Just the perfect example of Republican hypocrisy…..
How can the party that impeached Clinton for a blow job even let him run? It just proves that everything they say about “morality” is a political attack, and they don’t follow a word of it.
Rudy made the NYPD walk Nathan’s dog? Good grief:
The Shag Fund not only paid for the 11 tryst visits to Hamptons.
— It paid for hotel and other expenses for mayoral aides — in addition to the security detail — who also went with the mayor to the Hamptons on the tryst weekends.
— Nathan’s NYPD-chauffeured trips (without Rudy) to visit her parents in Pennsylvania, 130 miles outside the city.
— NYPD detectives and city-owned undercover Dodge to drive Nathan around the city.
— NYPD detectives and city-owned undercover Dodge to drive Nathan’s friends and family around the city even when she wasn’t in the car.
— NYPD security detail for Nathan, personally approved by Bernard Kerik.
— NYPD cops to walk Nathan’s dog.
Then again, at least the NYPD didn’t strap the dog on top of a car like Mitt Romney.
Of course, all the Republican candidates have some of the classic Republican features, as Hunter notes:
Watching the Republican debates is proving a surreal experience. The feeling is like watching… well, a science experiment, I guess, would be the best way to put it. All of the Republicans involved seem to be devolving into crude caricatures of Republicanism, but different crude caricatures of Republicanism — something a bit more surreal than mere pandering. It is as if modern Republicanism was pushed through an ideological prism, and each of its parts scattered onto a different podium at a different part of the stage.
Romney: The CEO Republican. The multimillionaire whose interest is an America secured for the financial goals of multimillionaires. The problems of the little people are nothing: give them a little verbal bread, by appealing to a few of their baser instincts (Guantanamo good! Terrorism bad! Torture good!), and the Republican party leadership can play the public like puppets on strings.
Huckabee: The Religious Republican. The perfect embodiment of true Republican religion; sings to the majesty of a Jesus that has been painstakingly repainted in the Republicans’ own image, scrubbed of inconvenient tendencies towards compassion. Huckabee does not know if Jesus would support the death penalty. He does not know if torture is anti-Christian enough to really make a big fuss over.
Giuliani: The Crime Boss Republican. Giuliani’s primary motivation in government has always been the consolidation of his own power, the use of that power to retaliate against his enemies, and, apparently, Herculean efforts to organize his city around best satisfying his own desires and needs and genitalia.
Tancredo/Hunter: The (Hypocritical) Bigots. Nativism and racism writ large; the “Southern Strategy” recast to draw from and stoke fear, resentment and loathing not against black Americans, now protected too well for such rank hatreds to be openly expressed, but against brown Americans.
Thompson: The Vacuum-Packed Professional Republican. Chosen by name alone, not skill, and specifically picked to be well known and inoffensive with no particular record, agenda, skills, or ideas that might get in the way.
Ron Paul: The To Hell With The Rest Of You Republican. The rejector of the base premises of government itself. Paul represents the large portion of the Republican party that condemns the very notion that government should have a role in bettering the health, education, or welfare of its citizens.
While not one of the current Republican candidates are eager to utter George Bush’s name — he is, after all, badly damaged goods, since he had the misfortune to put Republican ideas into practice and be branded with the now-obvious results — there have been absolutely no attempts whatsoever to distance themselves from either those ideas or those results. On the contrary, it has just been broken up into discrete portions, every one of them seeking dominance over the others.
It is as if all the failures and corruptions of principle of George Bush has been cleaved into parts, each one of them reaching an even more extreme level in one or another of those seeking to succeed him. Would you like the religious panderer Bush, or the fiscally incompetent Bush? Would you prefer the Bush that uses the crudely drawn specter of terrorism as distraction from every issue and act, no matter how seemingly petty or unconnected? Would you like the Bush that turns all aspects of government into crap, or the Bush that uses his position as a tribal lord, meting out punishments to all those that oppose him and lucrative positions and benefits to all those that maintain their loyalty? You have a choice: each one is represented onstage.
And why should that be surprising? It is, after all, the fabric of Republicanism. These are the things that get applause, when spoken from their podiums: the crude, the insincere, the blasphemous, the hateful, even the condemnation of the tasks of government themselves. Large portions of America cheer for these things, and, surely, those portions of America need a political party too.
UPDATE: My goodness, I forgot McCain, the Warmonger Republican. In my defense, it’s only because everyone has forgotten McCain. He is still running, right, and not just as a foil to Ron Paul?
One Response
gee, and you don’t even live in the big apple like i do! no place despises rudy g. as much as new yorkers. we are hoping all those overcome by his blovation of 9/11 will finally get it.
but the issue very much at the forefront is will the dems listen to us this time? one can hope.