Why I'm a Rogue Republican

My old California pals Bob and Larry, who are both wealthy, bigwig Republicans, are not happy with me. They are accusing me of having become a liberal because of my criticism of President George Bush and my evident lack of enthusiasm for Sen. John McCain's Republicans.

My pals are wrong. I've been a lifelong Republican and plan to spend all Eternity as one. I enlisted in the US Army as an infantryman during the Vietnam War when so many of today's `patriotic' Republicans - the ones with those little American flag lapel pins - were dodging the draft or playing weekend warrior in the National Guard.

For decades, angry leftwing readers have branded me a `fascist hyena,' `CIA agent,' and `American imperialist.' Now Bob and Larry think I've gone off the lefty deep end because I opposed the ruinous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and because I'm even grudgingly ready to pay higher taxes just to get the calamity-prone Republicans out of power.

As a lifelong, rock-ribbed Republican, I am more likely to become a Hari Krishna or Rosicrucian than a liberal Democrat!

So please call me a `rogue Republican.'

I've always been a moderate, conservative Eisenhower Republican who believes in small government, low taxes, saving, hard work, individual freedoms, and avoiding overseas adventures whenever possible.

As a child, I saw President Dwight Eisenhower's inauguration in Washington and treasure the memory to this day. For me, Eisenhower was the embodiment of America's finest qualities: courage, honesty, human decency, modesty and plain speaking. He warned Americans of the danger of the military-industrial complex, a term he coined, and called for global nuclear disarmament.

I've said it before and say it again: I like Ike. When Eisenhower was president, America was respected and admired around the non-Communist world.

I have high regard for Sen. John McCain and believe he would make a fine president. But he showed terrible judgment in picking Sarah Palin as Vice President, and by surrounding himself with neocon advisors like Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Randy Scheunemann, Elliot Abrams and other extremists who played a major role in creating the frightful foreign affairs mess the US now faces. They have made America hated around the globe.

Equally bad, today's Republicans are no longer a party of the democratic center. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush and Dick Cheney packed their administration with rabid neocon warmongers who drove the nation and Republican Party so far right it flirted at times with fascism.

When I hear `Republican' these days, the words that comes to my mind are: arrogance, ignorance, and just plain dumbness.

Religious fundamentalists have become the bedrock of the Bush presidency. Today, 44-50% of Republican voters call themselves born-again Christian fundamentalists who believe every word of the Bible is true. Their most urgent foreign policy goal is to recreate Biblical Israel so their Messiah can return and destroy the planet.

That is no longer my party. The Grand Old Republican Party of Lincoln and Eisenhower has been hijacked by America's rural heartland and the southern-fried Bible Belt. The Republican Party no longer primarily speaks for most educated, worldly, city-dwelling Americans.

McCain's choice of an evangelical Christian ultra conservative, Gov. Sarah Palin, a woman of stunning vulgarity and ignorance, is testimony to the dumbing down of the party and its transformation into a populist religious movement. But he may have had to do so. Without Palin, many on the Christian right, cool about McCain, would not have even voted, assuring his defeat.

Note to Bob and Larry: I haven't changed my politics and remain firmly in the center. But the Republican Party has lurched so far to the right that the old center looks like the left to many Republicans. My party abandoned me in the year 2000.

Barack Obama is dead wrong to propose raising taxes or sending more troops to Afghanistan, an ignoble conflict he mislabels `the good war.' But he certainly is no socialist, as Palin charges. Nationalizing the nation's banks is socialist. Urging world domination neocon-style is National Socialist.

Raising taxes for the wealthy is not socialist, just a Democratic Party shibboleth that has been proven counter-productive time and again.

Republicans disgraced the nation by all their lies about Iraq, endorsing torture, assassinations, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, secret prisons, kidnapping, kangaroo courts, spying on US citizens and undermining America's Constitution. Too many cowardly Democrats joined this lynch mob. Such vile behavior made me ashamed to call myself an American.

The Republican Party now speaks for many rich fat cats, the military-industrial-petroleum complex, and some of the least educated, most backwards, most prejudiced Americans. McCain and Palin have shamelessly stoked anti-black, anti-Muslim and anti-foreign hatred and fear among them during this campaign. So, to a lesser degree, did Hilary Clinton.

Gen. Colin Powell did the right thing by breaking with John McCain, denouncing racism and Islamophobia, and warning of the party's lurch to the far right. However, I wish he had also come clean regarding all the lies about Iraq he delivered at the UN. The good general still owes us an explanation.

America desperately needs a reborn, moderate Republican Party freed from narrow-minded religious ideology and ruralism that will return the nation to its former democratic values and multilateral policies. This was the United States the world used to respect.

Comments

[WarriorLemming]

And you sir are a true patriot, God bless you.

[3fingerbrown]

The GOP reminds me of a common scenario in baseball: A once-mighty team has suddenly grown old at the same time. There aren't, as far as I can see, any young superstars coming up from the minors to replace the team's aging mainstays. In the World Series of politics, the GOP had to rely on a pitcher eight years past his prime to match up against Obama, the dazzling young pheenom. This speaks volumes about the paucity of talent throughout the organization.

A good baseball GM knows that such situations call for a complete rebuilding phase: reassessing the organizational philosophy, scouting and signing talented young players, and patiently bringing those youngsters up the ladder rung by rung until they're ready for prime time.

I thought Howard Dean did a fine job as the Democrats' "GM" during their rebuilding phase--the party identified and nurtured several good, young candidates for this election cycle at the local, state, and national level. The RNC's next chairman/GM needs to do the same. (Helpful hint from an old lefty: Reorganizing the party in such a way that having an idea or getting a good education isn't considered a sin might be the first step in attracting young talent.)

[JKOSully]

It's a shame so many seem to put party above country.

Many who aligned themselves with the Republican party long ago for sound reasons, still follow the party line, even though the soundness and reasons are long gone. In fact, in ways, the "Republican party" is the inversion of what it was originally meant to stand for.

[RepublicanBrain]

I am, also, a minimalist-government type Republican. I'm pretty sure that's the definition of the word, and what separates them from liberals. It's not abortion, it's not religion, it's not any of that; it's government size.

Barack Obama will not make a good president. Perhaps he's merely naive, perhaps he doesn't think things through, but his economic policy will do horrible things to an economy that is not robust (there, didn't even use the "r" word) and his idea of health care will cost more people coverage, all because of two not-so-little words: pre-existing conditions.

I wish that the small government, anti tax Republicans (paleo-cons, I guess, as opposed to neo-cons) would take back the party. Perhaps it would be a real example for the neo-cons to follow to change them back. Then again, if Obama enforces his plan to financially cripple the nation, we might not have to worry too much.

[boophus]

We aren't financially crippled already? Wow that is a case of ignoring what is going on.

The opinions of stubborn and blindered republicans who are laying onto Obama the problems brought to us by the behavior of republicans in last 28 years but especially in the last 8 years is a foreshadowing of the tactics to come.
I think this continuing put down of a man that many see as inspirational is the product of small minds who are rigid and stubborn and unable to accept that others may be right. So I really don't care what your opinion is because I see you a another petty mind who seeks only to be proven right at any cost including alienating a large portion of the population.

Until they shed the theocratical element the republicans have nothing of value to offer to the national dialogue because they are currently the "Don't tax the rich, BORROW & SPEND" party.
Just look at the statistics since the Reagan years. Republicans not only spent more than any democratic administration but they invaded countries, damaged the constitution and insulted & threatened over half the population .
To try to even begin to ask that the excessive military budget be reduced sends many of them into the ozone clutching thier genitals. Thier idea of foreign policy is to invade , bully and force our form of government on others in order to control resources and people.

[jalowe1957]

I was attending a trade show earlier today when I was sitting in a massage chair alongside a distaff Republican. She admitted to me she voted for Obama because she was turned off by the hijacking of the GOP by the evangelical right-wing-nuts and that she was troubled by McCain's (imposed-upon) selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, particularly since there were more intelligent women that McCain could have chosen, like Elizabeth Dole and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who were obviously better informed and versed than Palin ever was, or ever will be, for that manner.

Let's face it, the GOP has managed to alienate itself from its supporters with their choices, and now they're paying dearly.

[hudsuckerproxy]

Hopefully rationality will prevail and moderate Republicans (assuming there are any left) will succeed in taking their party back from the neocons and fundies who hijacked it.

Mr. Margolis, I enjoyed your appearances on "Studio 2" over the years and hope to see you on some of the current TVOntario programs.

[CalDoug]

Great post! I am a moderate former Republican, now Democrat who agrees with Republican positions on many economic issues, but the "arrogance, ignorance, and just plain dumbness" you describe keeps me a Democrat.

[xrepublican]

NEWSFLASH - Big mistake saying ANYTHING expressing your disapproval.

You're now probably on a list of 'Disloyal Traitors' to be purged. The Republican Party does not WANT any 'divergence of views.' You're either a lockstep loyalist or a traitor. Look at the reaction to valid criticism by the intellectual conservative leadership. The lunatics HAVE taken over the asylum and they DON'T want anyone telling them to take their meds or act rationally.

Odd how the RepublicanParty has become all they once fought against in Communism. Party Loyalty trumps loyalty to the nation or Constitution. The Department of Justice is simply one more tool for the Party to maintain control. The sole focus of the Party is to enrich and preserve the power and wealth of the Nomenklatura.

[Pdubya]

Dear Sir: I hold many of your concerns and representations. The neo-cons have indeed highjacked true conservative representation. That said, we live in a plutocracy, exampled in the many atrocious bills that we've passed (FISA, bailout, Patriot Act, etc) and engaged in illegal wars or the funding of them thereof. It is truly a travesty.

I long for the days when statesmen such as Dr. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich present their common-ground concerns and it is those that rise to a vote in the House or Congress, instead of the dangerous centrist-state-corporate lobby policies we witness today.

I invite you to join the Campaign For Liberty: www.campaignforliberty.com You will find there true conservatives, greens, anti-war liberals, paleoconservatives, libertarians of all ilk, ...Americans, finding common ground: Liberty.

Freedom is popular. We can't forget this.

[newshawk14]

Mr. Margolis, I knew a very intelligent life long conservative, who had worked as a doctor of
physiology for the Harry Diamond Labs. He was involved in the research to detect the best
means of detecting explosives. It turned out that rats and dogs beat out all physical means
of detection. One day we were discussing the idea, that private industry always outperforms
government, when he offered up the thesis that government should own the networks, and
allow private industry to compete over them. First off this gets rid of government oversight
and forces companies to genuinely compete when they no longer have a monopoly position.
I happen to be of a liberal leaning, but still recognize a damn good idea when I see it.

[Samson1]

Actually, sir, you sound like a blue dog democrat. The first and last guy who held your beliefs was Ike!

[InjunTrouble]

Eric Margolis has been apologist for Pakistan as well as China for many years. I did not even realize he was a US citizen till today, I thought he was from some middle eastern country.

He was so happy when Pakistan developed the Islamic bomb. His dream has been that the Islamic world becomes a powerful force in world led by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia with help from China - at least that is what he usually says. Why would a US citizen want that? This guy is strange.

[KillTheMessenger]

Now, now, let's not get all teared up about losing. This is not kindergarten.

[HeevenSteven]

I have a wild hypothesis. McCain Picked Palin just to put a stick in the eye of the party establishment because they wouldn't let him pick Lieberman. He doesn't like the whackos who control the Republican party an more than you or we do, and he did this knowing he'd lose, cuz he's a patriot and he put American first.... how's that? crazy huh?

[Pdubya]

I'd buy that if I didn't think that McCain wasn't an insider. His record shows he was....

What amazes me is that people think there isn't outside organizations and people that put forward the candidates in either party.

Think Vegas. The house always wins.

[Pettit]

Hey! I like this rogue republican!

It's so refreshing to hear people acknowledging their party's blunders. As an independent, I vote for the best man. This time is BO.

I don't like the absolute right nor the absolute left. The middle is where is at. That is the most representative form of government.

[Pdubya]

I don't like the absolute left or the absolute right, either. However, the danger is thinking that the center is the answer. It is the plutocratic center that has brought us the CRA, NAFTA, Patriot Act, FISA, Military Commissions Act, funding for illegal wars, and the bailout. What we need to do is unite the "far" left and "far" right commonalities, expoused in the third parties and in true representation exhibited by such representative statesmen as Kaptur, Paul, Kucinich, etc.

We have been divided, and by design. It is folly to think that a demorat controlled Congress, House, and Executive Branch will do more to represent the populace than something a inept and corrupt GOP party could muster towards fighting over a shrinking pie of libery, money supply or policy.

I want change, don't get me wrong. I want a repeal of the Patriot Act, FISA bill, Military Commissions Act, a non-interventionist foreign policy, and economic sovereignty. Is that strictly a conservative standpoint? No. It is common ground.

Except that our power-elite unitlaterally ignore their constituents...exampled fully in the latest passing of the bailout. Who will challenge the Federal Reserve's authority? If they couldn't do that in the last 37 years, what makes you think an Obama administration is the answer?

So?...the pendulum has swung. How about we take away the wire from those who swing the pendulum/