Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Karma Elephant

This from Andrew Sullivan's site today. Couldn't have put it better myself:

'So far today I have gotten the usual daily spam e-mail from various fringe and self-acclaimed conservative groups and personages — variously alleging that McCain was not a real war hero, questioning his conduct during capture, commenting on his marital situation, and suggesting he was unhinged and identical to Ted Kennedy, Hillary (fill in the blanks).'

There is karma here, isn't there? These were the same kind of tactics used against John Kerry in 2004 - except then they were accepted by the conservative establishment. What's triking to me is how the fanaticism of the far-right, aided and abetted by Republican elites, may now be coming back to bite them. McCain is the victim. But perhaps the poison the right has peddled in these past few years has to work its way through the GOP bloodstream before being overcome.


Since the days of Terry Dolan, the GOP has been a bile-spewing, filth-propagating, divisive, and sharply polarizing force--and not just in the USA. But we're talking elections, and that's a home issue, and the GOP has studiously cultivated division, fear, suspicion, distrust, and outright rage in every election from Soddy Daisy's chief of public signage to the nation's President.

Given that heritage, it's ironic, and amusing, to watch three of its chief ghouls go after John McCain, one of their own, still yet again, but this time, apparently without regard for their party as a whole. I hope they keep it up, the Limbaughs, the Dobsons, the Coulters. If they fail--and I think they will; I think McCain will be the GOP candidate--they will have written "DOA" on the Far Right wing of the GOP, and that just can't be a bad thing, now can it?

These guys seem to have missed the memo that evangelicals woke up sometime around 2005 and realized that the environment, energy, the war, and poverty are (duh!) issues relevant to conservative Christians. Since then, there hasn't been a highly focused, united flying wedge of conservative Republicans.

Since then, that very constituency has seen, time and again, evidence that one of their own, W, is a liar, a thief, and a profligate with the national treasury, the national environment, and the nation's youth. From this undeniable evidence, they have rightly concluded that they cannot trust--guess who--Limbaugh, Dobson, Coulter, Savage, Reed, and all the rest.

They've decided to face the future armed with their own intelligence and the evidence of their own lives, with reference to the New Testament as contrasted with Leviticus.

Let's hope they continue to do so. They will vote for an Obama before they vote for a Huckabee or a Romney.

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