Faithful Republicans who are truly outraged by the conduct of former US Representative Mark Foley (motto: "I'm gay; I'm a drunk; I want sex with teenage boys") nonetheless are straining to find ways to preserve their illusion of belonging to the party of moral superiority.
In countless TV and radio news reports I've seen and heard on the subject, those interviewed are starting to lockstep to the refrain of "He was just one person; everyone in the party is outraged by his behavior and we will not put up with it."
Note that they are (conveniently) forgetting--if they ever cared to know--that the real scandal is not as much about what Foley said and wanted to do as it is about how the GOP powers-that-be turned a blind eye to Foley's "indiscretions" for as much as 5 years. This is not and never has been about the behavior of one sick individual. It's about getting and keeping power at the expense of what you claim to value above everything else.
Give it up, people! You know as well as I do that you just want to preserve the Republican majority in Congress, and you will strain and grasp at anything that allows you to keep doing it while maintaining the self-delusion that you are somehow better than those nasty, immoral Democrats (and the occasional aberrant GOP bad apple).
Reality check: no one group has a lock on virtue. Far better that you admit to yourselves that you prefer the GOP's stand on issues like NOT raising the minimum wage, NOT keeping the government neutral regarding expression of religious faith, NOT ensuring that everyone eligible to vote has easy access to the polls, NOT protecting the health of our vulnerable women and children, NOT making the government accountable for the mess in Iraq, and so on . . .
Give up the hypocrisy of claiming that you support the GOP because you and it are the defenders of "family values." If you look at the effects of the laws the GOP passes to implement its values, you must see that the GOP's basic philosophy is in fact "it's every man for himself." Well, I've been in a family where that was the prevailing attitude, and the only result was to promote sefishness, ruthlessness, and the overall "screw you--I've got mine" attitude that represents too much of what the GOP these days does, no matter what it says it believes in.
As reprehensible as I find most of what the GOP does these days, I can live with members of the GOP who are honest about it. This desperation amongst the party faithful to befog their real motives with a "holier than thou" attitude serves no one well. It merely perpetuates the error of injecting what should be matters of personal belief into the bloodstream of the body politic . . . which was never designed to withstand that poison.
No comments:
Post a Comment