If they’d lived to see the GOP trainwreck in election 2008 and 2012, the Old School Conservatives would be twirling in their coffins. My dad, who passed about 15 years ago, was born in 1910 in Hungary and lived through the early 20th century world war and it’s aftermath before he was able to struggle to come to Ah-meer-eekah. He was a conservative Independent all his life, would never say who he voted for, but given how he lived, paying cash for everything or going without, your guess is a pretty good one.
I once said to Dad, maybe we need more than two majority parties in the US, and my father said, no no, help them both to remain right and strong, for in the Balkans and throughout the pincushion and target practice states of E. Eu, he said there were SO many parties, and the vote was split so many ways, that no truly strong and visionary person running, could actually win.
My dad would be sickened by what the GOP has become in the sense of having only old old men to run, or idealogues or ‘nice guys’ who are without vision, without true conjones for the battle, and who do not reveal what the public asks of them.
I am my father’s daughter, and proud that many of his values are mine and my childrens’ and grandchildrens’ too. That’s why I take no pleasure in seeing the prejudices that have crept into the GOP over the last 20 years, taking it down to yellow-toothed plaints and threats and the equivalent of jr. high slam books… (starting with Newtie Gingrich’s posturing book with an entire chapter of lists re what demeaning and insulting words all GOP-er oughtuse to describe the other party). That sunk Newtie’s chance at EVER being seen as a statesman of gravitas and thought.
The GOP platform (what platform? promises are not a platform. Platforms have STEPS to take to get to the goal, the GOP platform has no STEPS, and thereby is just a ‘platform in the air.’), is not finely delineated re finance nor war chests nor the huge amounts that go to the poor, of which the Native Americans make up a large part with billions going to the tribes annually (nice job Mr. Romney insulting all the first peoples as part of the 47% slag)..
Rather the GOP platform has come down into the gutter, implying speciously that nearly half our nation is made up of people who are somehow lazy, that they are somehow morally unfit, that they are just parasites.
My dad was a conservative, and such unseemly and low words never, ever crossed my father’s lips.. in part because when he first came to the US, he would have been one of Romney’s 47%… not knowing where to go, not speaking English, not looking right, sounding right, working at pitiful jobs to hold hide and health together.
I’m sad to see the party my dad once thought so well of, one that had true statesmen in it, ones that didnt try to act like they were in a cheap B movie rumble, but instead worked together in much civility to ‘get the job done.’ And especially I’m sad to hear words from Romney that dishonor people that are caring, loving, kind, and wise people… and have challenges, challenges that dont have the massive money assets to cash in on in order to take care of it all, like Romney has.
Today, I heard Romney tell a group of people that he too was a small businessman and so he knew the challenges. Were my dad alive, my dad would have yelled “bullsheet” at the television, he would have called a spade a spade, for dad was a small businessman, he built a small tailor shop and struggled all the years of his worklife to make it in the trades. Romney has NO idea what it is to be an uncapitalized small businessman in a backwater town that looks down upon immigrants and refugees except for what work they can expoit on their backs and their bones.
The elephant is down. That much is clear. Whether it can ever stand and be hale again, be noble, as elephants are… we do not know. The poachers of the GOP are persons within the GOP itself, and I dont just mean those taking aim at Romney. It’s been going on for twenty years without any adult calling it, without calling a halt to it, without sending those who are chronically enraged that their soup is too hot, their ice cream too cold… to their rooms until they can practice a trait so endemic to governing: statesmanship.
That there appear to be no wise and far-seeing adults about, that does not bode well for bringing the GOP back from the brink.
Not to mention the some in the GOP and their resemblance to those who actually kill off real elephants. Poachers, since time out of mind, are driven by their greed to predate also on the innocent and the hapless.