The death of civility

                            The death of civility

 

           Something(s) happened today which made me very sad, and somewhat disillusioned. The disillusionment should have been less a surprise than it was, because all the warning signs were there.  

       Twelve  years ago, the state of Florida failed to properly conduct a Presidential election, partially by intent, I believe. ( Governor, Jeb Bush, having "guaranteed" his brother "W" that he'd deliver  Florida)  I suppose it caught them by surprise, which doesn't say much for the state, since the date was specified in a document over two hundred years ago and remains unchanged.  Of course, the Constitution doesn't micro- manage the process, so the infamous "butterfly"  and "hanging chad" ballots weren't technically illegal, simply stupid. The recount process, was of course specified and outlined by the Florida State Constitution and,  in the eyes of  then  Chief Justice Charles  Wells, would have provided the necessary framework for  resolving the issue.  His discomfort at having the Feds take control  was the  topic of a personal conversation between us . The matter was however taken from Florida and, in a process which reduced Justice David Souter almost to tears because of its impropriety, the USSC  elected George W. Bush  President of the United States. Those of us , and there were many nationwide, who were offended by the process, responded with a modicum of disappointment and in many cases anger, not so much directed at the President, who proved eventually to be as dumb as we suspected, but at the process  by which he was awarded the office.

               The response from the victorious Republicans was a cross between gloating  a la Karl Rove and being told to shut up and support the President a la Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. There was essentially no conciliatory movement  and little or no bipartisan spirit. A side result of this was the Bush White House decision to largely ignore a terrorism threat assessment specifically warning of Al Qaeda prepared by the outgoing  Clinton administration. 
    
            Traditionally Republicans,  the Party I grew up with, by the way, stood for fiscal conservatism and respect for the views of others, with some notable exceptions (See McCarthy, Joseph,   and others). Certainly Theodore Roosevelt, who favored women's suffrage when many Democrats opposed it, and  Dwight Eisenhower were of that sort.  It was Eisenhower who, born in Texas  and not by breeding  a racial liberal, nevertheless ordered the 82nd Airborne to Little Rock  to enforce a Supreme Court decision with which he probably secretly disagreed. This same decision furthered the  conversion of Southern Democrats like Strom Thurmond and others, to the Republican party, already  becoming the last bastion of civil rights resistance.   This transformation became complete when Thurmond and others formally converted to the Republican Party following passage of the Civil rights Act of 1964, against which Thurmond conducted the longest filibuster on record. By the Nixon years, the radicals were beginning to be heard , but the real issue was the seemingly endless war in Vietnam, which polarized the nation for much of  the decade. Nixon won in 1968 using what became known as his "Southern Strategy" -  a sort of "I feel your pain" subliminal message to the South, clad in a "Law and Order" package. Moderates still seemed to control the party, but that was about to  change.

                 The takeover by the Evangelicals in fact began in earnest during  the Reagan years.  It manifested itself in the spectre of Ronald  Reagan, a largely irreligious man who rarely attended any service, travelling to Lynchburg Va., the home of Jerry Falwell  (not Lynchburg, TN, the home of Jack Daniels,  more's the pity) seeking the endorsement of Falwell's "moral majority" movement. This election year sucking up to the Moral Majority as well as Pat Robertson and others, signaled a paradigm shift for the party. As far back as the Eisenhower years, Billy Graham had been a White House visitor, but there never seemed much real significance attached to it.  Graham did make statements during the mercifully brief McCarthy years that, "Communism is sponsored by Satan."  Even with Graham's  divine judgment,  however,  Ike's sole public statement regarding  religion was "Everybody should have one, and I don't care what it is!"  In the context  Eisenhower used it, it was really more descriptive of a moral code than a specific creed or dogma.  

                By the nineteen-eighties and ninties, however,  Republican candidates began to be subjected to much more scrutiny by the Far Right on social issues which had been of relatively little significance during the fifties and sixties. This wing of the party was, and remains, inflexible and has served to push real issues into the background  forging a coalition which would have been unimaginable in earlier times - Catholics and Fundamentalist Protestants.   In some cases these folks supported candidates who privately ridiculed them while publically courting their favor, The incredible gap of interest and world view between George W. Bush, profligate (but born again!) son of wealth, and the snake handlers whose favor he sought,  is exemplary.  Another example would be rich, amoral Donald Trump, and the poor whites who idolize him, in much the same fashion foreclosed dust bowl farmers idolized Bonnie and Clyde. Throughout the next eight years, the final hijacking of the Republican Party by its own lunatic fringe occurred, fomented by a combination of rabid evangelical Christians  and equally rabid neo-cons  who clung to the "trickle down" theory as shit clings to a baby blanket.   

                Now, Republican wannabees at many levels have to pass the litmus test on women's right to reproductive privacy, GLBT rights,  and other issues which should be personal and private. Not content with making their own personal choices  as their conscience dictates, they have determined that it is their divine obligation to force those decisions and point of view on the nation as a whole.  By the George W. Bush imperial presidency, the takeover was completed, as evil genius Karl Rove mastered the practice of looking  like a far right sympathizer while acting amorally and encouraging his president to do the same.  Along the way, campaign rhetoric became more vile and defamatory (on both sides in some cases) but much more personal in many cases with respect to the president, with race as an unstated, but obvious  factor in some localized regions.

                The recent example of how the political process has been shaped by this phenomenon is twofold. In the first place, moderate Republican Mitt Romney, apparently urged to do so by his "handlers", moved from his well established, and admirable to many,  centrist position , changed his mind (or so we are expected to believe) on the litmus items, courted the Far Right, made the obligatory homage visit to Trump Towers, and became blatantly untruthful, even to the point of  attempting to differentiate his Mass. health care initiative from the Affordable Health Care Act, which it closely resembles. The second example was the choice of Congressman (and rabidly anti-abortion Roman Catholic ) Paul Ryan as a running mate. This darling of the Tea Party was vocal and adamant on all the Far Right trigger issues. Meanwhile, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell actually confirmed  what many  suspected when he acknowledged  that  he was much  less concerned about working to improve the economy than trying to oust the President by denying him a second term, a point of view which just blew up in his face and reflects shamefully on him and those of his ilk.

                 I,  and many political writers far more sophisticated and experienced, believe this was the move that made it more difficult for Romney to win votes from the middle grounders who might have been persuaded to switch camps, especially considering the economy, a factor which usually causes shifts in the White House if economic indicators are weak. The real losers here are those moderate Republicans who lose influence due to the  extremism of others and may have  sacrificed the bigger picture for their own doctrinaire small slice. The Republican Party of my father and of my younger days is essentially gone. Dwight D. Eisenhower famously said, "I am conservative when it comes to money, and liberal when it comes to people."  I mourn the loss of that ethos.

                Finally, although I rejoice in the reelection of President Obama, I am nonetheless disappointed in the amazingly graceless reaction to it by some Republicans.  The vitriol spewing from social media and in some cases, the press, is disheartening at best. It appears  that not only were they bad winners in 2000, they are bad losers in 2012. It seems as if the Mitch Mc Connells  will again, out of spite,  sacrifice the good of the nation to partisan squabbling . One would hope that the lesson of negative reaction to  extremism would be learned, but it seems doubtful, considering the arrogance of long time GOP strategist Terry Holt - "The Republican Party is exactly right on all the issues!"  Right with respect to whom? Certainly not the majority of voters in America as clearly shown Tuesday.   And so the blame game begins anew, Romney  taking  the heat from Republican revisionists.  Some who urged him to embrace the lunatic right, will now cite that move as the reason he lost; while Mitt, who never really knew who he was, will sadly take his Swiss and Cayman Island  millions, and Anne, probably glad she won't have to move into a smaller mansion, will go back to her horses.   Makes one's head hurt, don't it?