The Party is Over for One Guy

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan: While I don't agree with everything in this op-ed (The whole Downing Street Memo is not the clear smoking gun that some believe) but I can understand his grief over how the GOP has betrayed its principles. It is a hallowed out party that no longer even believes in it's first principles. Those of us who are traditional Republicans are branded as traitors by the far right, even though they are the ones that aren't real Republicans.

I can understand this man's frustration. There are many days I just want to walk away and just become an independent. I've decided for now I'm not going to leave, but it is not easy for the soul to remain. The only reason I hang on is for something larger than my comfort: to bring a party back to the center. I don't think it's hopeless, yet.

If you want to see the spirit of the Republican party these days, we only have to see what anti-tax leader Grover Norquist had to say about some of the Republicans who were part of the "gang of 14:"

Speaking to the same group a few hours later, party strategist Grover Norquist lambasted three Republicans who broke party ranks over the issue of judicial filibusters. He referred to them as "the two girls from Maine and the nut-job from Arizona" – Sens. Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and John McCain.

How wonderful. He makes a sexist remark, calling two women Senators "girls" and then disgraces a war-hero who spent five years in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton."


Conservativism should not mean being mean spirited. But it seems that this is the new GOP. Like the writer, I have to wonder what people will think of the GOP in 50 years or so. Odds are history will not be kind.

Addendum: Well, Charging RINO reports a fine retort from McCain to Norquist's comments:

"I assume he wants to provoke us, but it’s hard to work up much interest for someone who in his continued warm embrace of Jack Abramoff is doing a more than adequate job of marginalizing himself. Most Reagan revolutionaries came to Washington to do something more patriotic than rip off Indian tribes."

Good one.