April 6, 2010
In an interesting and kind of sad piece on Frum Forum, conservative Chris Curry chronicles how the GOP became the party of crazy old white people after alienating minorities, women, gays, the young, and even life-long Republicans like himself. Curry says that his ideology — sane — would make him a Marxist in today’s overheated political environment and laments the rise of right-wing screamers who have commandeered the GOP, hastening the party’s destruction and poisoning the national dialogue. As Steve Benen points out, Curry doesn’t offer very much in the way of new analysis, but his eloquent take-down of modern conservatives and the sad, flailing GOP is worth reading:
I am an old Republican. I am religious, yet not a fanatic. I am a free-marketer; yet, I believe in the role of the government as a fair evenhanded referee. I am socially conservative; yet, I believe that my lesbian niece and my gay grandchild should have the full protection of the law and live as free Americans enjoying every aspect of our society with no prejudices and/or restrictions. Nowadays, my political and socio-economic profile would make me a Marxist, not a Republican.
Curry goes on to paint a rosy picture of old-timey conservatism, glorifying Eisenhower, Buckley, Reagan. The problem started in the 90s, says Curry:
The leaders of the GOP grew belligerent. They became too religious, almost zealots. They became intolerant. They began searching for purity in Republican thought and doctrine. Ideology blinded them. I continued to vote Republican, but with a certain unease. Deep down I knew that a schism happened between the modern Republican Party and the one I grew up with. During the fight over the impeachment of President Clinton, the ugly face of the Republican Party was brought to the surface. Empty rhetoric, ideological intolerance, vengeance, and religious zealotry became the common currency. Suddenly, if you are pro-choice, you could not be a Republican. If you are for smart and sensible taxes to balance out the budget, you could not be a Republican. If you are pro-civil rights, you could not be a Republican.
It started with minorities: they left the party. Then women; they divorced the GOP and sent it to sleep on the couch. Then, the young folks; they left and are leaving the Republican Party in droves. Then, someone stood up and told my niece and my grandchild that they are not fully Americans — just second class Americans because they are homosexual. They wished hell and damnation upon my loved ones just because they are different. Are we led by priests or are we led by rational politicians? Now, we have became the party of the Old Straight White Folks. We should rename the Republican Party the OSWF rather than the GOP.
Recently, since the election of Barack Obama, common sense has left the Republican Party completely. We are in the era of craziness. As David Frum has written, a deal was there to be made over the healthcare bill. Instead, this ideological purity blinded the GOP. As LBJ said it, instead of being inside the tent pissing out, we choose to be outside the tent, pissing against the wind. And we got splashed by our own nonsense. Why did we do that? Well, when a political party shrinks its electoral based to below 30% and is composed by one demographic group, all that is left are a bunch of zealots. We shrank it by kicking out of the party those who believe that abortion should be legal but limited. We shrank it by kicking out those who believe that an $11 trillion economy, like ours, needs a strong government, not a government that can be drowned in a bathtub. We shrank it when we sanctified Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, and canonized Sarah Palin. These are the leaders of my party nowadays. How did we go from William F. Buckley to Glenn Beck? How did we go from Eisenhower and Nixon to Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann? I do not know. What I do know, however, is that these leaders remind of me of the leaders of the Whig Party. And if they continue on their nonsense, they will bring the collapse of the GOP.
No, they’ll probably stop their wildly profitable circus acts for the good of the GOP and the country.
Curry’s piece is elouqent. But did the problem really start in the 90s? To a certain extent, the efforts of self-styled “dignified conservatives” to airlift the Buckley/Reagan legacy from Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are sort of tragicomic. It’s not like Reagan did a great job of pulling in gays and minorities. Where was the strategy of inclusion when William Buckley suggested HIV positive people should be tattood? Who benefits from a narrative that posits a drastic break between conservative politics pre and post 90s? What do you think?
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/04/06/conservative-the-gop-is-filled-with-intolerant-fanatics-party-of-old-white-folks/
