Velocity

It is no accident that technology advances exponentially. We humans are clever in applying learning in novel ways to solve increasingly complex challenges. Perhaps our greatest challenge going forward is learning how to live with this acceleration. Scientists are discovering that our children's brains are being fundamentally rewired in how they learn, what they learn and how they manipulate these new tools into a world I couldn't have imagined as a youngster.

And yet I did imagine it, and so did others. Twenty years ago I wondered aloud one day where were all those 'cars of the future' I saw in Popular Mechanics. Now I look around and see them everywhere (okay, I still don't have my flying car, but I remain optimistic). In fiction, Captain Nemo, Flash Gordon and Dick Tracy preceded Gene Roddenberry's Kirk and Spock, predicting 4G cell phones, medical diagnostics, voice actuated equipment, satellite navigation systems, e books, tablet computers. These were delivered by scientists inspired as children to ask, 'why not?' and refusing to take no for an answer.

The problem is that all these quantum advances scientifically aren't designed to work well with the linear evolution of us as human animals. We've transmogrified from hunter-gathers of food, shelter and clothing into hunter-gatherers of data, comfort and entertainment. Our girth (physically and in our credit card statements) reflects our appetites both literally and figuratively and the trends aren't showing much chance of improvement anytime soon.

It may be that this political election season just concluded is illustrative of the disconnect between the linear and the quantum side of human evolution. The majority of voting citizens re-elected a liberal, multi-ethnic president with Hussein as a middle name over a conservative, rich, white, Mormon. Convincingly in the electoral college, marginally in the popular vote, but substantially in the direction in which the country is headed culturally. That the Grand Old Party is on the verge of becoming the Grand Obsolete Party is startling to  the party faithful mainly because they simply could not (and for many still do not) see the forest for the trees. The signs of change have been apparent to demographers for decades, but the mostly old, white, rich men that direct the party have sequestered themselves in an isolated echo chamber where they hear only what they wish to hear as told to them by only those to whom they wish to listen. (An excellent analysis of this phenomenon can be found here.)

Personally, I think the tipping point has been reached, and the brittle rhetoric of theocratic underpinnings for governance is increasingly rejected as harsh, doctrinaire and unresponsive to the greater needs of a plural society. A society that was founded on the absence of church doctrine in governance, and a system of justice blind (and therefore not beholden) to race, religion, social status and financial means. In the two plus centuries since our Founders cobbled together this nation, each step toward the perfection of the union has been a struggle. In the beginning they couldn't even agree to outlaw slavery and it took over two hundred years for a person of color to ascend to the highest office, and we have yet to elect a woman. Women's rights, voting rights, LGBT rights, and whatever oppressive practices we continue to fight were, and are, ongoing struggles to adapt to change. The reins of power are changing from the Baby Boomers to the Next Gen, and each transition meets resistance and disbelief from the old guards.

Coming to grips with the velocity of change, reexamining our basic assumptions about who and what we are as a nation, and stepping back from the hollow grandiloquence of insisting the old ways are the only ways will be essential moving forward. Wallowing in self-pity and bemoaning the fate of the Union at the election results is delusional. Each time we come together to vote as a nation we tell our leaders where and how we wish to advance our grand experiment called the United States. To the extent our leaders cling to broken models and irrelevant posturing forestalls the inevitable. Conservatives wishing to have a seat at the table going forward need new leadership that understands function must drive form, that making reasonable compromises doesn't equate to 'my way or the highway', nor does it equal moral equivocation. Not even the church still thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, so let's roll up our sleeves and get to work on what needs to be done to plan for the future, for however much some among us might wish it, the past has passed and a new paradigm calls for fresh thinking. As my fourth grade teacher used to say, "Let's put our thinking caps on, shall we?"

Recipe for Creating a Progressive

First, a list of ingredients:

1.   One Moderate Republican

2.   A dose of inattention

3.   Three decades of being taken for granted

4.   A heaping helping of hypocrisy

5.   Spice with fanaticism as required to purge all who are not 'true believers'.

The first vote I cast in a presidential campaign was for Richard Nixon. Before Watergate had broken widely, before the eighteen minute gap in the tape stretched credulity with a ludicrous re-enactment featuring his secretary, before the Enemies List was widely known and while Deep Throat was still just a porn movie. 

Nixon was drawing the Vietnam war to a close, he was going to China, the economy was pretty good and his opponent, Eugene McCarthy, was seen as all about 'abortion, acid and amnesty' and had unceremoniously dumped his first running mate, Tom Eagleton, when it was revealed he had been treated for depression. Nixon prevailed in a landslide. He formed the Environmental Protection Agency, supported the Clean Air Act and OSHA and he even supported the Equal Rights Amendment and talked with the first men to set foot on the moon.

The subsequent scandal forcing him from office (and the one preceding it, forcing his VP, Spiro Agnew, out for crimes committed while in state office) tarnished his legacy, but did not erase his accomplishments. If he were alive today and running for President, it would have to be as a Democrat, for surely his heart would not be pure by today's conservative metric.

After the pardon (the correct decision--in retrospect) Gerald Ford effectively killed his chance of election, and I voted for the last Democrat I would support for the presidency until 2008. Jimmy Carter was a nice guy wholly out of his depth. His style was to immerse himself in minutiae which led him to constantly second-guess himself. The first Arab oil crisis, when OPEC began to flex its muscle with an embargo, left him in a sweater by the fireplace asking us to turn down the thermostat and drive less. Not a popular idea in gas guzzling, car-crazy America. The hostage drama in Iran, (the effects of which still echo in our foreign policy decisions nearly four decades later) and rescue debacle doomed his re-election.

In 1980 I voted for Ronald Reagan, and every Republican that followed him for twenty-eight years.

I felt pretty good about it, too. The hostages cleared Iranian airspace in time for a dramatic announcement during his inaugural address. Reagan out-dueled the Soviets by calling them out and spending them into a bankruptcy that would emerge with the fall of the Berlin Wall in George the First's term. He initiated negotiations to reduce nuclear weapons and saw them through. We felt better about ourselves as a nation. He stood up to a union when it staged an illegal strike by firing the entire striking membership of  PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) and barring them from future civil service. Like it, or not, he did presidential things in a presidential way, and if he seemed a little disengaged the last couple of years, that was okay, his team was doing just fine. I was a happy Republican. I voted for George Bush in 1988 and 1992. It seemed to me that raising taxes (even when he promised not to) made practical sense in balancing budgets, but, alas, Bill Clinton prevailed in '92. Neither Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush could be elected as Republicans in this current cycle.

I loathed Clinton and his cocky arrogance. His casual acquaintance with marital fidelity and then putting the (unelected) First Lady in charge of health care reform (crafted behind closed doors) set my teeth on edge. There was Travelgate and Troopergate. The Whitewater Land affair, the mysterious suicide of Vincent Foster, the FBI files fiasco and of course his transformation of an intern named Monica Lewinsky into a verb, which led to his impeachment. There was just an air of insolence and scandal that was unbecoming of a United States President.

I suffered mightily in those years, but in my disenchantment I failed to notice the signs that my party was changing. The 1994 Contract With America seemed mostly reasonable. After all, more than half of it had been lifted from Reagan's '85 inaugural address. What I missed were the tactical methods of achieving strategic goals. By now the Christian Coalition led by Ralph Reed and other uber-conservative religious figures like James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network and American Center for Law and Justice had succeeded in making abortion, gay rights and 'traditional' marriage hot-button issues. Like-minded conservatives swept into office by the tactics introduced by then House Speaker Newt Gingrich of scorched-earth demonization of political opponents were already poisoning public discourse.

Into this mix came conservative talk radio. With the FCC's elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, the airwaves suddenly became ripe to be overtaken by pontificating blowhards under no obligation to be truthful or allow countervailing opinions. Rush Limbaugh went into syndication in 1991, just in time to position himself as a mouthpiece for the ultra-conservative re-visioning of America by calling for the dismantling of most of the reforms of the last century.

Seemingly overnight my party--that had championed clean air and workplace safety, that had destroyed the Soviets without firing a shot, stood up for voting rights and equal rights for women--had an agenda I didn't recognize-or like. Worse, they didn't care. In their new paradigm moderation was a sin to be converted or expunged, and I was an unrepentant sinner. I didn't understand gays and lesbians, but I didn't fear them. I had been in the arts, many were friends and co-workers. Vietnam had schooled me (not as a participant, but as an observer) that foreign military interventions were risky and apt to fail. Respecting religious liberty meant leaving people alone to practice their faith, not asking the State to impose mine. Still, I believed this was a short-term aberration. It would pass into the dustbin of history, leaving only a footnote. In 2000 I voted for George W. Bush. I was no longer a happy conservative. I was defending positions with which I was uneasy. But I was compliant, perhaps even complicit.

When 9/11 suddenly reshaped the world, and after some initial disorganization, George the Second seemed to take command of the reins of power. We were all focused on national unity and at some level, revenge. Taking down the Taliban in Afghanistan was dangerous, but probably necessary to deny safe haven to terrorists. Notwithstanding the experience of the Russians a generation earlier, superior technology and training would prevail, there would be no morass like Southeast Asia. Dick Cheney, a former White House Chief of Staff, Congressman and Secretary of Defense to George the First during Operation Desert Storm, the first Gulf War, was the Vice-President.

Donald H. Rumsfeld was sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense on January 20, 2001. Before assuming that post, the former Navy pilot had also served as the 13th Secretary of Defense, White House Chief of Staff (both under Ford), U.S. Ambassador to NATO, U.S. Congressman and chief executive officer of two Fortune 500 companies. 

Colin Powell was the Secretary of State. Retired four star Army General, Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former National Security Adviser, Vietnam veteran and the man I really wanted to run for the presidency in 2000. This was a dream-team. All the right people were in just the right places at the crossroads of history. What could possibly go wrong?

Lots, as we now know. The Veep goes off his rocker, the SecDef tries to reshape the military as it is deployed, the SecState gets spoon-fed bogus information by the Veep and mission creep sends us into a two-front war for a phantom threat. George fiddles while Baghdad burns.

Meanwhile, Republicans (my guys, remember?) are systematically disassembling controls on banking and investment (to be fair, this got underway during the Reagan administration), while bankers and money manipulators are conflating bad loans into can't miss vehicles for financial ruin.  Additionally, my team is slashing taxes on the domestic front while spending at a calamitous rate on the war front. Entire pallets of one-hundred-dollar U.S. greenbacks, lost or stolen from military cargo planes disappear into the desert. Soldiers of fortune posing as private contractors run riot. The privatizing of war turns out not to be a good strategy. A decade later we are still trying to extricate ourselves from a war longer that Vietnam. Longer. Almost inconceivable. Still, much of this was yet to be exposed in 2004, so I voted to re-elect George. You don't change presidents during wartime.

By 2006 the cracks in the foundation were apparent. Moderate conservatives, Reagan Democrats and right-leaning Independents  began abandoning the party. Apologists were trying to shore up support, but talk radio and Fox News on cable TV had staked out their territory with the ideologues to the far right wing with no intention of ceding any ground back toward the center. Little of the common sense and calm demeanor of the likes of William F. Buckley remained. Venomous rhetoric and reprehensible personal attacks dominated what passed for discussion. Politics was no longer an honorable profession of service and sacrifice to country; it was a warped version of reality television. It was professional wrestling in suits and ties. It was take no prisoners, manipulate voters, strangle dissent. It was time for a change.

 When the Republican nominee, John McCain and his Straight-Talk Express began kowtowing to the basest elements of the party and then selected arguably the least qualified running mate in U.S. history, I wasn't just unhappy as a member, I was disillusioned as well. For the first time in my life I began to actively campaign for a candidate. I donated money, went to rallies, exhorted college students a third my age to get involved. My family was astonished. I was astonished. But more than that, I was desperate. The country I loved was foundering on shoals of shame. Self-inflicted, cynical seeds of hypocrisy, class warfare, sexism and racism were battering our shoreline, and they were coming from where I once stood. I was mad as hell, and I wasn't going to take it anymore.

In 2008, thirty two years after the last time I supported a Democrat for the office of POTUS, I voted for Barack Obama. I had become an Obama-can, caucused for him, and wept unabashedly on election night.

The long knives have since truly come out, the TEA Party (Taxed enough? For the rich, the tax rate is one-third what it was in the golden era of Saint Reagan) has moved the Republican party so far right that it is now actually passing state laws (while doing absolutely nothing in Congress) trying to repeal the protections afforded by the Voting Rights Act of 1964, deny basic health care to women on religious grounds, send abortion providers into back alleys again, demonize illegal immigrants, gays, lesbians, and even women using contraceptives. For good measure, while they are at it, they would like to eviscerate Medicare and Social Security. Their jobs program seems to be firing as many government employees as possible, allowing the once mighty infrastructure of this country-the backbone of interstate commerce and largely started and built during Republican administrations--to fall to ruin, and continue to reward corporations to send work offshore.

It took three decades in the stew pot, but I am finally fully cooked. When I started as a conservative, well-run government was our priority, civil liberties were on our agenda. Conservative values meant properly managed; preservation of resources, clean air and water and moderate taxes, steady economic growth with enough regulation to ensure fair play but not so much as to strangle innovation. 

Privacy and the dignity to make our own decisions about our life meant something. Equal access to voting and education and justice were ideals for which we strived. Now all is dross. When I started, those were conservative values, now they find a home with Progressives. I am a happy progressive now. Can you guess how I might vote this November?

I'll close by re-interpreting a comment made by Ronald Reagan. I didn't leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.

Babies and Bathwater

Like so many congresses before it, the 112th Congress has kicked the can on the budget down the road a few years, but not before Speaker Boehner was mugged by the recalcitrant Tea Party-ers throwing a tantrum worthy of the most leather-lunged three year old.  Meanwhile, Majority Leader Eric Cantor was busy cutting the legs out from under his own leader by pandering to this mob with calculating ambitions of his own for the Speaker's office.  All this hissy-fitting by the no-new-taxes-compromise-is-a-dirty-word crowd was playing out against a backdrop of exasperated voters, shell-shocked investors and worried governments world wide.

The difference this time, however, is that the real world consequences of this doomsday approach have been plastered on the news as investors around the world panicked and dropped markets by huge margins.  At least one investment rating company downgraded U.S. Treasuries from their AAA rating for the first time since Andrew Jackson issued debt obligations on behalf of the fledgling United States of America.

Real world results?  By refusing to consider all the options on the table, the Tea Party has emasculated party leadership and sent the economy on a roller coaster ride that will almost certainly kill any near-term job creation in this country, and likely will put us into the second half of a double-dip recession.  So, what do we have to show for it?

No serious effort to reduce the deficit was achieved.  We are still trying to drain Lake Superior with a teaspoon.  The much ballyhooed concession of getting a vote on a balanced budget amendment was political theatre from the start.  Super majority voting requirements in both houses of Congress and all the states doomed this before birth and even with a successful vote in Congress it would take years of wrangling in the states before any decision was reached.  I haven't even touched on the scary notion that in a time of national emergency, the ability to raise money by borrowing from friendly nations would be constitutionally foreclosed, likely with devastating results.

The right-wing, to which I proudly belonged not too long ago, is fond of describing taxes as job-killing.  To put not too fine a point on it--that's just crap.  Really.

The tax code of the United States has been successfully manipulated by special interest lobbyists almost since income tax was imposed in the early twentieth century and thus we see a set of laws that has been bent to serve business--big and small.  Everywhere you look the law is riddled with deductions, exclusions and exemptions for starting and owning a business.  For example, capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income.  Stamps and phone lines, office supplies and advertising, employee benefits and 401Ks and thousands more, all designed to allow business to re-invest in the economy and still be profitable.  The truth is, business knows exactly how to avoid higher taxes:  They invest more in the business.

It isn't new or higher taxes business really fears, it's uncertainty.  People like a level of predictability in the ordering of their lives and businesses-being owned and operated by people for people-like exactly the same thing.  Predictable, responsible action in Congress and the White House begets confidence in leadership.  The feeling that there is a reliable hand on the tiller of the ship of state leaves the electorate free to do what we do best-innovate, grow and outstrip the world in creativity and productivity.

Instead we find ourselves held hostage by a super-minority of mal-contented neer-do-wells struggling to wrest the tiller from calmer and more experienced shipmates as we veer madly toward the rocks.  This is not healthy debate, this is throwing not only the baby out with the bath water, but the soap, towel and tub right along with it.  At the core, the uber-rich don't want new taxes because an uncertain future clouds the vision of new business growth so they want to squirrel away their cache against further calamities.  An altogether reasonable response in uncertain times, however unfair it might seem to those of us with modest means.

Meaningful debt reduction can only begin when we re-evaluate how and where we choose to project military force and start making defense budget begin to look proportionate to the actual needs rather than having an enormous standing military in anticipation of what might happen.  I'd like to have a million bucks in the bank in anticipation of what might happen but in order to achieve that goal I have to increase my income and decrease my expenditures--substantially.  In governmental terms, I need to raise taxes and cut spending.  Slashing one without the other just leaves a bloody stump.

I heard a Tea Party Republican on a talking heads Sunday news show make the following statement:  "I don't think all these bad things are going to happen like they say they are.  It's a bunch of hooey."

The three most salient words in that sentence?   I don't think..

We've Been Here Before

As inexorable as the tides, as relentless as wolves chasing a wounded elk and as predictable as sunrise, another silly season is about to get under way in the form of Elections 2012.

Already declared is Barack Obama, seeking a second term as President.  On the right, jockeying to see who can be the farthest right, are such luminaries and lunkheads as Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour and pizza king Herman Cain.  Lurking in the shadows are Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Tim Pawlenty and--unbelievably--the Donald (Trump, that is).  Rest assured, there are others waiting to wax and wane in the coming months as ambition trumps common sense in the hinterlands.

The Republicans have been playing a game of chicken with the government again, the actual shutdown of government, which played out so well for them the last go round, in the hope that no one will notice how willfully stupid is such a game.  Worse yet is that this isn't even an effort to save taxpayer dollars.  Repubs have already extracted the entire amount they wanted in this round of negotiations with regard to money.

This transparent political ploy leaves one breathless.  Not satisfied with the economic concessions, hard-liners on the right in the House of Representatives are holding out (and threatening to shut down the government) on issues as far-ranging as defunding Planned Parenthood and NPR to taking the enforcement teeth out of the EPA.  The hope here is that the Dems will either blink first and cave, which would be catastrophic to the party principles, or that by holding firm the liberals will somehow end up taking the bullet in public perception.  Don't fall for it.  

First, at some point a compromise will be reached that will not achieve all their stated goals.  If this occurs without significant support from Republican House membership then Boehner will find himself presiding over a fractured party and his Speakership will have failed.  Bad news for Republicans with an election on the horizon.  Second, unbudgeted money will have to be spent to re-start what was shut down, not to mention pay additional interest for debts deferred during the dispute.  The notion of savings are purely an illusion, exactly the sort of smoke-and-mirrors showpiece conservatives hope will turn the tide for them come election day next year.

Don't be afraid to look behind the curtain.  You will discover the Great and Powerful Oz is really just the same tired old men, bemoaning how badly done to the business community is and how overpaid and under worked are union members and the middle-class.  Alongside are the same social demands that the radical right has been pushing unsuccessfully for three decades.  Lift the lid and uncover the machinery hidden behind and you will see the same culprits.  Look for huge donations from corporations, the Koch brothers, the National Chamber of Commerce (with a much different agenda than the friendly folks pitching for your local hardware store) and Big Oil.  Made much more convenient when the Supreme Court concluded that corporations were 'people'.  At some point in the future another court will revisit the ruling and conclude that this ranks right up there with Dred Scott as one of the worst decisions in court history.

These are watershed times for the United States.  We can fall back to the fear that has led us down the path of intolerance, suspicion and hate.  There are plenty of examples to use as guideposts.  Recall your history, remember McCarthyism?  How about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII?  Go back a little further to Father Coughlin, or the Chinese Exclusion Act, or even as far back as when we were still a freshly minted country with the Alien & Sedition Act.  Or, we can buck up and do the right thing.  Lincoln freed the slaves, Teddy Roosevelt busted the Trusts (we call them cartels these days, or in some cases Too Big To Fail), FDR created a program to stem the tide of retirement poverty, LBJ forced the Voting Rights Act, and, ironically enough, Richard Nixon created the EPA.

We can do the right thing when we need to.  And we really need to now.

Nothing In Moderation-How To Kill the Republican Party

From time to time in these posts I comment on the state of politics as I see them.  Long-time readers know I consider myself a conservative and a Republican.  I have, however, been increasingly alarmed by a lack of common sense by the far right, and have expressed my dismay that leadership has become an oxymoronic term within the party.  Having said that, I stood by my party (though not necessarily it's candidates) until now.

It has become clear since the mid-term elections that the agenda of the conservative right-wing is to form a cabal of business titans, ambitious office seekers and ultra-conservative Christian groups to systematically disassemble most of the economic and social gains for the middle and lower class populations of the U.S. in the twentieth century.  Preying on the susceptability of one-issue, or poorly informed voters and ginning up fear tactics--while blithely ignoring their own culpability in the current economic hardships--the Republican party has begun an assault on moderation that is sure to kill it in the long run.  Given their 'druthers, many of these people would eliminate unions, pensions, Social Security, Medicare, funding for the arts and abortion anywhere, anytime, for any reason.  This is the to-do list right now, having accomplished that they will move on to reducing or eliminating taxes on business, with an emphasis on big businesses.  Bigger the business-lower the taxes.  Don't think so?  Follow this link:  Tax Holiday for Big Business?

These are not moderate, or even conservative views, really.  There is no inherent conflict between fiscal conservatism and union bargaining.  Have we forgotten the lesson of the Good Samaritan?  We can, and should do what we are able to do as individuals, but not forsake those of lesser fortune simply because they are financially inconvenient to society just now.  Issues of human rights belong in the public discourse to the extent that all humans living in the U.S. should enjoy the freedoms and protections of the Constitution, not just those that subscribe to my particular point of view.  People of good faith and conscience can agree to disagree.  That is vital to the free flow of ideas and critical to finding constructive ways forward without disenfranchising opposition.

The assault has been under way for some time.  Thirty years ago, if you intended to run as a Republican for high office you had to be vetted by the Christian right.  What was your stance on abortion?  What about gays and lesbians?  School prayer?  You better drink the Kool-Aid and sign on or you had no active chance of advancing your candidacy.  Since then the requirements have tightened into a noose.  I stand in amazement that there is no sense of irony that the only unforgivable sin is to differ in opinion.

If you were nominated to a U.S. Federal judgeship the chances were similarly bleak for advancement if you had ever ruled on, commented in public or written a term paper in school on any or all of these and other issues.  As I write this thousands of position remain unfilled, the nominees blocked without even a committee review by some Senator acting as a 'watchdog' (read:  lapdog)  for the Christian Coalition or some other lobbying group.  If it is one thing a conservative pol knows, it's which side of the bread is buttered with campaign money.

Perhaps the most distressing aspect of this onslaught has been the dogged determination not to be deterred by facts.  I have seen, read and heard more mischaracterizations, misdirections, disinformation campaigns, whispered innuendos and downright damnable lies in the last three years then in the forty or so previous years I have been watching and thinking about politics.  And that includes, Bush, Clinton and Nixon.

Right now we have a President hobbled by the notion that there is compromise out there, just waiting to be hammered out with reasonable, moderate Republicans.  Respectfully, Mr. President, you are wrong.  From the grass-roots to the Capitol Dome the offensive against reasonableness is being pushed forward by a cynical and increasingly delusional conservative party.  Consensus building and bi-partisanship are given lip service, but in truth are seen as signs of weakness to be exploited.  It is time, Sir, in the words of a famous Republican, to just say no.

So here is what I say to my former Republican brethren:  Kill the party if you must, I shall not come along.  You have thrown down the gauntlet of extremism, I shall not pick it up.  You seek to crush moderation, I shall, starting today, resist.

Why Liberals Fail

After the primary a few weeks ago I was chatting with a liberal friend about the post-election washout of candidates.  I imagined out loud that since her candidate had not advanced, she would be supporting the Democratic candidate that had moved on to the general election.

"No," was the firm reply.  "He voted to fund the war [in Iraq & Afghanistan].  I can't support that.  I have to vote my conscience.  I am for peace, I will write in the name of my [failed] candidate, and vote for him."

"So," I said, "you will cast a ballot that indirectly favors the candidate whose party started the war under false pretenses.  The party that offered no apology or even reasonable excuse for same, whose executive leadership created a torture camp in Cuba and under whose lack of supervision crashed the most vital economy in the world?"

"I have to vote my conscience."  End of discussion.

This is why liberals fail.  It is a political truism that liberals fall in love; conservatives fall in line.  My friend has fallen in love with the candidate and been blinded to the forest by a single tree.  This phenomenon has had many names over the political years:  Peace & Freedom, Green, Progressives, the Mary Janes and others of a similar splinter mentality.  They, and others like them, succumb to the siren song of the 'protest vote', somehow imagining that those votes will be seen with all seriousness in Washington or at the state and local level at least.  They are correct in one assumption:  They will be seen all right, and promptly dismissed as a constituency that can, and will, be ignored.

As a group, liberals have an astonishingly short collective memory.  Only one election cycle ago the most diverse group of voters in my living history accomplished what many believed impossible; they elected an avowed liberal black man to the Presidency of the United States of America.  With him they swept into power a huge Congressional majority of Dems and between them--in spite of fierce and almost unanimous opposition from Republicans--managed to enact some of the most important fiscal and social legislation in half a century.

But, alas, Barack Obama proved to be human.  He didn't march into office and sweep away 220 years of political bickering with a single blow.  Don't Ask-Don't Tell still lingers, as do dozens of left and far left honey-dos.  The agenda is incomplete and you are an impatient and fickle crowd.  You liberals have lost your understanding of the power of incremental-ism.  Like children, you want it all now, or you will sulk in your room.

Republicans are counting on this.  The RNC is collecting and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on candidates, that in any other cycle, wouldn't merit a one line obit buried deep in the political pages.  They hold their noses, open their checkbooks and fall in line.  Most of the mainstream Republicans seeking election, or re-election, are espousing views they cynically don't believe themselves, in order to appeal to a general anxiety amongst the electorate.

And you are letting it happen.  You are so busy feeling sorry for yourself that the entire country isn't on board with your goals, that you have fallen into a malaise, that in just a few weeks, threatens to undo what you worked so hard to achieve.  If you are disillusioned and frustrated now, imagine how eviscerated you will feel when a cadre of elected representatives come into power that have the avowed goals of re-instituting school prayer, rolling back abortion rights, eliminating Social Security and Medicare, trying to deport millions of undocumented aliens and expanding tax cuts and deregulation to the wealthiest companies and individuals in the country. Don't be misled, these are the central tenants of their governing philosophy.

As a moderate Republican, sidelined by my own party, I find myself watching this slow-motion train wreck in the liberal wing with horror.  Oddly, the best hope I, and millions of center-righters like me, have of regaining the reigns of a GOP careening madly out of control to the reactionary right, is a united liberal front.  If you throw up your hands and walk away from the process it may be two generations before equilibrium can be restored, and reclaiming sanity in governance likely won't return in my lifetime.

Think about this; after the dust has settled from the upcoming election, states will begin the process of reapportionment and redistricting.  It is a little-understood, but critically important, constitutional process that affects the makeup of the House of Representatives and subsequently influences elections not just for ten years, till the next census, but for a generation or more, as Members become the ruling class, and re-election becomes a foregone conclusion for 90% of those running.

I'm trying to regain control of my party one blog at a time, but liberals, I need your help.  Don't screw this up, get out the vote.

Moderate Republicans and Independents are counting on you.

Ironic, no?

R.I.P. G.O.P.

It's done, but not finished.  Health care (or more accurately, health insurance) reform is the law of the land.  A few minor fixes will survive the reconciliation process and the Obama administration will put a check mark next to this item on their to-do list.  To be sure, it will face an onslaught of misguided legal challenges; which it will survive, as the Republican party continues to Balkanize itself on the shoals of intolerance.

The GOP has allowed itself to become fractured in a way that I used to think only Democrats were capable of doing.  I suppose what is about to happen is best characterized as the ritual cleansing of those weaklings among the keepers of the True Faith that have succumbed to the demon of reason and common sense.  These purges take place historically shortly before a political party self-immolates.  It is a sad thing to see the party of Lincoln about to break itself apart upon the reefs of extremism.

Even Barry Goldwater wouldn't recognize this party.  However rigid his ideology, he still understood that engagement in the process--even in a losing effort--was important.  His successor from Arizona has decided instead, in a fit of pique, that he just won't join in anymore.  Former presidential candidate and Senator from Arizona John McCain announced on the Senate floor he would no longer participate in lawmaking this session.  He did not resign, or offer to return his salary to the Treasury Department, he just decided to become the laziest Senator in Washington.  That in itself is a pretty tall order.  He apparently believes he is up to the task, but I imagine he will walk that statement back.  Egos of that proportion don't stand in the darkness very long.  Perhaps the voters in Arizona will finally receive that for which they are paying.  Perhaps they will instead decide his retirement is appropriate this fall.

Fear mongering has an epic and sordid history in politics.  In long ago and recent times it relies on distortions, lies and ad hominen personal attacks to gain traction among the poorly informed.  Then it fans the flames of divisiveness with race-baiting and conspiracy theories that would be laughable if the intent wasn't so sinister.  In the infancy of this country tracts were published under pseudonyms and distributed by hand and reprinted in small presses.  Later, similar tactics were adopted by newspapers on a massive scale (notably Hearst publications) as yellow journalism flourished in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.  Since then the cavalcade of technology has brought us Father Coughlin, an anti-Semitic Nazi apologist; Sen. Joe McCarthy, a Commie hunter that almost single-handedly fomented the Cold War, and has led us from Joe Pine to Rush Limbaugh and the modern day successor to Hearst, Rupert Murdoch and Fox 'News'.  The saddest part of this, especially in recent times, is that for Limbaugh and his ilk stirring the pot is a cold calculation to make more money.  Make no mistake, theirs is not an act of conscience, it is show business.  With controversy--the more shrill the better--comes ratings.  With ratings comes cash.  End of story.

Watch carefully.  When the hubbub over health care dies down, as it will, and the value of the sideshow loses its ratings punch, the flabby arguments from the right will disappear and a new villainous conspiracy will emerge.  It's even money what it will be.  The Senate will take up regulatory reform of the financial industry next and you can be sure that the right will weigh in, but perhaps with caution, given the mood of the populace toward that industry.  My bet for the next cause celebre' for conspiracy theorist will be immigration reform.  Expect a comeback from Lou Dobbs for that effort.

Ultimately, when no reasonable middle course of action is acceptable to the extremophiles of a party, factionalization will doom it to the dustbin of history.  Without strong leadership and a reassertion of reasonable compromise that is where the GOP seems headed.

I suppose if I really wanted to reopen the conspiracy can of worms I could let it leak that all those water boardings Dick Cheney insists were are so important in Gitmo were done with fluoridated water, in Area 51 instead.

As Sarah Palin put it; time to reload, America.