No, I don’t want Republican Son in Laws
Posted: January 17, 2014 Filed under: religious extremists, right wing hate grouups, War on Women, worker rights 66 Comments
I so badly want to write on your blog, Bob, or at NOLA.com about your op ed because it sounds so, well, reasonable. However, I’m going to do it here where I am totally surrounded by my friends. Yup, you’re reasonable, my friend, like most democrats I know. Y’all will compromise on just about anything because y’all so reasonable. I’ve got the President in mind when I say that one, actually, let alone most of the senators and congressmen in the democratic caucus. I’m a political independent, Because y’all tend to be so reasonable,
I don’t really mind that my oldest daughter grew up to be a democrat and that she married one. However, I would completely totally freak if either daughter registered republican or brought one home to me. I say this with the caveat that up until the Clinton years, I was a republican and I ran for office in Nebraska as a republican. You may be reasonable, but today’s republicans are not. There is no compromise with them. There is no one reasonable left in the party unless you count the people that don’t believe the dogma but enable it any way to either get re-elected or to have their businesses get preferential tax treatment and subsidies. I don’t want these folks in my home or near my daughters.
So you ask “Would you be troubled if your son married a Republican? What if your daughter married a Democrat?” and I’m answering you here because I don’t want to sully up the nola.com site or your blog site. My answer will be trolled beyond anything reasonable people can imagine and it won’t be by my fellow independents or your democrats. You can read my response here where I am surrounded by loving friends who will agree with me and will give you their own stories as Latinas, feminists, GLBTs, atheists or religious and racial minorities, and people that are not only reasonable but will stand up for what’s right.
According to a 2010 national survey, 40 percent of us would be “upset” with such a marriage. That’s worrisome, but almost as interesting as the historical trend. In 1960, when a pollster asked a similar question, only 5 percent said they would be “displeased” if a child married into the opposite party.
Doesn’t it feel some days that the entire, polarized country is obsessed with politics, down to the political affiliation of our children’s spouses?
I may have agreed that you were oh, so reasonable if I haven’t witnessed so much disrespect coming from the Republican Party towards women, gays, racial minorities and non-christians. I have the perspective of having been republican, having ran for office as a republican, and 
being basically drummed out of the republican party for being pro-choice and having “marched in the streets with lesbians” in support of an anniversary of women’s voting rights like it was some kind of immoral act.
As a matter of fact, I just had this conversation at a friend’s house last month. I met a woman who had a son undergoing gender reassignment surgery. I was telling her that one of my best friend’s nephews was having the same surgery and was a doctoral candidate at UC Berkley in the AI robotics program. We both laughed and said it could be worse, they could’ve become born again and republicans. I thought about it and decided that’s about the only thing that would cause me never to speak to either of my children. The idea of having a Michelle Bachmann as a daughter or a Ted Cruz, or a David Vitter or a Steve Scalise any where near my daughters let alone married to them would cause me to worry about their safety and their sanity.
Let’s check legislation proposed by today’s Republicans.
Here’s a new proposed law in Arizona.
A veteran state lawmaker is pushing legislation that would allow businesses to discriminate against gays — and maybe even women and Jews — as long as they were acting on sincerely held religious beliefs.
SB 1062 would allow those sued in civil cases to claim that they have a legal right to decide not to provide their services to any individual or group because it would “substantially burden” their freedom of religion. That specifically means doing something that the person feels is contrary to their religious teachings.
Sen. Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler, said the measure is aimed specifically at preventing what happened in New Mexico where courts there said a gay couple could sue a wedding photographer who turned away their request to take pictures at their nuptials. He said that should not be allowed to happen here.But Yarbrough said his legislation could also be interpreted broader than that, allowing motel operators with vacant rooms to refuse to rent to gays.
Potentially more significant, Yarbrough acknowledged there may be individuals who have religious beliefs about unmarried women, or even employing people who do not share their same beliefs.
On the morning of December 11th, Gretchen Whitmer, the charismatic 42-year-old minority leader of the Michigan Senate, stood before her colleagues in the Statehouse in Lansing, and told them something she’d told almost no one before. “Over 20 years ago, I was a victim of rape,” she said. “And thank God it didn’t result in a pregnancy, because I can’t imagine going through what I went through and then having to consider what to do about an unwanted pregnancy from an attacker.”
No one in the gallery said a word. Instead, with just hours to go before it broke for Christmas recess, Michigan’s overwhelmingly male, Republican-dominated Legislature, having held no hearings nor even a substantive debate, voted to pass one of the most punishing pieces of anti-abortion legislation anywhere in the country: the Abortion Insurance Opt-Out Act, which would ban abortion coverage, even in cases of rape or incest, from virtually every health-insurance policy issued in the state. Women and their employers wanting this coverage will instead have to purchase a separate rider – often described as “rape insurance.” Whitmer, a Democrat known as a fierce advocate for women’s issues, described the new law as “by far one of the most misogynistic proposals I’ve seen in the Michigan Legislature.”
And it’s not just Michigan. Eight other states now have laws preventing abortion coverage under comprehensive private insurance plans – only one of them, Utah, makes an exception for rape. And 24 states, including such traditionally blue states as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, ban some forms of abortion coverage from policies purchased through the new health exchanges. While cutting insurance coverage of abortion in disparate states might seem to be a separate issue from the larger assault on reproductive rights, it is in fact part of a highly coordinated and so far chillingly successful nationwide campaign, often funded by the same people who fund the Tea Party, to make it harder and harder for women to terminate unwanted pregnancies, and also to limit their access to many forms of contraception.
Here’s a great list of what right wing, christianist republicans say about women and their bodies. They believe it’s perfectly acceptable to deem women property of the state and endanger their lives.
1. Texas State Senator Wendy Davis is a “terrorist” because she filibustered an anti-choice bill.
2. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
3. Who needs abortion when victims of sexual assault can just get “cleaned out” by a rape kit?
4. Women shouldn’t terminate pregnancies resulting from rape because it’s what God intended.
5. Women shouldn’t complain about forced transvaginal ultrasounds, because they’ve already had sex.
6. “If babies had guns, they wouldn’t be aborted.”
7. “Abortion is much more serious than the rape of children by priests.”
8. Abortion rights caused the Sandy Hook massacre.
9. Ban abortions because of masturbating fetuses.
10. Abortion is just like the Holocaust.
I would worry about the safety of my daughters because of this: Virginia GOP candidate: Spousal rape isn’t a crime if she is ‘wearing a nightie’.
“I do not know how you could validly get a conviction of a husband-wife rape, when they’re living together, sleeping in the same bed, she’s in a nightie and so forth,” Black says. “There’s not injuries, there’s no separation or anything.”
or this: Medical Records Confirm The Pregnant Texas Woman On Life Support Is Actually Dead
Did I mention that my oldest is actually an ob/gyn and she went to practice some place where these folks aren’t second guessing her medical expertise? You’ll excuse me if I say that with their guns, their onward christian soldiers zealotry, and their anger/meanness that I believe that the only thing safe around these people might be a clump of cells called a zygote.
Then, there’s the laws they want enacted to teach specific creation mythology as science. Oh, and we taxpayers get to foot the bills for christianist madrassas.
When public-school students enrolled in Texas’ largest charter program open their biology workbooks, they will read that the fossil record is “sketchy.” That evolution is “dogma” and an “unproved theory” with no experimental basis. They will be told that leading scientists dispute the mechanisms of evolution and the age of the Earth. These are all lies.
The more than 17,000 students in the Responsive Education Solutions charter system will learn in their history classes that some residents of the Philippines were “pagans in various levels of civilization.” They’ll read in a history textbook that feminism forced women to turn to the government as a “surrogate husband.”
Responsive Ed has a secular veneer and is funded by public money, but it has been connected from its inception to the creationist movement and to far-right fundamentalists who seek to undermine the separation of church and state.
The opening line of the workbook section declares, “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.”
Infiltrating and subverting the charter-school movement has allowed Responsive Ed to carry out its religious agenda—and it is succeeding. Operating more than 65 campuses in Texas, Arkansas, and Indiana, Responsive Ed receives more than $82 million in taxpayer money annually, and it is expanding, with 20 more Texas campuses opening in 2014.
Charter schools may be run independently, but they are still public schools, and through an open records request, I was able to obtain a set of Responsive Ed’s biology “Knowledge Units,” workbooks that Responsive Ed students must complete to pass biology. These workbooks both overtly and underhandedly discredit evidence-based science and allow creationism into public-school classrooms.
I’m a political independent but frankly, if my daughters came home spouting this stuff or with some man in tow that thought it was okay, I frankly would see if they need to be institutionalized and thoroughly checked by a psychiatrist. Fortunately, my son-in-law is a nice registered Democrat and Hindu. My other potential son-in-law is also a democrat and is as agnostic as they get. My son in law is a doctor and my youngest’s SO has degrees in biological engineering so both of them are reality based.
However, I could go on and on and on about the climate change denial, the treatment of the poor in this country, the unemployed, and just about any one else who isn’t a big political donor to the Republican party and ask you to rethink your treatise. The leader of GOPround just quit because he couldn’t take the bigotry any more.
Jimmy LaSalvia co-founded political action group GOProud to prove to America that the Republican Party is a safe home for gay conservatives. But he no longer believes his own arguments. On Monday, he announced on his blog that he could no longer take his own party’s refusal to stand up to bigotry: he was leaving the Republican Party and had registered as an Independent. “I am every bit as conservative as I’ve always been, but I just can’t bring myself to carry the Republican label any longer,” he wrote.
His condemnation of the GOP was even stronger when he explained his decision to TIME on Wednesday. The Republican brand,
he says, is so tarnished that he no longer believes it is salvageable. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s time to pull the plug on the patient. It’s been brain-dead for a long, long time.”
In a wide-ranging interview with TIME, included before in an abbreviated form, LaSalvia explains the journey that led him to abandon the party ship:
TIME: You are someone who once had lots of hopes for the GOP. What happened?
LASALVIA: I have been my whole life the ultimate team player. I was ‘The Gay for Mitt’ last year. I think that what I did should cause the leadership in the Republican Party to ask themselves, How bad must it be if we’ve even lost Jimmy?
I spent my career working to create an atmosphere in the conservative movement where gay conservatives can be open and honest and live their lives and work within the conservative movement. I wanted it to be a place where straight conservatives could publicly support gay Americans and even eventually come to support civil marriage for gay couples. I feel like I have accomplished that. I had hoped that would be enough to melt the anti-gay bigotry that runs through the ranks of some in the Republican Party. I’ve come to realize that it is not, and that the leadership of the party tolerates bigotry, not just antigay bigotry, but anti-Muslim, any people who are not like us it seems like, because they are afraid of losing that sliver of their base who are anti-gay. And the truth is they are turning off millions more Americans by kowtowing to a group that frankly is losing and who most Americans think are wrong.
The entire party has become a safe haven and magnet for neoconfederates and bigots. Jimmy just came to the realization about 20 years later than me. I am sure there are some folks that seem like reasonable people. But try telling your conservative “friend” you’ve decided that you’re not a christian anymore and see what happens. Reasonable people do not tolerate and enable unreasonable and mean ideas, actions, and speech. My elderly father is the only Republican I allow near me any more and he just about does me in when he spouts all those Fox lies and Republican talking points that are about as far from the truth as they can be. Some times what he says horrifies me but he’s 90.
Our current democratic president and nearly all of his policies are just about as Nixonian as one can get. He’s pushing the new trade agreements. The Affordable Health Care Act was the republican response–called Chaffecare or Dolecare at the time–and the individual mandate is the cost demanded by private insurers for taking on people with pre-existing conditions like ovaries, HIV, or cancer. His budget and the level of government spending represents draconian cuts. His national security programs are still pretty extreme. Yet, every Republican sees him as a socialist. It’s total balderdash and racism!
Here’s a nice South Carolina Republican Senator advocating gun violence to get his views enacted.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s top-polling primary challenger, state Sen. Lee Bright, stood on the steps of the South Carolina statehouse (Confederate flags proudly displayed behind him) and said:
“If the Tenth Amendment won’t protect the Second, we might have to use the Second to protect the Tenth.”
Lee Bright’s insinuation being, if you don’t let South Carolina do as they want then South Carolinians will take up arms against you.
Go read some of the quotes from this darling of the Tea Party.
Let’s face it. It doesn’t take long for the congress and the U.S. Senate to come in and say, ‘Y’know what? These states are a lot of trouble. They’re gettin’ in the way. They’re organizing these people. They’re having these rallies. They got, you know, they got, some of them are even talking about militias. I mean, we gotta do something about this. So let’s just go ahead and dissolve them.
Today’s republicans and today’s republican party are no where near even Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan who had some pretty 
outrageous things to say in their day. They would hate Nixon, Ford, Eisenhower, and they dis Lincoln. All you have to do is talk to a Rand Paul follower and you’ll hear nothing but criticism of Lincoln. I don’t even have time to describe how absolutely crazy they are about regulation, the Federal Reserve Bank, balanced budget amendments, and policies that should be fairly noncontroversial that would get people back to work again.
Yes, Bob, I would absolutely say yes to your question: DEMOCRAT? REPUBLICAN? ARE WE REALLY ALL THAT DIFFERENT?
I wouldn’t let people like these near my home, let alone near my daughters. I wouldn’t even let Senator David Vitter near my home or near my daughters. Would you?
If you don’t believe me, ask another person who used to be a big reasonable republican party insider and is another economist. That would be Reagan advisor Bruce Bartlett. Hit him up on his facebook page or just watch his thread. He calls them all wankers now. Frankly, I’ve got worse words for them after my experiences trying to be pro-choice, pro-era, and pro-equal wages for equal work back in the day.
Anyway, that’s my rant illustriously peppered with republican rally signs. You know those great people that did things like boo at gay soldiers and believe in secession, they’re as reasonable as you so I’m sure I’m gonna hear from them here. That way, I wont sully your website.
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I appreciate the sentiment here in response to my post. But, here’s the deal: we cannot pick who will be our children’s spouses and we are probably very foolish if we should try. In fact, I think it’s a pretty good bet that none of us is ever fully satisfied with something about our children’s mates. If they have an affinity for a Republican, I suspect there’s not much you or I could do about it. I think Bill Shakespeare wrote about the consequences of that kind of thing many years ago. My in-laws are rock-ribbed Republicans. They hate my politics. When I went to work for Gov. Blanco as communications director, none of them congratulated me for taking the job. But, they raised my wife. They adore my children. And I love them like my own family, because they are my family. They’ve been kind to me and love me like a son. We don’t talk politics and that makes a difference, but if we do, we’re respectful of each other. We’ve found a way to make it work and you would, too.
Just for an experiment, try telling them you’ve decided you’re not a christian any more and see what happens.
I’m Methodist, so they don’t think I’m a real Christian anyway.
Yeah, I was a methodist when I ran for office. Even taught Sunday school at the time and directed the bell choir. I learned I wasn’t a real christian during the election!
Thanks for coming over. I figured the ping back would peak your interest. I actually thought about this in December as I endured yet another christmas season as a religious minority. I don’t step on bugs or any kind of living being and try to treat every one with compassion. I’ve had friends in that category before and endured. I have in-laws that I deal with who I endure also so I assume I could endure just about anything. But, I can’t say that I would actively go after any kind of relationship anymore with a republican. I actually have gotten to the point where I avoid most christians these days too. I used to do just swallow it and endure and I just don’t do it any more. After a lot of life’s experiences, including inoperable cancer diagnosed with a five month old baby at my side, I decided life was way to short to spend it with mean people.
I have to question that 1960 poll. I was around in 1960 and that is not how it was in my family. My grandparents and some of my mom’s siblings were Republicans, and we got along by not talking about politics. If it came up, it would lead to a screaming fight. And that’s just in-laws. My parents were also friends with a couple who were Republicans. Again, they got along by not discussing politics. But that’s a lot harder to do when you’re married to someone.
Frankly, I could never be friends with a Republican, because I care too much about politics and I don’t want to avoid discussing it like my parents did. As for actually living with a Republican, forget about it.
That makes me remember about my aunts by marriage. We used to hear about the aunt on my dad’s side being odd because she was “a catholic, you know” and my aunt by marriage on my mom’s side was explained as having odd notions because “she was a democrat you know.”
Well, we keep the politics to ourselves…being surrounded by the bible thumping folks here in Banjoville. But there are times when our views slip…and then I hear shit like, “Oh…you’re a liberal JJ, but we still love you. “
As Kat said, today it’s much worse because so many Republicans have such bizarre beliefs. Could I live with someone who denies evolution? Who thinks women belong pregnant in the kitchen? Who thinks a dead pregnant woman should be kept breathing for the sake of her, most likely brain-damaged fetus?
HELL, no!
Hell no!
I think Mr. Mann is sincere, but I doubt that he would be so laid back about significant “political” differences if his life was impacted and/or targeted daily by those political differences. It’s much easier to sweep differences under the rug when they have no real affect on you. All the empathy in the world can’t take the place of a REAL walk in the shoes of another. Political opposites can get along well when most other things are equal, which SO explains Mary Matalyn and James Carville.
Very true.
Yup, mouse totally agree. Same for me and my husband too. He is Republican, I’m not…but there are some things that he is not as far right about. Abortion being one of them, thank gawd! That is one thing that would be the magic bullet in the relationship.
Spot on Mouse……….can’t help but think about the people in W. Va., you know those who are depraved of clean water. We got thirsty people, and the whole fucking world revolves around “water”. But depravation is a bitch when you can’t go get the water, when you can’t afford the water, and when it’s chock full of chemicals, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. They have been upstaged, and the political ground that we derive our resources from are highly polluted.
IDak has told us what happened when hurricane Katrina hit, and people were suffering from depravation. You just want the basic needs, food, water, housing. How long do people have to experience economic depravation. Just enough to buy life’s needs, the essentials for family life, just barely able to re-enter society, when our entire survival energy is foremost on our minds, and somebody comes up with some emotional bullshit about lazy people, welfare queens and putting forth barriers to equal access because WE WANT TOO MUCH.
Are they for real? They help get jobs, rent houses, put food on table, provide drinkable water. Do they think freedom is available to everyone in this country? They are not helping solve problems, they are the problem.
When I first started typing my reply, I was thinking about going with something trollish. Or maybe something with just a hint of moral outrage at your seeming advocacy of deepening the iron-age tribalism/factionalism that has caused so much pain and grief in this world, but instead, I think I’ll go with something different, something that might be a meaningful question. I know that by asking this, I’m kind of like the guy in a bible-banger church who mutters to himself, “I don’t believe a word of this s–t” while everyone catches the spirit around him, but I think it bears asking. So without further ado:
If you would be angry or upset, or even just unaccepting, if your child married a Republican, how does that make you any different from the fringe examples of Republicans that you give above? I mean, isn’t it remarkably stupid to assume that you know relevant information about the person your child might marry just because you have a very vague idea of what their political beliefs might be? It seems to me that that is remarkably stupid, boorish, pig-headed, and reflective of the worst kinds of things that you see come from the very people you claim to dislike.
For those of you who either read and answer silently or read and answer by posting, and want to say that you are right in such feelings because Republicans are wicked, dirty, and mean, and you and those who agree with you are good, wise, noble, etc, keep in mind that such a reply commits you to making broad, unwarranted generalizations about ~30% of the adult population of this country. Ask yourself before you say it: Isn’t that what racists do? ;-0
No, Ben it absolutely isn’t the same. People can’t change physical traits or things that genes determine like sexual preference.. Ignorance, meanness, narrowmindeness, intolerance are all things people of character change. Denial of Science isn’t a genetic trait. Telling people that they’re going to hell because they’re aren’t straight, aren’t christian, aren’t whatever isn’t something that people come by naturally. Also, not wanting to be around mean people isn’t something tribal. It’s about avoiding something really negative and poisonous.
That is true enough. HOWEVER, what I’m questioning is your seeming assumption that all republicans have those traits. So let me rephrase my question:
While all those things that you mentioned are, without a doubt, mean and poisonous, how, by any reasonable definition, is it not equally mean and poisonous to assume, without further evidence, that someone has those traits merely because of the political party that they prefer? I can see how, for instance, you might say that about Nazis or Stalnists, but it seems mighty foolish to assume, for someone who isn’t a nazi or a stalinist, that knowing her political preference gives you relevant information about her moral and ethical qualities.
Did you read my post? Do you think enablers of folks like this are decent people? I sure don’t. I heard enough men in the republican party say that it was easier to give in to the so called right to lifers and not deal with them because, well, that issue just wasn’t a big deal to them. You think enablers who don’t believe that crap but let them put it in the platform, run alternative primary candidates for nonpurists, and who give in and write laws to appease them to earn their votes aren’t equally despicable? I stayed in that part for 10 years trying to change that crap and it just got worse because no one else would do it because, well, you get stalked, your kids get stalked, you get called and harassed on the phone, people run whisper campaigns about you that say horrible things so your neighbors think your an ax murderer … have you ever been at the receiving end of any of this? Because I have and the people that sit and let them get away with it just so they vote are just as bad in their own right.
And, to take a random example, the republicans organizing in Louisiana to reform the penal system have exactly what to do with that?
OR
I had a cat once. He had probably been abused before we got him because he would lash out unpredictably at anything that got too close and made him feel threatened. I remembered him when I read your reply.
The exception is never the rule. Look at what the GOPround founder did and said as he quit the party. My experience is not unique and while it informs me, it doesn’t rule me. I’m politically independent now. I am issues person by nature. I won’t vote for a party that basically believes and passes laws that say I am property of the state and a husband. PERIOD. I don’t want to hear anything any one has to say about anything else as long as that’s their guiding notion or their guiding notion is that gay people need to be executed, exorcised or cured of a disease. I don’t think that any one that thinks that dinosaurs were present on a literal Noah’s ark can contribute meaningfully to any kind of worthwhile dialogue. How hard is that to understand? That’s not to deny their or their right to believe what they want to believe. They can do what ever they want places far removed from institutions of democracy and nonpublic places. They can do it away from me and mine.
Well, that’s fine. All that’s great, but how is it remotely relevant? We’re not discussing the GOP here, remember? We’re discussing the 55,000,000-60,000,000 people who are registered to vote as Republicans. Claiming that all of them are evil and stupid is itself evil and stupid.
Those 55 to 60 million people registered as Republicans regularly vote for evil and stupid. So what the hell would you call them? They’re damn sure not enlightened individuals.
Are you enlightened? I bet they’re not 80 feet tall and don’t need the light of the sun or moon because they have luminscent bodies (a la the buddhist sutras), but neither are you, so what’s your point?
They enable evil and stupid. Is reading comprehension an issue?
No, but hubris seems to be.
Haven’t seen any legislation coming out of a republican in years I could remotely support.
Multiply that feeling by 2 and you’ll know how I feel about the American political system. Republican and Democrat – two wings of the same bird of prey, as Ralph Nader once put it.
You really are kind of a useless tool. Go play in traffic and take Nader with you.
oddly enough, he’s in the rand cult and not the nader cult but either way, can we go back to language that’s a little less pejorative?
Dr. Huff, I thought I’d told you that I’ve never actually read anything by Rand. I think that politics is that “systematic organization of hatreds,” and that’s where all of my opinions derive from.
Rand Paul or is Ron Paul the only Paul you like? Guess I should’ve been more specific!
I am indeed a useless tool, or at least a total tool, though those who don’t like me often put it in less complimentary terms. I can say, however, that there is one thing that I can say in my own defense and that is that I have not, since I first took birth, ever so ascended to the heights of asshattery as to use “unenlightened” or some permutation thereof as a way to insult someone’s political opinions. 😉
a–hat n. – One who has their head up their a–. Thus wearing their a– as a hat. A–hat
I just am a big fan of no name calling … so try to make your points a little less personally please!
Yours, not mine. “Not enlightened individuals?” Give me a break. Do you think that your farts smell like roses, candy, and babies breath to level that charge at anyone? For the record, people who vote for BOTH parties enable evil, at least in my book because whether it’s a Clinton, a Bush, or an Obama, they’re all complicit in lying to everyone, spying at home, and murdering people abroad, all while they pay their cronies to pick the bones of the American economy. And seriously, for everyone, if you’ve ever, for so much as an instant, thought of claiming that someone is not “enlightened” as an insult, get over yourself.
I’ve asked you at least four times what evidence you have that all or most Republicans have the traits that you’ve mentioned above and in several other places. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any evidence for this claim other than some personal anecdotes. Generalizations about tens of millions of people seem to tend to be really hard to prove or substantiate.
Let me head something off at the pass: Yes, Republican politicians have sponsored all sorts of bad stuff. HOWEVER, Democratic politicians seem to be universally in favor of lying, spying and endless war. So it would seem that any claim regarding the evil of ordinary republicans which draws upon the actions of republican politicians would commit you to similarly claim that democrats are also evil based upon similiar actions by democratic politicians.
Right … create false equivalencies … republicans and democrats are both war mongers but Republicans have a greater mass of them
True, but even if every state and federal politician were republican, and all of them were totally evil to the core, you would still be indicting just over 55,000,000 people based on the actions and beliefs of 10-15,000 of them. I simply do not see how you can justify such a thing or have any hope or providing meaningful evidence for it.
Check the platform and check the polls. Enablers of ignorance are not guilt free.
I actually thought about that during one of my many coffee breaks just now. There’s a large and well-established body of research on homophobia amongst African-Americans and its effects on things such as HIV prevention efforts. African-Americans tend to overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic party. Based on that, what do you have to say about those guys on the other side of the aisle? :-p
It’s wrong period but it doesn’t influence lawmakers on that side of the aisle at least.
Not on the federal level. On the state level, it’s a whole different story. Homophobic neo-puritans like Tara Wicker up in Baton Rouge are a great example. She’s got it in for gays, booze, and dancing on Sundays.
Random thought #2: Check out polls that compare the attitudes of evangelicals under 30 with their older counterparts. Extremely interesting stuff.
Yes. Possibilities of improvements decades from now. Meanwhile, how many must suffer?
Possibilities of improvement right now, and probably the best hope thereof. Probably offers a far better possibility for change than the “teh Republikanz are Satan” meme. :-p
again, ignorance is something that can be changed through education, learning, and openness. I’ve spent enough time around them during my life to know exactly what a miserable experience it is and I’m not dumb enough to keep banging my head against the wall.
I let you through. But really, your evidence is lacking in terms of what remains in the republican party.
Got another one for the record:
WATCH: Senate Candidate Claims IRS is Training “Brown Shirts” to Enforce Obamacare Using Assault Weapons
This is another one from the SC state senator that wants to overthrow the Lady Lindsey
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/01/irs-training-army-brown-shirts-assualt-weapons-enforce-obamacare
None of us are off the hook. I would like to think that I was for not empowering the two ruling parties, but I too have indulged in my share of smug superiority. That’s a real crime against our humanity. People say stuff that hurts, and the best I can do is pass some more hurt around? Unsatisfactory.
If we could just take everyone as a representative of only themselves, then the rest of us wouldn’t have to answer for the downfalls of people that we have never met. Instead of meeting a person for the first time with an opinion that is based on groupthink, we could all be like, “Hi, who are you really?” We still may choose to avoid that person, but at least our aversion may be less blind… less a prejudice.
If you want to talk about who is “enlightened,” and who is not. Kindness is enlightened, and unkindness is not. When I lose patience, and act unkind, I am thrice damned because I should know better. Perhaps one day… one fine sunny day.
C’mon Rick, don’t you know that we’re not individuals with our own hopes, wants, needs, virtues, and flaws? We are members of political parties first and individuals second, if at all. We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
😉
Why would you want to insult the Borg like that?
lol!
I must agree. Even the borg would be far too intelligent to let something as nasty and stupid as partisan politics distract them from their mission of assimilating all biological lifeforms. Though, having met more than a few politicians, I’d have to say that most of them are on a par with the borg when it comes to levels of humility and sociopathy. :-p
Political parties represent ideologies. People who vote not only vote for a candidate, they vote for the ideologies of a party. Those ideologies are presented, quite concisely, in the Party Platform. Political parties have a National Platform and most have a State Platform. When you vote for a candidate, even if it’s not your intention, you directly vote in support of that platform
A few goodies from the current GOP Platform (codified at the 2012 GOP Convention) via Fox News:
JOB CREATION:
It states that the best jobs program is economic growth. “We do not offer yet another made-in-Washington package of subsidies and spending to create temporary or artificial jobs.”
SMALL BUSINESS:
The GOP pledges to reform the tax code to make it easier for businesses to generate more capital and create more jobs.
TAXES:
“We reject the use of taxation to redistribute income, fund unnecessary or ineffective programs or foster the crony capitalism that corrupts both politicians and corporations.”
It says a Republican administration would extend the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, pending reform of the tax code. It says the party would strive to eliminate taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains altogether for lower- and middle-income taxpayers. It also would work to repeal the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax.
The party backs constitutional amendments to balance the federal budget and require a super majority for any tax increases.
MARRIAGE:
The platform affirms the rights of states and the federal government not to recognize same-sex marriage. It backs a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
VOTER INTEGRITY:
“Voter fraud is a political poison,” the platform says. It praises legislation to require photo identification for voting and to prevent election fraud.
GUN CONTROL:
The party says it opposes legislation intended to restrict Second Amendment rights by limiting the capacity of clips or magazines or otherwise restoring the assault weapons ban passed during the Clinton presidency.
ABORTION:
The party states that “the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.” It opposes using public revenues to promote or perform abortion or to fund organizations that perform or advocate abortions. It says the party will not fund or subsidize health care that includes abortion coverage.
ENERGY:
The party is committed to domestic energy independence and an “all-of-the-above” energy policy, backing the exploration and development of the Outer Continental Shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. It criticizes the Obama administration for picking winners and losers in the energy sector and expresses support for new coal-fired plants that will be low-cost, environmentally responsible and efficient.
It adds: “We will end the EPA’s war on coal and encourage the increased safe development in all regions of the nation’s coal resources.” It calls on Congress to prohibit the EPA from moving forward with new greenhouse gas regulations “that will harm the nation’s economy and threaten millions of jobs over the next quarter century.”
MEDICARE and MEDICAID:
The platform pledges to move both Medicare and Medicaid away from “the current unsustainable defined-benefit entitlement model to a fiscally sound defined-contribution model.” It supports a Medicare transition to a premium-support model with an income-adjusted contribution toward a health plan of the enrollee’s choice. Age eligibility in Medicare must be made more realistic in light of longer life spans.
Medicaid services for low income people would be transformed into a block grant program in which the states would be given the flexibility to determine the best programs for their residents.
IMMIGRATION:
The platform makes clear that “we oppose any form of amnesty for those who, by intentionally violating the law, disadvantage those who have obeyed it.” It demands that the Justice Department halt lawsuits against Arizona, Alabama and other states that have enacted tough measures against illegal immigrants. It says federal funding should be denied to universities that provide in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants. It advocates making English the official national language.
HEALTH CARE:
It states that a Republican president on his first day in office would use his waiver authority to halt progress in carrying out the health care act pushed through by President Barack Obama and that Republican victories in November would guarantee that the act is never implemented. It proposes a Republican plan based on improving health care quality and lowering costs and a system that promotes the free market and gives consumers more choice.
EDUCATION:
Republicans support consumer choice, including home schooling, local innovations such as single-sex classes, full-day school hours and year-round schools. It says Republicans renew their call for replacing family planning programs for teens “with abstinence education which teaches abstinence until marriage as the responsible and respected standard of behavior.”
DEFENSE:
The platform says Republicans are “the party of peace through strength” and support the concept of American exceptionalism — “the conviction that our country holds a unique place and role in human history.” It criticizes the current administration for its weak positions toward such countries as North Korea, China and Iran and its reductions in military spending. The Republican national military strategy “restores as a principal objective the deterrence using the full spectrum of our military capabilities.”
I haven’t read through all of the comments yet but I have given this some thought and the only criteria I have/hope for in my daughter’s choice of a partner is that he or she loves her, is kind, gentle, polite, and that they are best friends. Now the likelihood of her partnering with a Republican is small, given that she is a leftist feminist, but if that happened, I must assume that the person appreciates and respects my daughter for who she is and that’s all that matters to me.
Pretty much. This entire thread is a bit silly. I wonder which of the following anyone posting here thinks that reacting to their child’s choice of a republican as a significant other would result in:
a) Honey, you’re a republican and mom doesn’t like republicans. It’s over.
OR
b) Honey, I’m sorry that mom acted like a —-. Old people get stuck in their ways. You just have to remember to smile, nod, and ignore everything they say.
:-p
You may find out that with age and wisdom many people become even more independent-minded.
Honey, I’m not sorry mom gave you a piece of her mind. And wash your own damn dishes.
Some of them do. Some of them just get bitter and mean. Age seems to make good people better and bad people worse.
The oldest daughter says worse things about Republicans than I do because she is a partisan democrat who purposely moved to a bright blue state. The youngest laughed at me this morning when I asked her if she ever dated a Republican and said hell no that she had more self respect than that. So, guess I don’t have to speculate. But you keep on proving my point about how unpleasant republicans are these days between the theocrats and the cult of Paul. I really don’t think you realize sometimes exactly how you never make points. You just disagree by belittling people.
All things considered, it’s better to make points by belittling people, which I don’t actually think I do, than it is to do so by rhetorically gouging their eyes out, spitting venom in the sockets, stabbing them, burning their corpses, and then peeing on the ashes, which may or may not seem to be the main argumentative strategy of some people around these parts.
However, for what it’s worth, while I have drunk the Paul/Rand koolaid, and will proudly admit it, I’m not a Republican in any sense of the word, apart from a brief period of time when I was registered as such. I deny that politics has any legitimacy whatsoever, and I think that it brings out the darkest, most foul parts of people. I am anti-political.
Besides, that’s nice, but what is it relevant to? Most kids ignore what their cranky parents say.
Depends on how you parent the child … mine ask me for advice all the time.
I’m debating whether or not to post a trollish comment that I wrote, using my broke-ass german, as a parody of a Volkischer Beobachter article. The title is “Nein, ich möchte nicht einen jüdischen Schwiegersohn!” Think that’s a bit much?
Yes. It is. No one likes it here.
Hmmmm. I’m late catching up on the blog postings. Glad in retrospect that I didn’t read this in real time. One never gets anywhere trying to discuss with someone who keeps saying you’ve said something you actually haven’t said or implied.
The moderate Republicans of yesteryear are today’s Democrats. The immoderate Republicans are …. oh never mind; I’m going to read JJ’s comix to get some relief.