wars of "liberation" in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Worse, Bob accuses me of becoming a ... gasp ... Democratic liberal! In America, "liberal" means a lefty. Them's fightin' words.
I've been called a lot of things, including "fascist hyena," "CIA agent," and "right-wing warmonger," but a leftist Democrat? I'm more likely to become a Hare Krishna than a liberal!
Actually, I'm a rogue Republican.
I've always been a moderate conservative Eisenhower Republican who believes in small government, low taxes, saving, hard work, individual freedoms, and avoiding overseas adventures.
I respect Sen. John McCain and believe he would make a fine president. But he showed terrible judgment in picking Sarah Palin as his v-p candidate, and surrounding himself with a coterie of extreme neocon advisers such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Randy Scheunemann, Elliot Abrams and other far rightists who played a major role in creating the frightful foreign affairs mess the U.S. now faces and making America hated around the globe.
IDEOLOGICAL BLACKSHIRTS
Equally bad, today's Republicans are no longer a party of the democratic centre. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush and Dick Cheney packed their administration with ideological blackshirts called "neocons" who drove the nation and Republican Party so far right it flirted at times with fascism.
When I hear "Republican" these days, the words that come to my mind are: Arrogance, ignorance, and just plain dumb. And now, add economic disaster caused by Enron-style fraud and allowing crooks to run the nation's finances.
Two of today's most regressive political movements, far right American Christian conservatives -- the Rush Limbaugh crowd -- and supporters of Israel's far right expansionist parties, joined forces to become the bedrock of the Bush presidency. Today, 44-50% of Republican voters call themselves born-again Christian fundamentalists who believe every word of the Bible is true.
The Grand Old Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan has been hijacked by America's rural heartland and the Southern Bible Belt -- what we nasty New Yorkers call "hicks and holy rollers."
McCain's choice of an evangelical ultra conservative, Gov. Sarah Palin, a woman of stunning vulgarity and ignorance, is testimony to the dumbing down of the party and its transformation into a populist religious movement.
LURCH TO THE RIGHT
I haven't changed my politics and remain firmly in the centre. But the Republican Party has lurched so far to the right that the old centre looks like the left to many Republicans.
Barack Obama is wrong to propose raising taxes but he is no socialist, as Palin charges. Nationalizing the nation's banks is socialist. Urging world domination is National Socialist.
Republicans disgraced the nation by endorsing torture, assassinations, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, secret prisons, kidnapping, kangaroo courts, spying on U.S. citizens and undermining America's Constitution. Too many cowardly Democrats joined this lynch mob.
Republicans now speak for rich fat cats, military-industrial-petroleum complex, the financial industry and some of the least educated, most backwards, most prejudiced Americans.
McCain and Palin have shamelessly stoked anti-black, anti-Muslim and anti-foreign hatred and fear among them during this campaign. So did Hillary Clinton. It's also dismaying that blacks will vote en masse for Obama because of his colour.
Gen. Colin Powell did the right thing by breaking with John McCain, denouncing racism and Islamophobia, and warning of the party's lurch to the far right. Powell commands my attention. I was always disappointed this fine man and soldier did not run for president.
America desperately needs a reborn, moderate Republican Party freed from narrow-minded religious ideology and ruralism that will return the nation to its former democratic values and decency.
This was the United States the world used to respect. When it happens, I will return to the fold.
Toronto Sun
Bang frickin on.
