When this campaign cycle began, I supported Guiliani. I knew nothing about Huckabee, since then I’ve heard him say a lot of idiot god-stuff, he’s apparently playing the card that “the Republican establishment hates Evangelicals, its time we got in their face and nominated one, who happens to be me“, which is a pretty weak argument.
McCain I didn’t like because he made his bones being a “maverick”, which means bashing Republicans and President Bush, which of course the MSM loves to report, and McCain loves press more than the Dallas Cowgirls love to get an ass-whuppin’ on national TeeVee. I also didn’t care for his “campaign finance reform”, but let’s face it, all that crap is esoterica and there are a million ways around it, and it sure didn’t stop the Swiftboaters. Its meaningless in the long run- the money will get out there, they can try to direct the flow but it will get out there anyway. Its a non-issue to me.
On the other subject, immigration, I go against the flow of doctrinaire xenophobic Mexican hating nativists that seem to suck up all the oxygen in the rightosphere. My grandparents were not born in this country. My great-grandparents, who were alive until I was a teenager, spoke only broken English. They ran a business. They worked for a living. They paid taxes. They venerated the flag, the president, the Cleveland Indians and the country.
It angers me that if they had been born 50-70 years later, people like Michele Malkin and half the right-o-sphere would like to see them denied citizenship.
I also find it very hard to find a single person on the right who can come up with a coherent rationalization to deny gays the right to be married in a legal, monogamous relationship, other than the fact that they hate most gays because they are on the other side of the political fence.
Furthermore, while I deplore abortion and think it is a very evil and terrible practice. I don’t believe in throwing a young girl, nor a middle-aged woman for that matter, into prison for making a very personal decision about their own body.
Lastly, I have spent years defending the Republican party against liberals who define it as the “racist” party, the party that hates black people, that is a sexist, repressive and oppressive patriarchy. Well, the fact that so many Republicans back Mitt Romney has pretty much left me at a loss to try to defend that position any more. And, it dovetails right in with the fact that most of those who back Romney do so because McCain is too liberal about immigration.
The petulant tantrums being thrown by Romney-backers over any success by McCain border on ludicrous. Dan Riehl is all het up because Charlie Crist, Governor of Florida (according to a Guiliani backer, certainly an unimpeachable source) had promised his support to Rudy but has changed to McCain!! Oh my paws and whiskers, what a sin. Of course, if he had backed Romney, whom Riehl supports, that would have been fine. But to back the Great Satan who wants to change the national language to Spanish is just going too far!
Following the demagoguing of McCain and the adoration of Romney I am more and more detecting a common thread- support for Romney because he of his hard line against immigration, his veiled racism and sexism (codified in the Book of Mormon, just Google “Mormon racism, Mormon intolerance, etc. for much much more), his support for further blurring the lines between state and religion, his glib “say whatever it takes” glad-handing campaign technique. His experience at proselytizing for his cult is being utilized for great effect in his campaign.
And the code-worded racism that lies just below the surface on many rightblogs can be camouflaged quite effectively using Romney’s rhetoric.
I’m disgusted for my party and particularly disgusted at bloggers who I had assumed were sincerely libertarian or socially conservative. Instead, I suspect the Romney campaign is giving the bigots, racists and xenophobes the cover they need to push the hateful policies they secretly espoused all along.
While I find Team Clinton would be a disaster for this country, I can see voting for Obama if the Republicans lose their minds and nominate Romney. I would actually volunteer and work for Obama’s campaign after leaving the Republicans. I still hold out hope McCain (or even a Guiliani comeback) will prevail, but I will also welcome the exodus of the disgusting haters who seem to have rallied around the ‘anybody but McCain” banner. The party is better off without them. They should dispense with the ‘conservative’ mask and just become the neo-John Birchers they are. At least it would be more honest. And the party will be better off without them.