Another Republican response
: The Moderate Republican also responds to my Jumping the shark for Jesus post:
Sometimes I wonder though, aren’t the theocrats the “mainstream” of the GOP these days? As an old-style Republican (I sometimes think I’m the lovechild of Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller), I feel kinda like the odd duck in the party these days. I guess it leads me to wonder if Jarvis is right. In the past I believed that if the party realized how nutty the theocrats were, they would drop them like a hot potato and move towards the center. But the GOP has come to dominance because it catered to these yahoos or at least the leadership would like to believe that. I want to believe that the GOP will see how dangerous these people are to our democracy, but I’m not certain they will.
It’s not like the Democrats are any better. Now that the Michael Moore/MoveOn group has taken over, the party really out in Left field.
: LATER: Glenn Reynolds says:
Hugh’s right that it’s hard to ascribe the Congressional legislation to “theocrats” when it was supported by Tom Harkin (and Ralph Nader!). There’s much more going on than that; this is a matter on which all sorts of people, of all sorts of persuasions, can be found on both sides.
On the other hand, here’s some advice, very similar to advice I gave to the antiwar movement: If you don’t want to be confused with a movement led by theocrats, don’t let actual theocrats be seen as your spokesmen. It may be impossible to shut Randall Terry up — though if I were Karl Rove, I would have tried really hard — but he needs to be loudly and regularly denounced as a nut. Otherwise you’re in the same boat as lefties who don’t want to be identified with Ward Churchill, but happily use him when they want to draw a crowd.
(In fact, the Terry / Churchill axis is surprisingly close — they both view 9/11 as a necessary chastisement for a sinful America. If that’s not a distinguishing mark of full-bore idiotarianism, I don’t know what is).
We can only hope that both parties start fighting like cats and dogs over the moderate middle of America rather than trying to suck up to the lunatic fringes. Emphasis on the plurals.
: LATER: Common Room, a home-schooling blog, uses my post and Hugh’s post as an exercise in writing and reading. I’m not going for the grade. I’m auditing this course.
: LATER STILL: Linking to Micah Sifry’s review of Hugh Hewitt’s Blog book will be seen as a political act, but it’s not: I like both both of them.
: FILM AT 11: Glenn Reynolds does the blog report on MSNBC Connected and mentions this very disagreement. Political Teen has the video.
