Friday, October 17, 2008

Pandora's Box

So McCain has said that he is proud of his supporters. Really??? Check out these classy supporters at a McCain/Palin Rally from Oct 11, 2008 in Johnstown, PA.



When Karl Rove and George Bush unleashed their strategy of using divide and conquer tactics, they opened Pandora's Box. Now in the 8 years since Bush took office, Karl Rove and his minions have turned the Republican Party into a monster that they can not control. They have used the "us vs them" mentality, and they are unable to rein in the hatred even within their own party.

This thinking of either you are for America or you are against, leaves no room for any differing view points. They have brought religion into politics, resulting in a culture war, with God choosing party politics. Instead of promoting freedom, they are slowly poisoning the American Democratic process, and turning it into a American Version of the Taliban.

Recently, Conservative writers such as Christopher Buckley, whose father founded National Review a Conservative Magazine, Kathleen Parker, and Peggy Noonan, have experienced this disturbing trend, that their party no longer tolerates differences.

The intellectual conservatives have honestly written their view points regarding Sarah Palin and her deficiencies, and their candid views supporting Obama have been inundated with extreme reactions.

Kathleen Parker wrote about her concerns about Sarah Palin's qualification in the Washington Post.

She was then inundated with hate mail, which she wrote about:
Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself. Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down. Who says public discourse hasn't deteriorated? The fierce reaction to my column has been both bracing and enlightening. After 20 years of column writing, I'm familiar with angry mail. But the past few days have produced responses of a different order. Not just angry, but vicious and threatening.
Then we saw Christopher Buckley come out with his endorsement of Barack Obama,

His endorsement of Obama apparently angered and offended so many, that the the negative reaction resulted in his resignation.
"Within hours of my endorsement appearing in The Daily Beast it became clear that National Review had a serious problem on its hands,"
Kathleen Parker writes in defense of Buckley:
Christopher Buckley's endorsement of Barack Obama -- followed by his abrupt departure from the back page of the magazine his father founded, National Review -- has caused a ripple of contempt from the conservative right.

What does it mean that the right cannot politely entertain dissenting opinions within its ranks? What, if anything, does it portend that Buckley The Younger has bolted from the right, even resigning (with enthusiastic editorial approval) from the family flagship?

Peggy Noonan writes in her Op-Ed Piece in the WSJ:
But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office. She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains: What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for? For seven weeks I've listened to her, trying to understand if she is Bushian or Reaganite—a spender, to speak briefly, whose political decisions seem untethered to a political philosophy, and whose foreign policy is shaped by a certain emotionalism, or a conservative whose principles are rooted in philosophy, and whose foreign policy leans more toward what might be called romantic realism, and that is speak truth, know America, be America, move diplomatically, respect public opinion, and move within an awareness and appreciation of reality.

But it's unclear whether she is Bushian or Reaganite. She doesn't think aloud. She just . . . says things.
Here are just a few sample comments that readers have left, which are quite tame compared to what Parker received, but still show how they leave little room for dissension :
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Reply 7 - Posted by: kennowen, 10/17/2008 1:24:20 AM
Good LORD, Peg, if you cannot figure out the values and issues that Governor Palin cares about by now, maybe you aren't quite as bright as you claim!
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Reply 8 - Posted by: losgatos, 10/17/2008 1:26:16 AM
Peg is just such a snob.
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Reply 9 - Posted by: The Phantom, 10/17/2008 1:29:40 AM
No longer read her ramblings, she has gone to the dark side, never to be allowed to return.
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Reply 10 - Posted by: DoktorFranken, 10/17/2008 1:29:56 AM
Noonan's Loonyin'
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Here is a fact of life that is also a fact of politics: You have to hold open the possibility of magic.

Abracadabra! Poof! You're a toad, Peggy!

Then we have politicians like Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota, who seemingly resurrects the dark and ugly ghost of McCarthy:
"What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or Anti-America? I think the American people would love to see an expose like that."
Seriously???? Bachmann wants to have a litmus test on Congressional leaders as to how patriotic they are?

Even more alarming, Palin continues to pound out the "You are either for or against America" meme:
Palin also made a point of mentioning that she loved to visit the "pro-America" areas of the country, of which North Carolina is one. No word on which states she views as unpatriotic.
We are fighting two wars, have a financial crisis on our hands, with more and more Americans facing economic challenges, and all the Republican Party can offer is racism, hate, and violence.

Case in point, we have Mike Lunsford of Fairfield, Ohio. Note this moron couldn't even spell "Hussein" right!


There it is, right above the "McCain-Palin" sign: a make-shift ghost, hanging from a noose. A Barack Obama sign attached upside down. Obama's middle name: "Husain" spray painted and misspelled above.

Mike Lunsford hung the ghost in his yard. He spoke to us off-camera, saying his views could hurt his employers business ... but he says make no mistake: He doesn't want an African American running the country.

Lunsford says he believes Barack Obama is not a "full blooded American." And he says the United States is a white, Christian nation - and only with white Christians should be in power.



In a time of crisis, it's so important for all Americans to come together, yet instead of taking positive action, all they want to do is spread fear about "who is Obama": that he's a terrorist, unpatriotic, a "baby killer", un-American, a lover of gays (or other such euphemism), and that he's a communist.

Has it really come to this? Truly, I wonder if Karl Rove and George W. Bush realize in their zeal to win the Presidency, if they understand the destruction and division that they have brought upon the US has been worse than anything Osama Bin Laden could have crafted.
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