Back in the late 1990s I wrote for a small town monthly newspaper. This past weekend my son was reading one of my columns and commented that all I had to do is change a few names and the column could run with very few modifications.
I live in a rural town that votes mostly Republican, but there have been changes over the years, most notably in the 1990s and in the first decade of the new century. I am well known in the community for my leftist leanings and yet was elected to the village council and later was asked to serve as the school superintendent.
Follow me over the fold and see if you agree that the column remains accurate today.
Here is the column written seventeen years ago.
Perusing the list of nominees for the upcoming village elections I noticed that there are more Democratic candidates than Republicans. Now I am not suggesting that the village will lose its Republican tilt, but the change in the last few years is striking. We may eventually become an authentic two party community.
Some of my friends are solid Republicans and I am sure that this development must be somewhat unsettling. Even worse for them was the re-election of Bill Clinton last year.
Let's face it. Clinton was not the most impressive of opponents. He is nearly as inept as George Bush and while he hasn't yet matched the scandals of the Reagan administration, he certainly is making a valiant effort in that direction.
So why couldn't the Republicans defeat Clinton? Where is the tidal wave of Republicanism that was supposed to flood our nation in the aftermath of the 1994 election? Since many of my Republican friends are genuinely good people, I offer the following constructive criticism in the sprit of the season so that perhaps they may be able to affect a change in the Grand Old Party.
First of all, my conservative friends, let's be honest. Your party's leaders are on the fringe - extremists, to the right of Atilla the Hun. On the national scene, there is Jesse Helms, a virulent racist who also unabashedly promotes the interests of Big Tobacco. Oliver North is an admitted liar and proud of it. Newt Gingrich and his cronies in Congress are ideologues who arrogantly tried to bully the country into submission by shutting down the government.
In our own state we have David Jaye who is so out of touch with the real world that he actually believes that white males suffer more discrimination than any other group. Under Republican Governor John Engler, Michigan is becoming more like a gulag each day as we spend over fifteen percent of the state budget on prisons, second in the country and nearly triple the national average.
Our honorable Governor has a mean streak that would make Ebeneezer Scrooge proud. Incidentally, a syndicated conservative columnist, Joseph Sobran, wrote a piece defending the mythical Scrooge, suggesting that Bob Cratchit should have been grateful just to be employed at all. Leave it to the humorless right wing to sneer at compassion during the season that is synonymous with charity and giving.
On talk radio, Rush Limbaugh has such difficulty with the truth that his supporters finally justified his mendacity by claiming he is merely an entertainer.
Then there are Pat Robertson and the assorted telemarketing televangelists - the modern day heirs to the biblical Pharisees and money changers in the temple.
In the business world the darling of the right is a fellow who goes by the name of Chainsaw Dunlop. His specialty is corporate takeovers and destroying the lives of workers in those unfortunate companies.
This list is certainly not exhaustive. The antics of Robert Dornan and the inane rantings of G. Gordon Liddy deserve mention; and we shouldn't forget xenophobic Pat Buchanan.
There are certainly Republicans of quality but the party really seems to have been captured by the irrational right. Sadly, mainstream Republicans appear to lack the courage to challenge this mindset. Worse they pander to the excesses in hopes of gaining votes from the political margin.
Gordon Liddy advocated shooting federal officials between the eyes and several conservatives defended him, even after the tragedy at Oklahoma City. Apparently one must be wearing a KKK hood, ala David Duke, to earn even a mild rebuke from the GOP hierarchy.
So it is an unfortunate fact the many Republicans, at least the ones grabbing the headlines, are rather extreme. More incredibly, they dare to question the morality and patriotism of anyone, even someone such as Colin Powell, who doesn't march lockstep behind their banner.
Republicans would be much better served by leaders who were capable of reasoned thought, who did not equate greed with virtue, who didn't kindle hatred toward the poor and minorities, who didn't fear women, and who were not hypocrites
On the subject of hypocrisy, we are all somewhat guilty of this weakness, but the Republican leadership has seemingly made this vice a criteria for membership. They believe in morality, but for others, not themselves. Several examples are illuminating.
Question: What does Bill Clinton have that Bob Dole, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and John Engler don't have? Answer: His first wife. Marriage is a sacred bond except when it comes to Republicans.
And the Clinton's appear to have raised a well adjusted daughter who loves and values her family. Contrast this with the dysfunctional Reagan family.
Republican decry the collapse of the family but it appears that a leading cause of this collapse is becoming a Republican politician. They prattle on about the President's indiscretions while glossing over the many marital infidelities among their own.
President Clinton's war record is often a target of the right, but say what they want, at least he didn't want anyone else to go to Vietnam either. What did Newt Gingrich do during the Vietnam War? Rush Limbaugh? Phil Gramn? John (Two Pound) Engler? What was Reagan's war record? And then there is Dan Quayle who actually had the audacity to compare his time in the National Guard to real combat service. Anyone who grew up in that era knows that people were desperately trying to get into the Guard to avoid going to Vietnam. Quayle, typical of the hypocrites on the right, has no shame and is shocked when others don't buy into the scam. Samuel Johnson was correct when he wrote that patriotism was the "last refuge of the scoundrel."
Term limits is another favorite conservative cause - unless they are talking about heir own. Storm Thurmond and Jesse Helms have been n Congress so long that they may have personally known Teddy Roosevelt. Our own Governor Engler never has been anything but a politician, having been elected to the Michigan statehouse at the age of 21, right out of college. He claims his occupation as farmer but many city slickers have probably thrown as much hay as that boy.
Michigan passed a term limits law but when faced with giving up their offices, Republicans have complained loudly, including our own legislator. One Republican actually considered having his wife run in his place. Term limits is a bad idea, but it is a Republican idea and they should at least attempt to abide by the spirit of their own legislation.
And on it goes. The Republicans loudly trumpet their concern about the middle class while their tax cuts benefit the wealthy. They accuse unions of being greedy but during the Reagan years the disparity in income between he wealthy and the rest of society grew so wide that writer James Mischner rightly described the 80s as "the decade of shame". Any tax break that the middle class received was more than offset by the decrease in real wages.
Personally, I'll keep my union and my standard of living and gladly pay the extra $100 in taxes. I'll even throw in another hundred or so if the Republicans can restrain themselves from trying to force their so-called "values" on the rest of society.
It was a Republican, Abraham Lincoln, who once said that though you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time,you can't fool all of the people all of the time. We will see.
Some of my best friends are Republicans. They are a credit to their party. Unless they and other rational members of their organization can reclaim control of their party, they will see the GOP slide back into minority status soon.
I find that this column remains accurate in today's political climate, with one glaring exception. Although at the time I wrote this column I hadn't voted for a mainstream Presidential candidate in over 25 years, I nonetheless failed to recognize that the Republicans would have one important ally that would assist them and help prevent their slide into irrelevance. That ally was the Democratic Party.
DLC strategies would push the Democratic Party to the right and would essentially blur many of the lines between the two major parties. The Democratic Party would adopt neo-liberal economic policies and neo-conservative foreign policies. They would choose to ignore their base in the pursuit of corporate donors. As a result, a political party that is even more insane now than it was 17 years ago controls not only both houses of Congress but also stands a chance of winning the Presidency in 2016.