Maybe this had been posted already and I am just not bright enough to find it here. But I can't add anything to this that in any way improves the work of an honest, decent, caring conservative with a conscience and an incredible work ethic. Just an open letter to the Red side, laying out every bit of fact-challenged nobbery that is in the air right now, with invitation to rejoin the American party.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com...
This is the best piece of work I have read in decades.
Here's a tiny selection from the piece, which goes on for pages to lay out, expose, and defuse just about every one of the Mad Bombs that have been tossed by the I gues you would call it "Right.:"
Dear Conservative Americans,
The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now. You've lost me and you've lost most of America. Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I'd like to give you some advice and an invitation.
First, the invitation: Come back to us.
Now the advice. You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more. But you have work to do even before you take on that task.
Your party -- the GOP -- and the conservative end of the American political spectrum has become irresponsible and irrational. Worse, it's tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some expamples -- by no means an exhaustive list -- of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.
If you're going to regain your stature as a party of rational, responsible people, you'll have to start by draining this swamp:
Hypocrisy
You can't flip out-- and threaten impeachment- when Dems use a parliamentary procedure (deem and pass) that you used repeatedly (more than 35 times in just one session and more than 100 times in all!), that's centuries oldand which the courts have supported. Especially when your leaders admit it all.
You can't vote and scream against the stimulus package and then take credit for the good it's done in your own district(happily handing out enormous checks representing money that you voted against, is especially ugly) -- 114 of you (at last count)) did just that -- and it's even worse when you secretly beg for more...
You can't fight against your own ideas just because the Dem president endorses your proposal
....
These are just a few of the hundreds of well researched, pointedly corrected blabs from the looser side of the tent... Under the headings Hypocrisy, Hyperbole, History and Hatred...