Ripples of alarm are making their way through members of the Republican base now that Gov. Mitt Romney has become the presumptive GOP nominee for president.
But I would like to encourage the base to think positive. I want to help them see it’s found the person they've been looking for all their life.
Ripples of alarm are making their way through members of the Republican base now that Gov. Mitt Romney has become the presumptive GOP nominee for president.
They are concerned about Romney’s inability to cohere to a set of principled political beliefs for longer than it takes to drive across the country with a dog strapped to the roof.
They are concerned about their own cognitive dissonance as they face the choice between the non-mainstream, perhaps even non-Christian religious views of Barack ‘Hussein’ Obama, and the non-mainstream, perhaps even non-Christian religious views of Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney.
They are concerned for the future of the GOP, as it wakes up from its Tea-Party binge sporting one helluva hangover and a tricorn hat. It scratches its head blearily at the primary results, and wonders, “How can this New England chameleon possibly be a good fit for us?
But I would like to encourage the base to think positive. I want to help them see it’s found the person they've been looking for all their life.
After all, Romney’s gift of adopting a bedrock political principle du jour is one that the Republican Party has spent the last half of its existence perfecting. The governor is simply the low hanging fruit of decades of hard work, a squishy reward for the party of political pivot. He is an etch-a-sketch candidate worthy of an etch-a-sketch party.
Let’s review the bidding:
Perhaps the single greatest pivot is away from the party of Lincoln to the party of the Southern Strategy. This stunning reversal is one for the record books (and for the dust heap of history, but that’s a different post).
But there are other examples of the Republican Party’s inability to stick to one script.
What with the hue and cry over the questions of Obama’s eligibility to be president of the United States, one would think this issue had always been of primary importance for the GOP.
It turns out that the minutiae of long-form birth certificates, the distinctions between jus soli and jus sanguinis, and the relevance of the 14th Amendment have not always fascinated the GOP. Evidently, these requirements of citizenship were not always so closely, um, scrutinized.
Take for example, Chester Arthur (please). At the time of his presidency, the Republican Party was not so keen to shake the limbs of their candidate’s family tree. They were somehow able to accept the fact that Arthur’s father was not American (Irish, in fact). Modern Republicans were equally sanguinis about presidential candidate John McCain (Born: Panama). Oh, and wasn’t Governor Romney's father (George) born in Mexico? You can imagine the ruckus raised by the GOP over this bit of birth trivia during his presidential campaign (...crickets...).
The easy-going legal consensus accepted by the GOP when it comes to their own candidates is that if a child was born to a citizen parent, than the child was also a citizen, regardless of where it was born (this is also the legislative consensus). According to this logic, even if President Obama somehow managed to retroactively dupe the entire population of Hawaii (including the hospital, secretary of state, and the newspapers) into thinking that he was born there, it doesn’t matter, because regardless of where he was born, there is no disagreement with the fact that he was born to a citizen mother. (Note to birthers: Let it go.)
In the 60’s, the elephant circus carnival hall of mirrors revealed visionary conservative stalwart Barry Goldwater’s wife Peggy, founding member of Planned Parenthood, celebrating the FDA’s approval of an oral contraceptive, and within five years, 4 out of 5 women had used The Pill.
But it wasn’t just the Goldwaters who supported Planned Parenthood. Bush patriarch Prescott served as treasurer of the board. Richard Nixon signed the legislation funding it. The Romneys were supporters, before they were involved in politics.
Today, requiring insurance coverage of even medically needful contraceptives like the pill has become a lightning rod for who see such coverage as a state-directed elimination of religious freedom. Texas Governor and former presidential candidate Rick Perry has cut off his nose to spite his hair by refusing any aid from the federal government tied to Planned Parenthood, despite the fact that 2008, contraceptive services offered by clinics supported by Title X Funding prevented 45,900 unintended pregnancies, which would have resulted in 20,400 unwated births and 19,200 abortions, saving the state more than $161,738,000.
The Arizona legislature, not be outdone, has brought to the floor bills that would allow employers to check their employees’ medical records to ensure that birth control pills were not being used inappropriately. These bills haven’t been passed. Yet.
In the 70’s, the republicans left the nation in shambles, a crumbling, disgraced presidency, a corrupt, out-of control vice president, record deficits, rampant unemployment and inflation, our international reputation in tatters over our unprovoked war in a small nation a long ways away. But then, from 2000-2008, the GOP did...exactly the same thing. I guess I was wrong about them. They can be constant about some things.
In the 80’s, known Marxist puppet Ronald Reagan suggested that CEO Pay be taxed at a higher rate than a secretary’s. Evidently, when Reagan sings this tune, it’s the Prosperity Gospel, but when Obama sings it, it’s Die Internationale.
In the 90’s, fifth column socialists, under the name of The Heritage Foundation, first suggested the idea of a national health care mandate -- and then in 00’s, Mitt Romney implemented it in Massachusetts.
But now it’s the most socialist/fascist (note to republicans: these are competing ideologies) piece of legislation ever Shoved Down Our ThroatsTM.
Is it me, or does it seem like the Republican Party is just making it up as they go along? Etch-a-sketch as a metaphor doesn’t quite do the party’s remarkable flexibility justice.
I’m thinking something more along the lines of silly-putty.