So You Think You're a Republican?

I hadn't been in New Hampshire more than a few months when I found myself standing on a "visibility line" on the corner of Rte 27 and Lafayette Road, across from the Old Salt with an Obama poster along with about a dozen Democrats. Cars would drive by and beep sympathetically or someone would smile and wave, but mostly drivers ignored us, absorbed in their own thoughts. 

Talking with a lady who was dressed in a Talbot's jacket and pressed slacks, I asked about New Hampshire politics and whether she thought this was still a Republican state.  "Oh," she said, "What you have to understand is New Hampshire Republicans are not like down South. They are reasonable people. They just worry about taxes and they want small government, but you can have them over for coffee and there's a whole range of topics you can agree with them about."

Just at that moment a car drove by and a young man leered out of an open window and shouted, "Nigger lover!"  

I looked at her and she looked off after the car, disappearing down Lafayette toward Hampton Falls.  

You have to wonder what it feels like to be a Republican today and to see those whackos on stage, the leaders of your party. 

Not that the Democrats haven't had their times of agony.  From the end of the Civil War until Lyndon Johnson passed the Voting Rights Act in 1964, the Democratic Party was the party of the South. So everyone from Roosevelt to Adlai Stevenson had to accommodate the most vicious and ardent racists to keep their coalition together. 

But those Southern Democrats were simply monomaniacs, or maybe limited maniacs--apart from their belief that Negroes were subhuman and that the Bible was the literal truth and the source of all knowledge, they could be charming and in some areas even erudite.  

That most charming slaver of all, Thomas Jefferson, once remarked, "Embracing slavery is like holding a wolf by the ears. Better not let go."  For him and for many Southerners, they realized the jeopardy in which their beliefs had place them, but they were stuck with it.  

These current day Republicans seem to relish their own folly.

They enjoy believing Mexican, Honduran and El Salvadorian migrants are rapists and depraved. They love the thought of bombing Iran back to the stone age. They relish the idea of sending other people's kids off to fight ISIS in Syria. They love the idea they know the truth about vaccines causing autism when the doctors are unable to see it. They feel all potent when they think about scaring Vladamir Putin by sending American boys and girls in uniform to mass on his borders. 

The New York Times today, in a remarkable editorial, finally said what every Democrat should be saying--this current crop of Republicans is simply not worthy of any sort of respect.  They are so damaged they cannot stand the touch of reality and so they create a fantasy world in which they are strong and smart which is simply not in touch with any sort of reality.

When Carly had her great moment of high dudgeon, when she really connected with the deep feelings of her base, she was telling a story about Planned Parenthood officials selling the brain of a living fetus for profit. Her high cresting moment was based on a lie; she simply made it up, or if she thought it was true, she thought it was true because she didn't want to ask the questions which might have ruined her great strum und drang story. 

Wow. Is this the best the Republican Party can do?  Makes you get all misty eyed thinking about Mitt Romney.