Extreeeeeeme!
I hear often, from various Beltway pundits as well as from people I know, that, okay, yeah, the Republicans have gotten really extreme--but both parties have gotten too extreme. This is usually followed by some statement like "we should just kill them all and start over."
I suppose it's unfair for me to say this, but I've always suspected people say things like this because it makes them feel so much more moderate, which in their minds makes them automatically virtuous. Deep down they're less concerned with actual principle than with positioning themselves as "centrists." It's bad to be "partisan." Therefore, if you're going to condemn one side, it's psychologically necessary to condemn the other, to create an equivalency any way you can, so you can continue to feel like you're in the middle. Why being, at any given time, on one side or the other is inherently unacceptable, I don't know, but there you are.
As Kevin Drum noted a while ago, there have been times when one party or the other had to purge itself of powerful extremist elements:
People go around saying the Democrats are as captive to the extreme left as Republicans are to the extreme right, but it's simply not true: if it were, it would look like what Kevin described, there, and obviously we just aren't seeing that. But what we are seeing is an extreme deep-southern far-religious-right taking control of the national Republican party. And any vote for the Republicans, today, is a vote for that movement.
Kevin also noted a while ago that, since Texas (home of Bush, DeLay, Rove, Armey, et al) represents in large part the beating heart of national Republicanism today, it's worth taking a look at the Texas Republican platform. What he sees there is pretty frightening: Texas Republicans stand for, among other things, abandoning sparation of church and state, criminalizing gay sex, banning all forms of abortion, teaching Biblical creationism in science classes, abolishing Social Security, abolishing the federal income tax, abolishing the federal minimum wage, eliminating the EPA and the Department of Education, getting out of the UN and possibly invading Panama.
A vote for any national Republican empowers the minds behind this agenda. Being "partisan" at a time when extreme and dangerous elements have taken control of one of the major parties is no vice. Being "centrist" when it means making nice with extreme and dangerous elements is no virtue.
It's important to stand up for what's right even when that makes you look "partisan." Only when moderate Republicans--you know, the heirs of Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower--take back their party will it do any good to seek bipartisanship.
I suppose it's unfair for me to say this, but I've always suspected people say things like this because it makes them feel so much more moderate, which in their minds makes them automatically virtuous. Deep down they're less concerned with actual principle than with positioning themselves as "centrists." It's bad to be "partisan." Therefore, if you're going to condemn one side, it's psychologically necessary to condemn the other, to create an equivalency any way you can, so you can continue to feel like you're in the middle. Why being, at any given time, on one side or the other is inherently unacceptable, I don't know, but there you are.
As Kevin Drum noted a while ago, there have been times when one party or the other had to purge itself of powerful extremist elements:
Every party has extremist elements. I can live with that, especially since most extremist elements have little actual power. But some political movements are so odious that decent people need to take active measures to shun them. In the same way that Democrats purged their party of communists in the 40s and Jim Crow racists in the 60s, and the Republicans purged their party of the Buchananites in the 90s, Republicans need to purge the Texas strain of messianic intolerance currently growing on their right wing. It is not harmless, it is not small, and it is not a joke.
Consider this. Suppose that very serious, very miltant communists took over the New York State Democratic party and wrote a platform advocating, say, nationalization of key industries and confiscatory taxation of all income over $50,000. And suppose that one of these New York Democrats had enough support in the party to become House majority leader. And then, finally, suppose that as communist influence spread throughout New England and beyond, Democrats pretended that nothing was amiss. A few communists here and there are harmless. Most of them don't really believe that stuff anyway, and we're just compromising with them on a few minor issues. Honest.
People go around saying the Democrats are as captive to the extreme left as Republicans are to the extreme right, but it's simply not true: if it were, it would look like what Kevin described, there, and obviously we just aren't seeing that. But what we are seeing is an extreme deep-southern far-religious-right taking control of the national Republican party. And any vote for the Republicans, today, is a vote for that movement.
Kevin also noted a while ago that, since Texas (home of Bush, DeLay, Rove, Armey, et al) represents in large part the beating heart of national Republicanism today, it's worth taking a look at the Texas Republican platform. What he sees there is pretty frightening: Texas Republicans stand for, among other things, abandoning sparation of church and state, criminalizing gay sex, banning all forms of abortion, teaching Biblical creationism in science classes, abolishing Social Security, abolishing the federal income tax, abolishing the federal minimum wage, eliminating the EPA and the Department of Education, getting out of the UN and possibly invading Panama.
A vote for any national Republican empowers the minds behind this agenda. Being "partisan" at a time when extreme and dangerous elements have taken control of one of the major parties is no vice. Being "centrist" when it means making nice with extreme and dangerous elements is no virtue.
It's important to stand up for what's right even when that makes you look "partisan." Only when moderate Republicans--you know, the heirs of Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower--take back their party will it do any good to seek bipartisanship.
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