It's Not Just Jeb Bush - Good Bye to the GOP

I noted just the other day how Jeb Bush - perhaps the most intelligent and rational member of the Bush family - had some very unkind but wholly true things to say about the Republican Party and its descent into a party of lunacy and irresponsibility.  As David Frum - another rare commodity: a sane conservative - takes up the issue and notes that the Palmetto Queen, Lindsay Graham, has finally grown a spine and come out against the GOP demagoguery on never, ever raising taxes.  In fact, this piece at Yahoo News lays out some of Graham's belated resistance to his party's insanity:

As a conservative Republican, Lindsey Graham has never had a problem promising not to raise taxes. Like almost every other Republican member of Congress, he has signed the anti-tax pledge put forth by Grover Norquist's group Americans for Tax Reform.  But now Graham says the debt crisis is so severe that the tax pledge — which says no tax loopholes can be eliminated unless every dollar raised by closing loopholes goes to tax cuts -- has got to go.

"When you eliminate a deduction, it's okay with me to use some of that money to get us out of debt. That's where I disagree with the pledge," said Graham.

Graham said eliminating some deductions should free up money to lower tax rates — but also to pay down U.S. debt.  "I just think that makes a lot of sense. And if I'm willing to do that as a Republican, I've crossed a rubicon," said Graham.

This puts Graham at odds with his party's leadership. Just last August, when the eight Republican presidential candidates were asked if they would reject a deal with $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue, all eight said they would walk away. But Graham is now raising his hand for increased revenues — he says he could support a plan that included $4 in spending cuts for every $1 in increased tax revenue.

"We're so far in debt, that if you don't give up some ideological ground, the country sinks," said Graham.

Obviously, if he keeps it up, Graham will find himself subject to a primary challenge unless he  decides to leave the GOP like one Delaware GOP official has decided to do.   Here are highlights from David Frum's coverage of this departure that was described as necessary to "maintain personal integrity"  (needless to say, truth and integrity are mutually exclusive with most of the GOP and its Christianist overlords):

Michael Stafford, a former official of the Delaware Republican Party, explains his decision to reaffiliate as an independent:

From the moment the Tea Party emerged on the scene, I had a premonition that I would eventually have to leave the GOP. But my mind conjured innumerable reasons for delay- for putting off the day of reckoning in the desperate hope that some game-changing miracle would occur, such as a victory by Governor Jon Huntsman in the Republican presidential primary.

But no miracle happened. Among all the difficult truths I’ve had to face, perhaps none has been harder than the realization that I, and those dissidents like me, are unrepresentative outliers far removed from, and largely unable to influence, the main currents of opinion within the GOP.

Ultimately, leaving the GOP was necessary in order to maintain my own integrity. Leaving is also a public act of personal protest. I am under no illusions about its broader significance- it will have no impact on the trajectory of the political narrative in this nation. But that does not make it futile. On the contrary, as the shadows lengthen, such minor individual acts of defiance and dissent are more critical now than ever before.

I myself reached a similar decision well over a decade ago.  I knew that I could not stop the insanity and religious extremism that was becoming the hallmark of the GOP.  And I knew I could not be true to myself - not to mention morality and decency - if I remained.  Thus, like Stafford, I left the GOP.  As did almost my entire extended family.