1.
Supreme Court Ruling Brings Split in Antiabortion MovementBy Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 4, 2007; Page A03
In a
highly visible rift in the anti-abortion movement, a coalition of evangelical Protestant and Roman Catholic groups is attacking a longtime ally, Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson. Using rhetoric that they have reserved in the past for abortion clinics, some of the coalition's leaders accuse Dobson and other national antiabortion leaders of building an "industry" around relentless fundraising and misleading information.
More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/03/AR2007060301218.html?nav=hcmodule2.
Backers of Immigration Bill More Optimistic
Lawmakers Cite Sense of UrgencyBy Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 4, 2007; Page A01
(snip)
For Republicans in the coalition, opposing such amendments will only increase the pressure they are facing at home.
Over the break, Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) were booed at their state party conventions. And President Bush's attempt to give Republicans political cover by praising the deal may have backfired. Republican opponents in the House now call the proposal the "Kennedy-Bush Amnesty" bill. "I just know that we've got a tough week ahead of us," Kyl said.
More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/03/AR2007060301455.html?hpid=topnews3.
Ron Paul is blowing up real goodThe rambunctious GOP candidate wants to drag the U.S. out of Iraq, can the war on drugs, and overturn the Patriot Act. No wonder Republican power brokers want to boot him off the stage.
By Michael Scherer
Salon.com
(snip)
We are sitting in the Speaker's Lobby at the U.S. Capitol, a fireplace-studded salon off the floor of the House of Representatives. I have come to find out why so many people care so deeply about Paul, who is to the Republican Party about what Cindy Sheehan has been to the Democrats, an outsider sounding the alarm in unconventional tones and demanding an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. For years, Paul had been the GOP's doddering old uncle, advocating strict small government principles too extreme for most of his colleagues.
In the last few weeks, however, he has evidenced the first inklings of becoming something more -- the public face of a small but passionate Republican revolt against President Bush's foreign policy. Paul's dissent is public enough, and his views inconvenient enough, that some Republican power brokers have wondered aloud about ushering him off the public stage.
More:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/06/02/ron_paul/index.html=====
So...what do we have here?
The GOP coalition is basically a tripod: small-to-midsized business owners/professionals, mostly white, who don't like federal regulation or taxes; the captains of industry who own most of everything, write the checks, and basically run the show; and, of course, the evangelical single-issue-voter movement folks used as useless idiot shock troops by the party to divide and distract whatever national political discussion happens to discomfort the leadership.
That's a pretty simple sketch, but you get the idea. Regional permutations complicate the picture, but that's basically the deal.
There are all kinds of rationalizations/reasons why our government got taken over by truly frightening religious/economic radicals who are absolutely in the minority. Bush v. Gore, corporate media nonsense, shady voting machines, 9/11, fear, etc...but there's one reason that stands out above all.
In any presidential election nowadays, a 60% turnout is huge. Most midterms see half that. The movement radicals make up roughly 25% of the electorate that can be counted on to vote...and that 25% almost always votes GOP, and will show up en masse to do so. If it is raining live, killer jaguars from the sky on election day, that 25% will still go out and vote an anti-choice GOP slate across the board.
They are, in short, the most dependable voting bloc in the history of the galaxy...and because of that, any GOP presidential candidate who says the right things about fetuses and Jesus is halfway to victory before he/she gets out of bed on election morning. All those other reasons matter, but the shock troops make the crucial difference.
Go back up and read story #1 again. A rift within the ranks of that crew means serious trouble for the GOP if really gets out of hand. Thus, one leg of the tripod is not entirely stable.
#2, however, is the whopper, the bull-moose dead-bang guaranteed rift exploder for the GOP. Battallions of GOP politicians have made careers out of demagoguing on immigration...but were simultaneously accepting campaign checks from the big-money boys, who absolutely depend on having easy and unscrutinized access to a dirt-cheap pool of slave laborers they don't have to provide health insurance for.
The problem for the GOP politicians, of course, is that their constituents came to buy into the demagoguery about immigrantion, unleashing a seething anger within the GOP base, anger aimed at immigrants on the whole...and also aimed at any politician who stands for anything besides deporting the whole lot of them.
But there's those checks, right. The moneymen didn't spend all those ducats buying GOP politicians by the gross, and then have those owned politicos go and legislate their cheap labor pool back across the border. That's not how they say cricket. The base wants fences and draconian deportations, the moneymen want cheap labor and big profits...and the rest of us want California strawberries and Florida oranges every now and again.
There is no solution here for the GOP, which is a damned embarrassing shame, because this nonsense will wind up screwing the immigrant population the worst. If the GOP goes hardcore on legislation, their check-writers will be screwed and will abandon them for guys like Ted Kennedy. If they go the business-friendly route, the GOP base will detonate...and maybe stay home again on voting day. I do think, as an aside, that the pre-11/06 immigration mudfight had at least as much to do with the midterm wipeout as the war and the scandals. If this continues to fester, you've got two shaky legs.
#3 is just a theory of mine. It may be heretical to say on DU, but I do believe that Republicans are, in the main, good people whose policies and priorities I disagree with. I think a lot of GOP voters are quietly horrified by what has happened to their party. Ron Paul is never going to win any primaries, much less the Oval...but the very fact he is there at all, and getting editorially championed by the likes of Pat Buchanan besides, augers towards serious trouble at the core.
Ron Paul is the Republican for smart Republicans, the embarrassed ones who should have known better, the small-business GOPers who can actually win political debates without hurling invective and insults. That's the third leg.
The anti-choicers are fighting among themselves, the immigration issue is rock-hard-place writ large for those who railed against immigrants while cashing checks from the industries that rely on immigrants, and Ron Paul is making way too much sense for a guy with an (R) after his name.
I'm not predicting any kind of imminent immolation with this. But boy o boy, that tripod is looking awfully unsteady. That's the thing about tripods, of course...it only takes one leg to crap out, and the whole thing comes crashing down.
Thoughts?