Letter From America
The dumbing down of the Republican Party
THE Republican Party used to be the party of new ideas, and intellectuals like late William F. Buckley. In a tell tale sign of how much things have deteriorated, after Buckley's son, Christopher, endorsed Barack Obama for president last week, the subscribers to his father's publication, National Review, forced him to resign from the magazine!
When conservative columnist Kathleen Parker called Sarah Palin ignorant of foreign and economic affairs and asked her to resign from the VP position, she received over 12,000 threatening Emails!
Last month, The New York Times' conservative columnist David Brooks lamented that in their disdain for the elitists, the GOP has now become an anti-intellectual and anti-education party!
The soul of the Republican Party has been taken over by racist, semi-fascists thugs like radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh and Fox News Channel's fuhrer Sean Hannity.
All this proved too much for the most prominent African-American Republican, General Colin Powell. On October 19, he endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president. It was more than an endorsement; it was a comprehensive denunciation of his party. General Powell chastised the McCain campaign for its negative tone, for its obsession with forcibly linking Obama with domestic terrorist William Ayers, for moving too far to the right and for becoming a "narrow" party.
Gen. Powell also complained that senior Republican Party officials told him that "Obama is a Muslim." The general then exploded: the correct answer is Obama is and always has been a Christian. But the proper answer is: what if he were a Muslim American? Can't a 7-year old Muslim American boy or girl aspire to be the president of the US?
Gen. Powell then recounted a photograph he saw of a mother praying at the tombstone of her son at the national cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. There were Purple Hearts and other awards of bravery etched on the boy's tombstone; however instead of a cross or a Star of David, the tombstone had an Islamic crescent and star marked on it. The grave belonged to a 20-year Muslim American boy from New Jersey who enlisted after 9/11 (when he was 14) and died fighting for his country in Iraq.
Senator McCain dismissed Gen. Powell's endorsement of Obama as "expected." What he meant is: naturally a black man will endorse a black man! Powell countered that if that was the case, he would have endorsed Obama months ago.
He agonised over the decision to disappoint his friend of 25 years John McCain. But he came to the conclusion that America needed a transformational leader, who is unflappable under pressure and who understands the nuances of the horrendous financial and security catastrophes that confront America.
Powell had served President Ronald Reagan as assistant national security advisor, Bush senior as the national security advisor and Joint Chief of Staff, and Bush Jr. as the Secretary of State. For a long time Powell was the jewel in the Republican Party. As soon as he endorsed Barack Obama, Powell became "just another black man!" Rush Limbaugh ridiculed Powell's endorsement of Obama as "racial."
Beginning in 1988, the Republican Party has adopted the policy of winning the presidency at any cost through lying and negative campaigning. They Willie Hortoned Michael Dukakis in 1988, swift-boated John Kerry in 2004 and are attempting to William Ayers Barack Obama to defeat. They are willing to lie, to demonise and destroy the credibility of the Democratic opponent to win.
With all their energies spent on winning at all cost, very little is left for governing after winning. All the Republican candidates who had demonised their opponents to win -- Nixon, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. -- turned out to be catastrophic failures once in office.
Watergate scandal forced Nixon to resign. With an approval rating of 90% after Gulf War in 1991, Bush Sr. was hounded out of office a year later in 1992 as the economy sank into recession. With America mired in two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the financial tsunami threatening Americans' livelihood, a consensus is developing that Bush Jr. is the worst President in the US's history.
Interestingly, Ronald Reagan never engaged in negative campaigning, and he is the most successful Republican president of the last fifty years.
Richard Nixon had a pathological dislike for John Kennedy and the Ivy League (Harvard) education he represented. Nixon's Southern Strategy was geared towards wooing the southern whites towards the Republican Party because the Democratic Party of Lyndon Johnson had enacted the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts for the blacks.
The Republican Party has traveled that prejudicial path ever since, making the Republican Party the party of the whites. Not a single Republican US congressmen or senator is black. The McCain campaign is calling Omaba a "socialist," who will usher in a "welfare" society. There are racial overtones here: "lazy" blacks are supposed to be on "welfare."
Anti-elite and anti-education stance of the Republican Party was reflected in the choice of their candidates. In 2000, Al Gore was demonised as an elite; Bush was marketed as someone average Americans would like to have a bear with. Although how George W. Bush of wealthy lineage, who attended Yale and Harvard (although he does not seemed to have learned much) qualifies as an average Joe is hard to fathom.
This year Republicans are labeling Obama an elite, while celebrating Joe Six-packs, Joe the Plumber from Ohio, and Sarah Palin, the anti-intellectual VP candidate.
With Palin they may have gone too far. Gen. Colin Powell pronounced her unfit to be president, as did Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's speech-writer, among others. Americans are waking up to the fact that the Americans president should be able to do more than drink beer with the average Joe or Jane.
With George W. Bush's failure of intellect vividly on display, Americans are beginning to believe that intelligence and education are not such bad attributes in a president after all. They are now considering voting for the smartest guy, even if he is not of the same skin pigmentation as they are.
The consequences of emphasis on education by the Democrats and disdain for the same by the Republicans have been highlighted by one recent event. While Sarah Palin attended six colleges before graduating and the Republican opinion makers are barely educated, a liberal, Democratic columnist for The New York Times, Paul Krugman of Princeton University, won this year's Nobel Prize for Economics!
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