Andrew Sullivan has a column in today's Times of London that looks at the festering hate of all who are different that has become the hallmark of the increasingly sectarian Republican Party. In his discourse Andrew contrasts the GOP with the evolution occurring in the Tory Party in the UK where the realization has come home that to be a winning party the Tories cannot be defined by who they exclude. He also makes reference to Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell's homophobia and efforts to take Virginia backwards in time rather that set the state on a course for a successful and inclusive future. The fact that the Republican Party is taking the opposite approach to the Tories is something that we in the USA must strive to get to the attention of unengaged voters who do not spend the time to look behind disingenuous campaigns and sound bites such as the one run by and disseminated by McDonnell and his fellow Christianists like Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia's delusional and insane Attorney General. Likewise, big business in Virginia needs to grow some balls and tell the Virginia GOP that religious extremism in government does not help grow the state's economy or create jobs. Here are highlights from Andrew's column:*
I had the pleasure of accompanying Nick Herbert, the Tory shadow environment minister, on some of his tour of conservative and Republican circles in Washington last week. . . . Herbert came here to give a speech on why conservatism can and should be inclusive of gays and lesbians. The speech he gave was terrific, largely avoided domestic culture-war politics and focused on what he believed the Tories’ experience could teach their sister party in the US, today’s Republicans.
*
“I can tell you what happens to a party when it closes the door to sections of our society and is reduced to its core vote,” he told the wide-eyed audience at the libertarian Cato Institute. “It’s no fun being in opposition for 13 years. And I can tell you what happens when a party opens its doors again and broadens its appeal. A successful political party should be open to all and ought to look something like the country it seeks to govern.”
*
The same week, the most popular conservative activist conference [CPAC] — attended by Mitt Romney and Dick Cheney, among many others — was full of rousing speeches. . . . On one panel for the under-thirties, Jason Mattera, a rising conservative star, brought the house down. His new book is called Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation, and in his speech, adopting a black accent, he mocked what he called “diversity”, including college classes on “what it means to be a feminist new black man.
*
Since I left the UK a quarter of a century ago as a supporter of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the gulf between American and British conservatism on this question has never been this wide. There is something of an irony in this.
*
The founder of modern American conservatism, Barry Goldwater, who ran for president in 1964, was a passionate supporter of gay rights in the early 1990s. When Bill Clinton botched the question of gays in the military in 1993, Goldwater quipped: “Everyone knows that gays have served honourably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.” He added: “You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.”
*
And this month, Bob McDonnell, the newly elected governor of Virginia, as one of his first acts in office, rescinded a non-discrimination clause protecting government employees from being fired because they are gay. In all of this, of course, the Republican leadership — and the Christian base of the party — is moving in the opposite direction to the country as a whole.
*
This is a new kind of Republican party. It is not Goldwater’s Arizona libertarianism or Reagan’s California tolerance. It is getting whiter and whiter, and straighter and straighter. And among the heterosexuals, the hostility towards gay equality is becoming an intense and defining shibboleth of what the party means. As I said goodbye to Herbert, there was a part of me that wondered why a gay conservative should have emigrated in the first place.
*
If the Democrats had some backbone and were bold enough to take on the Christo-fascist noise machine, the GOP could be well on its way to joining the Whig Party on the trash heap of history. Sadly, so far Obama and Congressional Democrats seem Hell bent on giving power back to the GOP. It leaves be dumbfounded.
No comments:
Post a Comment