The Moderate Republican

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James,

I don't think the Bush admin really hates Muslims or Islam. How can you hate a potential voting bloc? :) Seriously - I don't believe "hate" is in play with Bush and Co. Men like Bush and Cheney and Rummy are motivated by money, not by hate.

However, there are many that support Bush who do hate Islam. Bush has stated "Islam is not the enemy" but that is not far enough. He should repudiate those that support him and hate Muslims, he should state quite clearly, "Your hatred is not wanted nor accepted. If you hate Islam, if you hate Muslims, then you do not support what we're doing in Iraq."

Of course, he won't do that - there's another voting bloc he'd have to anger! Not to mention that hatred of Muslims is one of the few things that keeps many people supporting the war - that feeling that Muslims should be punished for terrorism, and that they are inferior in general, so why not make ourselves feel good at their expense?

So Bush has to waffle on this back and forth. Can't come right out and declare hatred against Muslims, can't denounce those who hate Muslims.

What it really comes down to is the same thing these kinds of issues have come down to in the past. The Muslims happen to live in a country that coincidentally has a valuable natural resource. Treating those people as equal partners in a market venture is not profitable nor reliable, so it is better to treat them as lesser beings in order to gain the best profit. Those that stand to profit can rely on the hatred of the ignorant, uneducated masses that need to channel their frustrations at someone. Better a bunch of "towel-heads" than at the fat cats on top.

Now I'm ranting.

I'm haunted by what dorsano shared in his last blog with the English class in Baghdad. Is the right-wing of the Republican being driven by hate? If not the intent at the top, it certainly drives its reelection constituencies.

Here's a play by play of an English Conversation Class at Baghdad University

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Anna teaches English conversation to the final year students at Baghdad University, who wanted to talk to someone with a British accent and I wanted to talk to them about university twinning links. Because it’s all over the news here the same as everywhere else and because I introduced myself as a clown and trainee lawyer, the topic of conversation moved quickly onto the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

The other students muttered, “Shame,” as Mohammed mentioned it. “There is a contradiction,” someone said, “between what they do and what they say they will do.” Heba said her neighbour’s house had been raided one night and three men, the father and two sons, were taken away. That was seven months ago; two have been freed and one is still detained. The reason given for their arrest, according to Heba, was “talking loudly against the Americans”.

Lots of the students nodded at her account. Mugher’s house was raided too, on false information, he said: someone told the Americans that there were guns in their house. Most of them had heard of the Geneva Conventions, although few knew anything about what they were, and wanted to know how one went about acquiring any rights under them. Ahmed explained the Conventions as, “Some informations about the rights of presidents,” an indication, perhaps, of how limited their use has been in Iraq.

I explained about the different Conventions, the essence of the protections they contain and the problem of enforcement, that there is no court which can uphold them against a powerful country, particularly one which chooses to exempt itself from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Of course, the prisoners in Abu Ghraib are not all classified as Prisoners of War because most were not taken in anything resembling a combat situation.

A young woman called Hana said it’s because they are Muslim. She listed Bosnia, Afghanistan, Palestine, Chechnya as places where Muslims are abused either by or with the complicity of the US and UK. Someone else pointed out that the people of Central America have also suffered abuse and torture at the hands of the CIA, along with plenty of other non-Muslim countries.

The belief that religious bigotry is behind all of this runs deep, but we moved on to how power corrupts: power in the hands of prison guards, in the hands of a single and unassailable national leader or in the hands of one all-powerful country. Anna’s family is from Maryland, where several of the guards that have so far been exposed are from. Some of them worked in the big prison there before going to Iraq with the Reserves. She said people are wondering, if this goes on in an Iraqi prison, whether the same thing isn’t happening in Maryland too.
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http://www.wildfirejo.org.uk/feature/display/124/index.php

CNN is posting this from the 2000 Republican Party Platform at

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/conventions/republican/features/platform.00/#1

"But make no mistake: In my administration, low-income Americans will have access to high-quality health care.”
— George W. Bush

“As an avid outdoorsman, I know all our prosperity as a nation will mean little if we leave future generations a world of polluted air, toxic waste, and vanished wilderness and forests.”
— George W. Bush

"Let us not dominate others with our power — or betray them with our indifference. And let us have an American foreign policy that reflects American character. The modesty of true strength. The humility of real greatness. This is the strong heart of America. And this will be the spirit of my administration."
- Governor George W. Bush

"Today’s Republican party stands in the proud tradition of Teddy Roosevelt, the first president to stress the importance of environmental conservation. We approach both the national and individual stewardship of natural resources in the spirit of his maxim: "The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value."

"The arrogance, inconsistency, and unreliability of the administration's diplomacy have undermined American alliances, alienated friends, and emboldened our adversaries." [this is referring to Clinton's administration]

"Gerrymandered congressional districts are an affront to democracy and an insult to the voters. We oppose that and any other attempt to rig the electoral process."

"Nor should the intelligence community be made the scapegoat for political misjudgments. A Republican administration working with the Congress will respect the needs and quiet sacrifices of these public servants as it strengthens America's intelligence and counter-intelligence capabilities and reorients them toward the dangers of the future."

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The platform is almost right on as far as I'm concerned.

It seems that Bush is not a Republican.

New political commentary has hit the web! It is called "SG - Fuel for Thought" (http://sexygasoline.com/politics), and it is right up the ally of any informed citizen.

Writer Roger Conway's latest posts is a commentary on Thomas Friedman's politization of the war in Iraq. Here is a brief excerpt:

"What are “our ideas”? I’ve spent most of my adult life chasing the answer to that. I wonder about some of our shibboleths: like ‘success’ and ‘opportunity’. We wink at ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ these days; we use them to leverage desperate people. How do we demonstrate our attitude regarding the significance of human life? What do we mean by ‘the value’ of human life? I’ve been wondering about that. Is there a difference between the significance of human life and the ‘value’ of a human life? Is a human life relevant to the bottom line?"

I reccommend this site to everyone: http://sexygasoline.com/politics. Just click my name to visit and read the rest of the post.

Several things on this

1). Moderates have behaved, well, moderately (to quote something I read long ago by Norman Mailer (more on that probably another time). They also wanted to be "good soldiers", to prove their loyalty to the house at general election time, and frankly, in the past quarter century, they have always been taken for granted by the national party.

2). They have never been ready to crack skulls, and walk away like right-wing candidates and constituencies have never hesitated to do.

3). What does "moderate" or "middle-of-the-road" mean to most voters. It doesn't render itself to much excitement. Don't get me wrong, I don't like at all what's happening w/the Republican party right now, but the American voter can now be assured they know what they're getting when they look at most Republican candidates at the state or national level.

What makes a "moderate" Republican? Is that person pro-choice or pro-life? Do they care about the environment? What is their view on gun control, the death penalty, all the red meat, hot button issues that the social conservatives care about?

At a earlier point in my life, I did try to bring a group of moderate Republicans together. Being much younger, and much more inexperienced, it was not very successful, with several "moderate" people in the group I later found were supporting basically Michigan's answer to David Duke (and Caligula rolled into one...but "he was good on the floor"--won't touch that one), and two others complaining loudly that the group was becoming "too liberal" after hearing one other member talk about environmental protection in a positive light.

The key to success in bringing the party back to the "center" for lack of a better term, is to break all the rules of being a "good" Republican. You can't win playing someone else's game.

One big contributor to the problem is gerrymandered districts. Ideally every seat should be contested with at least two competetive candidates and there should be no "safe" seats.

That used to be the Republican mantra before the current majorities but today things are pretty much as they were under the Democrats.

I'm not sure what would take longer - building a grassroots organization or changing the gerrymandering game.

I still think that the best approach is a bi-partisan group that endorses and supports candidates in all parties - and "A Common Interest Contract for America" that the endorsed candidates sign on to.

Both George Soros and Warren Buffet are throwing some significant money into politics this time around - maybe we should give them a call?

Well you're right on that, Dennis. Republicans for Environmental Protection also has the advantage of being a "focused" group - they are focused on bringing Republicans to a moderate/centrist stance on one important issue. They're not looking at reform on all issues and at all levels.

So any grassroots group would do well to do the same. Maybe a grassroots conservative group focused on foreign policy? Focused on a return to responsible and principled spending? One focused on constitutional/civil rights problems? One focused specifically on the Patriot Act, perhaps?

I think those groups are out there... they may just not be all that well marketed!

Mark,

Part of it would have to be proper marketing. One of the reasons Republicans for Environmental Protection is popular is that they say they are staying true to the party's conservation principles. Any grassroots group would have to do the same.

Maybe I'm an optimist, but the other choice is to have the theo-cons have control and have see the political life in America suffer because of extremists in both parties.

Dennis,

I think part of it is that no one would take a grass-roots "moderate Republican" movement seriously. They'd immediately be labeled as "traitors" and "liberals in disguise" by party establishment, effectively knocking out the groups' chances of convincing other Republicans to join. I mean, really... what Republican would want to publicly associate with someone the party leadership has defined as a "liberal"?

Or, the flip side is to convince the zealots to stay at home and NOT vote - yeah right. :)

Yes, we should stay in the party and move it back to the center. And that means ditching and abandoning guys like Bush, who want to pull the party further to the right. We have to play the same kind of voting game that the ultra-right plays.

Hey, what about the Main Street Republicans? Aren't they moderates? Can't we start promoting them to high heaven and get the word out about these guys?

The biggest problem, as I've always seen it, is that the moderate VOTING base needs to get motivated (therein lies the irony, as moderates are too...moderate to get their Irish up). We've got to get more people involved in the electoral process. We've got the potential leadership for a shift back to center (McCain!!!), we need the troops to do it...