To be factual, they never actually left, but they were dealt a significant beating back in 2008.
The Four Horsemen were identified by Senator Margaret Chase Smith back in 1950 as part of her Declaration of Conscience speech to the Senate. Her speech is pretty hard on the Truman Administration and she makes her case that her Republican Party should be in power, but then she did something unusual for a Senator sixty years ago and unheard of from a Senator today. She took on the pricks in her Party who were trying to seize power though lies, character assassination, fear mongering and all around dickishness.
To the jump...
Here is how Senator Smith framed her point in far more graceful prose than mine:
I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.
I doubt if the Republican Party could—simply because I don’t believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans aren’t that desperate for victory.
Of course today's Republican Party is that desperate and have been ever since it was taken over by the Confederate Party.
And the American people have proven themselves to have far less honor, integrity, intellegence and courage than Senator Smith thought they had sixty years ago.
Today, the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear is all that the shell of her former party has. It is all they know. It is the only way that they frame and discuss any issue. It is their entire game plan and beyond that, well, they got nothing. And unlike Senate Smith, there in nobody in her captured Party that is willing to call out the neo-Confederate assholes running the show.
Elsewhere in her speech Senator Smith mentioned four basic American Rights under attack by the complete wankers of her era:
Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:
The right to criticize;
The right to hold unpopular beliefs;
The right to protest;
The right of independent thought.
The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us doesn’t? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in.
The race to see who can attack these rights the most and who most tightly embraces Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear in their place will decide the Republican Confederate Party leaders in the 112th Congress and who will be their candidate for the White House in 2012. If any member of their caucus gave Senator Smith's Declaration of Conscience speech today that person would be an outcast of the Party.
One can not repeat often enough how anti-American and fucking insane all of these rat bastards actually are. It should be an interesting two years.
Cheers
dengre
Reposted from Balloon Juice
