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The Republicans Are Now the Stupid Party
Does any reasonable person not believe that gays and lesbians deserve respect and equality? Not today’s Republican Party. Expert translators from Arabic have been dismissed for being gay. And applicants for the post of certified public accountants in the Iraq Green Zone have been asked about their view of Roe v. Wade.
Both Obama and McCain supported federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. An embryo is a cluster of cells the size of the period at the end of this sentence. It takes a strange mentality to equate that with a seriously ill human being. (Bush, August 2001: “It’s wrong to destroy life in order to save life.”)
But science never sleeps, and embryonic stem cell work has been going on around the world in advanced nations, as well as in state or privately funded laboratories here. Harvard is planning a new billion-dollar science campus, with a major cell-research laboratory. Promising advances of various kinds are being explored world-wide.
So here we are in 2008. With its indispensable Southern and, more widely, evangelical base, the Republican Party has become the stupid party.
In the election, the McCain-Palin ticket received the highest percentage of votes in South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia. The Southern Strategy succeeded. It succeeded in facilitating a Democratic landslide. This can not be good for the nation. We need two viable parties.
Sarah Palin is now the heroine of the Republican base. Scary. During the campaign it became obvious that she is completely ignorant on the principal issues. It never became widely known that she is a religious nut: she believes in the imminent End of Days and the “Rapture,” in which the saved will be suddenly wooshed up to heaven—a notion that has no basis in scripture or anything else. She believes she was elected governor because of a laying-on-of-hands by an African clergyman who had run a witch out of town for causing automobile accidents.
This stuff makes William Jennings Bryan look like Martin Heidegger. I think the recent electoral disaster will energize reasonable Republicans to form a caucus with the party. Eisenhower was a prudential, common sense Republican, who loathed extremism and arrogant ignorance. He knew the New Deal could not be repealed. He once said that Senator William Knowland “tested the limits of human stupidity.” Despite Watergate, Nixon was a successful center-right president, and first-rate on foreign policy. Reagan too was a successful center-right president. It is no accident that in the election, Julie Nixon Eisenhower and David Eisenhower supported Obama.
In its embrace of the religious right under George W. Bush, the Republican Party became the stupid party. And committing suicide along with it has been the conservative movement. The party united around god, guns and gays is finished.
Jeffrey Hart is professor emeritus of English at Dartmouth College. He wrote for the National Review for more than three decades, where he was senior editor. He wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan, when governor of California, and for Richard Nixon.
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Jeffrey Hart is professor emeritus of English at Dartmouth College. He wrote for the National Review for more than three decades, where he was senior editor. He wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan while he was governor of California, and for Richard Nixon.
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Abelard
So, how can the GOP recover? I think the first step would be to drop-kick the religious right out of the tent (or, at the very least, severely curtail its power). In the short term, this would not be without pain; I think that the non-evangelical party would not be able to field a viable president candidate until 2016. But in the long term, the GOP would gain more support than it lost.
Will the GOP do this during its time in the wilderness? Given the seeming support that Gov. Palin for 2012, initial appearances would indicate otherwise. I've predicted elsewhere that if she is the candidate, the GOP will tear itself apart and she'll lose to President Obama with a performance somewhere near that of Alf Landon's in the 1936 election. Here's hoping that the cooler (as opposed to the kookier) heads prevail in the GOP...
Catch22
While I'm okay with the writer here bashing Christainity, I must ask for a little better research. I am a Christian, but I can acknowledge thatPalin and the extreme conservatives make us all look bad. That said, her belief in the rapture has significant scriptural basis despite the author's claim that it does not. This is the prime example: "For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord." (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17). There are also passages in John, Matthew, and other books of Paul's letters that support the rapture in some form.
pani211
Yes, there are extremists on the right, but there are extremists on the left, also. I am a Christian who voted for Obama, because I was open to listening to his middle ground philosophy, and because he reached out to people of faith. I love God, hate guns and capital punishment and this endless war.I am an environmentalist, populist, and I pray for an end to unnecesary abortions. I have gay friends, but I am opposed to gay marriage. My friends do not shun me for that, they know I love them and respect my faith as I do their personhood.The dems and r's would do well to stop assuming that Americans are not complex in the way they view the world of politics. When both parties pigeonhole people into voting groups, they do not allow their parties to shift with the times. I believe Pres. elect Obama will have a place at the table for people of faith-in that he is the future of a third way in politics..
r
Catch22
This is why as a Christian Sarah Palin and the extreme right piss me off. They make the rest of us look equally ignorant and close-minded. However, I must ask what scripture the author is looking at when he claims that the rapture has no basis. In Christian scripture (presumable in Palin's Bible, because it's in mine) there are several examples of prophecy about the rapture in Paul's letters and the books of John and Matthew. The prime example is from 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17: "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with themin the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord." No mention of "whooshing" but sounds pretty clear to me.
jettrock138
Guess what, religion is not what most younger kids are thinking about. They want a future in life not a key in the gates after death. Campaigning about the afterlife has no relevance to what is happening in reality. Stop preaching about the after life!
chitoiur
The title may be a bit strongly worded, but good article nonetheless.
The main issue I disagree with when it comes to the Christian right is how they force their beliefs on people. It's none of your business who I'm dating, what I believe in, what a woman should do with her body, what my views about foreign policy are. NONE OF YOUR GODDAMN BUSINESS!
Visualmyth
"Real Christians should line up to kick Jerry Falwell in the ass."
Perhaps the best place to start today is with the Chrisitan Embassy, a fundamentalist organization that operates at the highest levels, flag officers and those with top secret clearences, within the Pentagon. Their stated goal, removed from their mission statement on their website, is to "raise up a godly military". While individual faith is our right, to have an organization that is trying to destroy the seperation of church and state with a fundamentalist agenda is a threat to the Constitution, in my, Christian opinion. So perhaps it is time to shine the light on this organization and for the military to wake up to the threat of fundamentalism inside their own organization, while they fight the same fundamentalist threat in foreign lands. A spit shinned "kick in the ass' would be a good start.
LuniusMaximus
pani211... NEWSFLASH, your gay friends (if you truly have any) DO shun you for your opposition to gay marriage! Your arrogant view that they don't only adds insult to injury... is it not enough to strive to remove someone else's fundamental civil liberties, must you then absurdly claim that they would not resent you for it?
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n--Y--Xertrukivyhouse
For an opinion from someone who thinks that ALL parties are "stupid" (rather, are not serving us the way they could) check out this post:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Welcome-to-the-U-S-S-A-by-Matthew-Hard y-081101-464.html
sakura
Party of god guns and gays.
philipjames
before you get carried away, just remember that almost the same amount of people voted this time as in 2004... there was not a great increase and that the Republicans were still in that 40% - 50% range which both parties go up and down within....
so give your head a shake and at least have a reasoned point of view...
2004
BushKerry
62,040,61059,028,444Total: 121,069,054
2008
McCainObama
56,477,64463,987,562Total: 120,465,206
hronbp1
First, Hart states that, On November 4, two thirds of voters under 30 voted for Obama. That's the future. A large majority of voters with college educations voted for Obama. That represents the best informed segment of the electorate. So, how did everything go wrong for the Republicans?
This is an asinine statement that ranks right up there with Donna Shalala saying that we didn't send our brightest and best to Vietnam. Assuming that youth and college educations equate "voter intelligence" is truly a stupid and biased statement. Arguments could very well be made just the opposite since our college campuses are hotbeds of liberal indoctrination PURELY BECAUSE youth are the easiest segment of society to indoctrinate!!! They aren't called "groupies" for nothin' !!! Most youth haven't figured out who THEY are yet . . . let alone what party most closely represents them philosophically. This is not a criticism of youth . . . it is a simple fact that youth is more malleable.
Secondly, I really take offense at "Conservatives" being bunched in together as fundamentalist, gay-bashing, stem cellist (even though other countries have proven that the same life-saving, disease curing work can be done without killing babies, but instead, from using umbilical cord cells as well as cells from our own bodies). . . this is Hart's own hate-filled, bias.
Thirdly, Hart does stumble upon one correct point . . . a battle for control of the Republican Party has been ongoing for decades. However, this past election, I would assert, is a demonstration of just how poorly a LIBERAL REPUBLICAN CAMPAIGN fares. You can't offend or ignore a huge portion of your base, emulate your opponent (which, in case Hart doesn't know it, is the Democratic Party) and still win elections.
All dividing the Republican Party will get you is a three party system.
Hmmmm . . . Ultimately, perhaps not such a bad idea . . .
hronbp1
Abelard
philipjames raises an excellent point. Given the extreme distaste with which the majority of the electorate holds the Bush Administration, the fact that McCain won so many votes at all is a sobering thought. I really wish we could know (for both sides) how many votes were being cast with noses held...
All, in all, though, President-Elect Obama has recognized this fundamental fact of American life in his acceptance speech. I think that he realizes that he needs to govern from the center if he doesn't want this new era to be stillborn. We'll see more in the coming days and weeks as we learn who will be in the cabinet.
Abelard
hronbp1 --
You wrote "Secondly, I really take offense at "Conservatives" being bunched in together as fundamentalist, gay-bashing, stem cellist (even though other countries have proven that the same life-saving, disease curing work can be done without killing babies, but instead, from using umbilical cord cells as well as cells from our own bodies). . . this is Hart's own hate-filled, bias."
Hart is indeed biased, but he also seems to be right on this particular question. For years, Republican politicians have been marching in lock-step with just such people and have been rewarded for it.
You then wrote: "You can't offend or ignore a huge portion of your base, emulate your opponent (which, in case Hart doesn't know it, is the Democratic Party) and still win elections."
Last time I checked, wasn't the base exactly the group you didn't want to be lumped in with? Could you explain which portions of the GOP base you feel were left in the cold?
Thank you.
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