The Elemental Republican

Daily Kos
State of the Nation


The Elemental Republican
By Hunter
on 2008 Republican primaries

Watching the Republican debates is proving a surreal experience. The feeling is like watching... well, a science experiment, I guess, would be the best way to put it. All of the Republicans involved seem to be devolving into crude caricatures of Republicanism, but different crude caricatures of Republicanism -- something a bit more surreal than mere pandering. It is as if modern Republicanism was pushed through an ideological prism, and each of its parts scattered onto a different podium at a different part of the stage.

Romney: The CEO Republican. The multimillionaire whose interest is an America secured for the financial goals of multimillionaires.

Huckabee: The Religious Republican. The perfect embodiment of true Republican religion; sings to the majesty of a Jesus that has been painstakingly repainted in the Republicans' own image, scrubbed of inconvenient tendencies towards compassion.

Giuliani: The Crime Boss Republican. Giuliani's primary motivation in government has always been the consolidation of his own power, the use of that power to retaliate against his enemies, and, apparently, Herculean efforts to organize his city around best satisfying his own desires and needs and genitalia.

Tancredo/Hunter: The Bigots. Nativism and racism writ large; the "Southern Strategy" recast to draw from and stoke fear, resentment and loathing not against black Americans, now protected too well for such rank hatreds to be openly expressed, but against brown Americans.

Thompson: The Vacuum-Packed Professional Republican. Chosen by name alone, not skill, and specifically picked to be well known and inoffensive with no particular record, agenda, skills, or ideas that might get in the way. The goal of the handpicked vacuum packed Republican, whether it be Fred Thompson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or anyone else, is for their name to quickly provide enough boost to make their actual statements and positions irrelevant. Unfortunately for his party backers, Thompson has proved to have the political vibrancy of a dead halibut, thus defeating himself handily in his only area of purported accomplishment.

Ron Paul: The To Hell With The Rest Of You Republican. The rejector of the base premises of government itself. Paul represents the large portion of the Republican party that condemns the very notion that government should have a role in bettering the health, education, or welfare of its citizens.

snip

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/11/30/32758/259

Good call:)