Monday, February 6, 2012

How to seem open-minded.

     I admire RobertSinners, the name attached to an opinionist over at Process Story, SC political consultant Wesley Donehue's latest demonstration that he, like Herman Cain, is the CEO of Self.
     RS has a piece up titled GOP and The Millenials: Can The Connection Be Made? [note to editor: spell check].
     In it he posits that young up-and-coming voters are your grandfather's Robert A. Taft, and that the Republican Party needs them, and ought to see that they need them.
     I used to argue things like that. You like to believe your party can adapt with the times and changing demographics.
     Alas, today's GOP ain't in a big tent mood. David Brooks was closer to the mark January 16 when he wrote of his tour of pre-primary South Carolina, "I was also struck, as in New Hampshire and Iowa, by the mood of this year's rallies. Republican audiences want a restoration. America once had strong values, they believe, but we have gone astray. We've got to go back and rediscover what we had. Heads nod enthusiastically every time a candidate touches this theme."
     Brooks continued, "I agree with the sentiment, but it makes for an incredibly backward-looking campaign. I sometimes wonder if the Republican party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return."
     You'll never find- anywhere in the Republican Party- a candidate who'll agree with RS' declaration, "We didn't grow up with the same divisions that our parents did. A Conservative stance, if you will.  A more interesting example is that our generation associates with everyone. We bas our friends and relationships upon personal character, whereas race, orientation, background was a strong influence of prior generations. As a result, we're more accepting of civil unions and gay marriage. This is because most of us have gay friends or family members as well, so it's just not as much of an issue for us. Most of us want the government out of our sex lives..."
     Today the GOP isn't just RS' parents' party, it's that of his grandparents and great-grandparents. They're splitting the majority of their primary votes for president between Rick Santorum, who genuinely wants to trade the bully pulpit for the bully bedroom of sex policing, and Newt Gingrich, who declared in 2008, "I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion."
    Which it what makes it intriguing, if not downright ridiculous, to read RS' essay in Process Story, the house organ of a GOP consulting house that devotes itself to making and keeping SC government in the hands of the most narrow-minded, non-adaptive, bigoted people it can find donors to buy elections for. You gotta wonder what they were thinking running it.
     If anything.
    

2 comments:

  1. With today's political consultants, most any viewpoint can be put forth for the right amount of money or desire to appeal to a certain demographic.

    And next week, the opposing viewpoint will be put forth by the very same folks. It's just a business to them.

    By the way, it's good to see you're back. Your insight has been sorely missed over these past few months.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks very much for the welcome- ai have found a little head-clearing time very useful. I agree entirely with your assessment of what consultants will do/say for money (most of the film The Magic Christian comes to mind), but I am still puzzled by why that site'd post something so clearly anathema to everyone its ringmaster does bidness with. There's just no upside to pretended tolerance.

    ReplyDelete