posted 10-06-2004 12:39 PM         

By Garrison Keillor

August 26, 2004

Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once,

it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed

spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their

communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all

ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier

elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat

Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element.

The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero ofD-Day,

who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought

the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway

System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and

gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American

arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeoned - and there

was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were

giants compared to today's. Richard Nixon was the last Republican

leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor.

In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated

southward down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea

of public service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great

Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of

pirates that diverted and fascinated the media by their sheer

chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who,

while George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a pass and

made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon moderate vanished like

the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry white men who rose

to power on pure punk politics. "Bipartisanship is another term

for date rape," says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the GOP.

"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the

size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the

bathtub." The boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy.

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of

hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based

economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of

convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking

midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts

in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks,

Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong's

moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to

diminish the rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch

president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of

information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble

of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1

reason the rest of the world thinks we're deaf, dumb and dangerous.

Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild

swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering!

Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms

and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires!

Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain,

where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age

reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign

of Divine Grace.

Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform

of tragedy - the single greatest failure of national defense in our

history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put

this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White

House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to

the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to

lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government

impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was

undertaken for the president's personal satisfaction but sold to the

American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose

purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking

place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working

beautifully.

The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the

death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has

survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what

happens to ours. The omens are not good.

Our beloved land has been fogged with fear - fear, the greatest

political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a

drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy

and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can

appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution,

eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a

standstill, stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich.

There is a stink drifting through this election year. It isn't the

Florida recount or the Supreme Court decision. No, it's 9/11 that we

keep coming back to. It wasn't the "end of innocence," or a turning

point in our history, or a cosmic occurrence, it was an event, a lapse

of security. And patriotism shouldn't prevent people from asking hard

questions of the man who was purportedly in charge of national

security at the time.

Whenever I think of those New Yorkers hurrying along Park Place or

getting off the No.1 Broadway local, hustling toward their office on

the 90th floor, the morning paper under their arms, I think of that

non-reader George W. Bush and how he hopes to exploit those people

with a little economic uptick, maybe the capture of Osama, cruise to

victory in November and proceed to get some serious nation-changing

done in his second term.

This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray us Democrats as

embittered academics, desiccated Unitarians, whacked-out hippies and

communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the party of the

Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow over and over the

footage of firemen in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and

bodies being carried out and they will lie about their economic

policies with astonishing enthusiasm.

The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and

by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what

Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii has

humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and

school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what

books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the town and

clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and mark up the constitution on

behalf of intolerance and promote the corporate takeover of the public

airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them.

This is a great country, and it wasn't made so by angry people. We

have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchildren in better shape

than however we found it. We have a long way to go and we're not

getting any younger.

Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in

time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank

you, dear reader. It's a beautiful world, rain or shine, and there is

posted 10-06-2004 10:18 PM         

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posted 10-06-2004 11:12 PM         

Why don't you NPR people try running your radio network without taxpayer money for a year? How about competing in the marketplace of ideas without the crutch of money taken out of the paychecks of working people? I bet NPR wouldn't last 3 months in most markets.

They say they are the party of tollerance and acceptance and unity yet, their actions and words completely contradict that.

Look at all the names garrison is calling folks. Is that to bring us together?

Listen to the radio ads they spew across this great country trying to scare the vast minorities into thinking we are some 3rd world country where militia will keep them from voting. Is this how they plan to unite a country?

For 8 years, character and service didn't matter a hoot. Now they lambast the president for "only" flying a fighter jet in the National Guard. Regardless of political position, this is a complete disservice to all the men and woman who have or are serving in the National Guard and trivializes what they do.

posted 10-18-2004 10:08 AM         

And what is this "sewage" about Bush lieing about Iraq. I bet you think Michael Moore is a saint.

4 more for W - then it's time for Rudy!

Keep Hillary out!

quote:

---

Originally posted by mayordoug:
I know I'm a lonely voice calling in the wilderness here, but I felt the need to bring this back to the top of the list. Neither candidate is the best. Unfortunately, I feel that one is definitely the worst. The last president lied about a BJ. He was impeached. This one lied about Iraq, and over 1000 young men and women are dead. Thousands of others have been disabled because of this lie. I know how I'm voting.

---

Let's make this perfectly clear to those on the left that can't seem to understand it. bill clinton was not impeached for just lying about sex although, I'm amazed that democrats are so nonchalant about adultery. bill clinton was impeached for 1) perjury, 2)obstruction of justice, and 3)wagging his finger at us and lying to us all.

Now I'm seeing some really stupid (no other word describes it) bumper stickers from the left stating, "bill clinton lied but, nobody died". Madaline Albright even stated this.

Well, they are wrong. Explain that to the families that lost loved ones on the USS Cole, Bosnia, WTC bombing in 93, etc.

Now as far as lying about WMD, 1)chemical weapons are WMD and they HAVE found those, 2) Any number of reports show Sadam was trying to accquire weapons grade plutonium, 3) bill clinton, john kerry, and ted kennedy ALL STATED Iraq HAD WPD.

posted 10-19-2004 02:51 PM         

quote:

---

Originally posted by ALLEY CAT:
M/Doug - I believe terrorism is not limited to the location of Afghanistan. I'll agree we should have kept the heat on when we first went there, but looking for one man hiding in a hole in a mountain, is a long shot. I'm still looking for the Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine here in Arizona.

I'm really concerned that both candidates have skirted the questions about protecting our borders along Mexico. Tens of thousands of people sneak into this country every month by crossing the Mexico border. If you think my figure is a stretch,,,you'd be wrong. They are coming to America and nobody is stopping them.

---

I'm not sure if building a Berlin type wall is the answer because folks could always just swim around it in Texas and California.

Seeing as how we know were the really bad guys are coming from, we could just profile them but, you know what the ACLU is screaming about profiling.