Signs of Some Intelligent Life in the GOP

Even though the base of the Republican Party has increasingly become dominated by knuckle dragging Neanderthals and unhinged religious fanatics, speeches at the Log Cabin Republican convention over the weekend by Meghan McCain and Christie Todd Whitman suggest that not all intelligent life has yet fled the GOP. Both came out in support of same sex marriage and urged the GOP to move forward instead of trying to hang on to the fast slipping away past. With younger voters overwhelmingly identifying with the Democrat Party and supporting gay marriage, if the GOP doesn't wish to become today's equivalent of the Whig Party, it must change course and move with society. Whether and how McCain, Whitman and other non-theocrats can regain control of the GOP remains to be seen. A look at McCain's remarks correctly identifies one of the major problems with the GOP: Most people are ready to move on to the future, not live in the past, but most of the old school Republicans "are scared shitless of that future." Here are some highlights from the Daily Beast:

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People in our country have much more important issues to deal with on a daily basis. But the experience did reinforce what I learned on the campaign trail in some major ways. I’ll summarize them in three points:
1. Most of our nation wants our nation to succeed.
2. Most people are ready to move on to the future, not live in the past.
3. Most of the old school Republicans are scared shitless of that future.

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I feel too many Republicans want to cling to past successes. There are those who think we can win the White House and Congress back by being “more” conservative. Worse, there are those who think we can win by changing nothing at all about what our party has become. They just want to wait for the other side to be perceived as worse than us. I think we’re seeing a war brewing in the Republican party, but it is not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is between the future and the past. I believe most people are ready to move on to that future.

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Christie Todd Witman went even further and spoke out directly about the need for the GOP to separate religion from the civil laws. This is precisely the issue that first caused me to leave the GOP even before the advent of the Chimperator's fool's errand war in Iraq and his administration's trashing of the Constitution. Here are highlights of Whitman's remarks on this issue which no doubt will have the Christianists writhing with fits:

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The government should have no say about marriage, and the plank in the Republican Party platform that calls for preserving marriage between a man and a woman should be scrapped, former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R) told CNSNews.com. Furthermore, the U.S. military should not differentiate between homosexuals and heterosexuals, said Whitman. The former governor spoke Friday at the Log Cabin Republicans’ (LCR) 2009 convention and symposium in Washington, D.C.

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“Well, I am somebody who believes in the separation of church and state and that the government, frankly, ought to be out of the business of marriage entirely,” Whitman told CNSNews.com after her speech. “It ought to be everybody – heterosexual, homosexual. When you go down and register to get married, that’s when the legal transfer of everything occurs and that’s a legal recognition of a relationship – and if you want to get married in a church, a temple, whatever, and you find one, great!” she said. “Civil marriage, everybody,” said Whitman. “I am not against marriage for gay couples. I just think it would make the issue easier if it was civil marriage for everybody.

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“I am not saying to Christian conservatives, ‘There is no place for you,’” said Whitman. “I am saying, ‘Please stop saying there is no place for us.’ “We can't succeed nationally as a party that only has 31 percent of the American people behind it,” she said. “It’s not going to work.

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I wonder how many death threats Whitman has receive so far from "loving" Christians because of her candid and legally correct remarks.