Posted by
FeargalX on Saturday, November 29, 2008 12:44:38 AM
It really began with the focus on Iraq after 9/11. Those who understood Iraq knew that although it was not a “great” country in the context of the Middle East, it was not too bad.
Although Sadaam Hussein was certainly violent towards many elements in the country, his political party and philosophy was fairly moderate. Thus, women had rights as did religious minorities (Christians --- Sadaam’s right hand man Tariq Aziz was a Christian). No orchestrated violence was going against Christians. The law and the political system was secular, not religious.
Radical Muslims were great enemies of Sadaam Hussein. Both radical Shiites and Sunnis were great enemies of Hussein. He treated both very harshly. Sadaam allowed alcohol and allowed women to engage in work that they wanted.
Prior to 9/11 I questioned the Iraq war. My Republican credentials were strong – but I immediately heard amazingly stupid things from people I knew for 30 years.
I was told things like:
We finished the job in Afghanistan, so we now can turn our attention elsewhere.
We will be greeted as liberators, the Middle East will have a great ally of America as a result.
The war will not cost anything, Iraq’s oil will pay for it.
The $100,000,000,000 pre-war estimate was way too high (turns out, way too low).
You are a traitor for questioning the President.
As a result of Iraq, the Republican party has forfeited multiple positions that it could bank on. Republicans were no longer the party of fiscal responsibility (the war costs were way, way too high). The Republican party was no longer the party with military expertise (No war, Vietnam or otherwise, was planned worse than this one). The Republican party was impotent to bring Al Qaeda and Bin Laden to justice (it made Jimmy Carter look like Patten or Grant in comparison). The Republican party is no longer “Pro-Christian” (no similar destruction of a large Christian community has occurred in the same numbers – but the Republicans simply could not care less).
So, this is what we are left with. Virtually all Republicans have a long record of not questioning the President at all. They no longer believe in accountability – while they could blame welfare queens for not having a work ethic – when the Bush administration continually made ridiculous inexcusable mistakes every excuse in the world was made for them.
The Republicans did virtually nothing about real issues such as political correctness (Bush pretty much waved a white flag to this one) and immigration issues (Bush apparently believes that because he never had a hard job that there are many jobs that no American will do, so we need to import cheap labor). The Republicans were stupid enough to believe that they could somehow recruit large numbers of “Hispanics” (mostly Mexicans) to vote for them. 10 years ago, it was obvious that, at best, maybe you could reliably get about 35% of the Hispanic vote – while that is not as low as the black vote (10%) it is still a lot less than 50%.
The Republicans were too stupid to understand that Democrats could better appeal to Hispanics because of (1) better social welfare issues, (2) more reliability on quotas/affirmative action, (3) the fact that most immigrants, being poor, would support the party that is more poised to support “the poor.”
Demographically, how in the world did the Republicans think that the immigration policies would help them? If I could go somewhere to get preferential treatment it would be pretty tempting to seek such a place and vote for a party that more strongly supported such a program.
How in the world will Republicans have more than 40% of the vote in 10 years?
Conservatives literally would be better off to quit the Republican Party and go into the Democratic party and try to support conservative Democrats in primaries since it appears that they will be unable to secure a majority.
Obama had less experience than any recent Presidential candidate and more baggage (to me, more than anything it was the Wright issue – which showed that Obama had crazy bigotry and chutzpah [knowing his family held slaves, and were not slaves, but believing that anyone with white skin is guilty of some historical sin]).
While I sincerely hope that Obama becomes a great president – undoubtedly should that happen it will be the death knell of the party.