Wouldn’t a Real "Moderate Republican" be a Democrat?
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
We are constantly amazed to find even our most progressive friends fall into the "moderate Republican" trap.
"Oh," we will hear, "He (or she) is such a nice person and good on choice and Head Start and things. We need to encourage moderation in the Republican Party."
Sorry, folks, that’s not our job.
Here’s the scoop: There are no moderate Republicans in Congress. The phrase itself is an oxymoron, given the current radical GOP agenda.
In this day and age, when one-party rule means that the issues so-called moderate Republicans champion never even come to a vote, all that they do is enable right wing, anti-democracy thuggish rule by giving the Straussian, Theocratic Republicans control of both houses of Congress.
This, in turn, enables the "Non-reality based" psychotic Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld crowd to continue trashing the Constitution and this nation. No House or Senate Committee has conducted any credible investigation of the Bush Administration or of the corrupt Republican Congress.
And the "moderate Republicans" enable this behavior.
What’s more, when their votes are really needed to pass an authoritarian, profiteering or anti-Constitutional Bush bill, they will vote with the caucus if their vote is needed to pass the legislation. "Moderate" votes that don’t affect the actual outcome of legislation don’t count. The extremist GOP strategists are smart enough to know that they have to let "moderates" vote for some "moderate" issues so that they can appear "moderate" come election time. Otherwise, the Republicans will lose suburban (for the most part) districts where there are Republican voters with some sanity.
In the 2006 election, there are no local races. You are either voting for a thuggish, Anti-American Revolution, Tory, dictatorial Republican Party or you are voting for supporters of the Constitution and democracy in the Democratic Party.
You are voting for who controls the House of Representatives and the Senate. Period.
No Republican will protect us from the ongoing dismantling of our Constitutional democracy nor from the ravages of leaders living in a world of delusion and failure. We repeat, not one so-called "moderate Republican" will have an iota of power to turn off the autopilot of national and planetary destruction that the Bush administration has turned on.
If the Republicans maintain control of both Houses of Congress, the "moderate Republicans" won’t be worth a bucket of warm spit. They will just be pawns that allow the GOP to keep the machine of corruption, secrets, the shredding of our Constitution, a spiraling deficit, the further gross enrichment of the wealthiest, and an unending war going on full strength.
BuzzFlash will cite as one example of this "moderate Republican" myth, the 10th Congressional District in Illinois. It is one of the wealthiest districts in the nation, on the North Shore of Chicago. We know it well. Donald Rumsfeld used to represent the area.
The current congressman for the district is "moderate Republican" Mark Kirk. Everyone like’s Mark. He’s a fine gent. Very polite and amiable. Every mom would like Kirk as a son-in-law. (He is taken, however.)
Okay, so one of his staffers was just caught trying to punish a wealthy Republican who defected to Kirk’s opponent by implying in an e-mail that one of his charities might not get any more government money if he didn’t get on the Kirk bandwagon. And Kirk just slapped the wrist of the staffer and said that it wouldn’t happen again. These "moderate Republicans" are a very compassionate lot, you see.
But that little insight into Mark Kirk is not the issue.
The issue is that his opponent, Democrat Dan Seals, is within striking distance of taking what is considered a safe Republican seat. If Seals were to win, that would help gain the seats necessary for Democratic control of the House.
So, here’s the irony, if Seals wins, he would actually be able to pass some of the "moderate" measures Kirk claims to support.
So if Mark Kirk wants to truly achieve his "moderate Republican" goals, he should vote for Seals.
If Mark Kirk disagrees, we’d like to know then why Congress has been run like the Politburo for the last decade – and what Mark Kirk did to prevent the right wing agenda from passing through Congress like a greased pig on a spit, or to protect House pages from pedophiles.
(Nancy Pelosi’s maternal instincts will kick in to protect our youth as compared to Hastert’s apparent decision to leave a gay stalker loose among the pages to preserve Republican Control of Congress.)
We encourage the same sort of thinking in races involving "moderate Republicans" around the nation. To achieve their alleged goals, you need to vote for the Democrat!
And what are "Republican moderates" doing as 102 Gis have now died this month in Iraq? (The count is probably higher by the time that you read this.)
Do "Republican moderates" like Kirk define victory the way Bush does: "Victory is not admitting I made a big mistake and letting people continue to die for it. That – pure and simply – is what victory is."
But, of course, Kirk -- and he is just an example here – can’t and won’t do anything to steer America back to its Constitutional foundations.
When you go to the voting booth, remember this: there are no "moderate Republicans."
Because given the realities of the current situation, a "moderate Republican" could only exist as a Democrat.
"Moderate Republicans" are just pieces Rove plays with on his chessboard.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
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Very good!
It would be virtually impossible to vote for any member of the GOP. All are Liberal and dispicable. It appears that none are moderate and if they are then they would be a centrist Dem.
I'm getting ready to duck.....
.....because I'm going to break with the crowd.
Some Republicans are more heinous than others. Some Democrats (thinking the 'L' word here) are just as bad.
Assuming that we achieve our best hopes next week, we will have a slim margin of control in the House and the Senate. The GOP will still be able to block and frustrate us from achieving our goals because we won't have the numbers to enforce cloture in the Senate or overcome a presidential (I'll capitalize it when we get one who was actually elected.) veto in the House.
I believe there are some Republicans in both houses of the legislature who will work with us once the stranglehold the GOP leadership has on power is broken. Willingness to work with them, as long as it does not involve abandoning our principles, serves our ends.
One of our complaints about the GOP has been the way their leadership's extreme partisanship has excluded Democrats from any influence whatsoever in the decision making process. I think we can be better than that.
tseving
-Surviving Bush one day at a time
Politics Plus
Moderation in pursuit of liberty is doomed.
The way that Gerrymandering works the majority of seats are largely Republican, so in a normal year Democrats win their seats by 95% and Republicans win by 55-60%. This is not a normal year, so there is enough of a "throw the bums out" attitude that "safe" 55% Republican seats are only as safe as vote theft can make them.
In 2008 they will not have that problem, they will still be safe Republican seats held by Democrats, and challenged by new Republicans with no bribery convictions yet. Diebold will still own the election process, and Bush might well be leaving but all the atrocious laws will still be on the books. We will have all the bad and little of the good.
Unless WE Fight!!! and change the dynamic. The Vote fraud must be cleansed. The Gerrymandering must be eliminated. The Constitution must be restored. The Government must be funded from someplace. The Congress cannot enforce RICO laws, but it must investigate and Make folks aware of what has happened to the country in the past 6 years.
The GOP will howl like stuck pigs that they are, and the Bush lapdogs will resume their "hounds of hell" role against Democrats. It will be a very rough time, but any falling off or going easy to reduce the squalling will bring defeat, and the Straussians are depending on that.
The only good GOOP is a dead GOOP
It's very simple....
either the Democrats win the House and the Senate, as the polls are indicating...
or,
the election is stolen again.
And in that case, be ready for ARMED INSURRECTION.
It's about enough of this shit !
According to the Constitution, habeas corpus can only suspended in times of armed rebellion.
Well if you trash my Constitution and my vote for the fourth time, I say it's time to give you what goes along with suspension of habeas corpus.
In that case rethugs watch out, as far as I am concerned each one of you is a domestic enemy to our cherished Constitution, "moderate" or not, Congressman or elected dog catcher or even registered as GOP... and I am sure many would then feel that your elimination by any and all means at any and all levels would be justified...
Also, besides GOP, let's not forget about INC, MSM, all Gestapo FEDS and WWJD tax exempt traitors to the First Amendment and separation of church / state.
These are the stakes. You want plink plink boom boom in the streets of America, go ahead, steal another one nazi vermin losers of 2 wars at once. I guarantee, you will lose this internal war too because my allegiance is to the Constitution and all my brothers of the resistance are with me.
I realize most are hopelessly addicted to cable and walmart, but there's enough of us real patriots left to bring back our Constitution to the prominence it deserves... and all you GOOP the rope you deserve.
Anyone not with me is against me. be ready.
One is not born a radical. One becomes a radical after the ideals he cherishes have been trampled one too many times by illegitimate twice unelected murderers of countless souls, and not to forget, even and almost most importantly, about 3000 on 9-11. We all know that wasn't the work of Bin Bogeyman...
--------------------------------------------
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -- Abraham Lincoln
"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the SUPREME INTERNATIONAL CRIME differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
-- US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, presiding over Nuremburg Trials in 1946.
Today there are ZERO moderate republicans
the Republican party has been hijacked by ultra right wing extremists who control the committees, agenda, etc...
ANYBODY who caucuses wth them is NOT a moderate. ANYBODY who enables them (Joe Lieberman) is NOT a moderate.
If Jim Leach, Olympia Snowe, and others want to form a 3rd party, or caucus as independents, then they would have every right to call themselves moderates.
But they don't do that. They voted to put the RW loonies in charge of congress. Every other vote of theirs after that means nothing in comparison.
Let's consider the career of Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa
Congressman Jim Leach, of Iowa's Second Congressional District, is counted as the most "liberal" Republican currently serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. Yeah, so...
The really only distingushing thing Leach is noted for in his thirty years career is being one of three Republican representatives voting against the Iraq War Resolution in 2002. That's it.
Yet The Des Moines Register endorsed the long time Congressman stating,"In its January 2006 issue, Congressional Quarterly ranked him first among Republicans who voted in opposition to their party. Leach voted 37.4 percent of the time against the position of the House Republican leadership and was at odds with the White House more than 50 percent of the time.
...Leach's experience as a 30-year congressman and his moderate views in a harshly partisan caucus make him a better choice." So what. He's powerless, therefore ineffectual. He's merely a placeholder, giving "harsh partisan" Republicans an edged in the U.S. House for committe assignments, etc.
Yet a Des Moines area anti-war/peace activist writes this about the ineffectual Leach:"We cannot thank Leach enough for his original courage, and we pray that the administration will listen to him now... Wha!? When did this administration ever listen to Jim Leach, moderate Republican. When did any Republican administration ever listen to Jim Leach, moderate Republican.
Moderation and "bipartisanship" is what got this nation into this conservative morass in the first place. The time for "moderate" or "liberal" Republicans is past.
Moderation
Moderate Republicans as Democrats, not necessarily. This depends on the criteria established for the designations. There are liberal and conservative social issues, financial issues, foreign policy issues and security issues. There is the underlying precept of the Government’s role in society in general. There are nuances to each of the previously mentioned subjects. It is virtually impossible to categorize a group of individual positions as strictly liberal, moderate or conservative. Is a moderate view one which is socially liberal and conservative on issues of finance and security? That leads to tolerance of gay marriage, the slaughter of Iraqi children and turning the American middle class into peasants. Is a moderate view one which allows for being “a little bit pregnant”. That leads to ignoring civil unions, gradually ceasing the slaughter of Iraqi children and slowly allowing the American middle class to deteriorate.
A more fundamental question is “What is a Democrat?” Are you talking about “Centrist”, DLC, big money Democrats or Progressive, populist Democrats? This site has raised these issues many times. Anyone can be a “Centrist Democrat” just add money to buy the position of the day. A Populist is more difficult to define. Supporting American workers against unfair trade and labor issues puts you at odds with Chamber of Commerce Republicans. Supporting amnesty or tolerance for undocumented aliens puts you in bed with them. If one supports a woman’s right to choose and gay rights shouldn’t that person also support an individual’s right of gun ownership?
In short, moderation is for wimps. Something is either right or wrong. The War in Iraq is wrong, get out. All people have rights whether you personally agree with each right or not. Accept gay rights, women’s rights and the rights of gun owners or admit that Bush’s signing statements are right. The immigration laws are on the books, enforce them. Bush has violated the Constitution with the NSA surveillance programs, impeach him. Moderation in the pursuit of Democracy has given us George Bush. No thank you, I’ll take mine full strength.
liberalism IS moderation between socialism and social Darwinism
Liberalism seeks to find the right balance between government action and individual initiative and capitalism.
When republicans make liberal ideas beyond the pale of public discussion, they have effectively narrowed the range of our debate and democracy.
Gradually, things that we used to consider part of the common good and therefore deserving of government support will be considered unAmerican, like having public schools, public land, and parks.
If Nixon or Eisenhower ran today, they would both be to the left of even many Democrats.
The people at the top seem to want us to have just this choice: a business party with religious nuts--or one without.
BiPartisanship
If the Gang of Psychos think that the only good opponent is a dead opponent (or one that will act the part). Why would anyone think acting the part is moderate or bipartisan.
Every Democrat with a soul still alive should be shouting this from the rooftops. Your point on the Straussians is well made. Their secret ideology needs to be heavily outed. If that can be done,everyone would know that freedom and democracy are things that they hate as much as any Islamist.
How can one be moderate about such evil.