Blog post

November 18, 2008 [LINK / comment]

Parker blames Christian Right

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker is still getting a lot of hate mail for her op-ed pieces criticizing the choice of Sarah Palin to be the GOP vice presidential nominee, but she's not backing down. In today's column she slammed the evangelical right wing for the misfortunes that have befallen the "erstwhile conservative party." (!) As the party has come to be dominated by low-brow moralizers who refuse to tolerate any deviation from their belief system, more and more normal voters finally lose their patience with the GOP and switch their allegiance. As Parker writes,

preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party -- and conservatism with it -- eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs.

Well put! That's the same basic point made in former Senator John Danforth in his book Faith and Politics; see my post from Oct. 2006. The worst part is the increasing hypocrisy that becomes manifested whenever religion and politics become so closely fused together. So why in the world aren't more people grasping something that is so obvious?

Any reasonably intelligent and level-headed person in Virginia or elsewhere knows very well what ails the Republican Party. With the feverish atmosphere of religious zeal that currently prevails, however, it is hard for anyone in a position of leadership to speak the truth openly. That is bound to change as the party loses more elections, as more people in the party will wake up to the monumental disaster that courting "The Base" has brought them.

Monarch in waiting

I heard Valerie Jarrett making this comment to Tom Brokaw on "Meet The Press" on Nov. 9, but the implications of the words didn't sink in until I watched it again on YouTube: "It is important that President-Elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule Day One..." [emphasis added]; hat tip to New England Republican. Yikes!

The mortgage debacle

For those who are too impatient to read lengthy articles on what the hell happened to our economy, there is an amusing and informative video on "The Mortgage Banking Meltdown" at youtube.com; hat tip to Connie.