From today’s TFN News Clips:
“As a religious right guy, I’m thinking there was a guy named Jesus who had some things to say about these kinds of concepts. And I don’t want to live in a society that lets a few test cases die on the steps of the hospital. I can’t go there.”
— U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C., responding to “hard-right” activists who have told him that they are willing to let people without health insurance “die on the steps of the hospital” to make a point about the problem of “free riders.”
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Unless I’m misreading this, it sounds like Inglis is actually trying to do the right thing—except the “I can’t go there” part of his comment sounds like he’d like to go there, but he just can’t, because it wouldn’t look good.
Ben: Not at all. He’s saying ‘you can’t push me in that direction.’ Or maybe “…there no matter how much you argue from those points.”
Inglis is a very interesting example — a true “Christian Conservative’ who has not lost his humanity. Earlier this year at a constituent meeting he told his constituents to ‘turn off Glenn Beck’ — and immediately got four primary opponents challenging him from the right. I wouldn’t try to get him to go along with a proposal for gay rights or abortion funding, but on this, he might just break with the party if he really gets it — and if anyone out there can ‘talk the language’ perhaps he might respond favorably to an argument along the lines of ‘Jesus’s miracles were all healing ones.’
Most people have responded to the pressure from the ‘crazy right’ by trying to move towards them, (see Mark Kirk) but he may be one of many who respond by moving in the opposite direction.
I wrote the above before I read the article, but I hope people click on it, and on the comments, and you’ll understand the position he is in — and how crazy his constituents are getting. When a group of voters criticize Inglis and Graham for being insufficiently conservative, you wonder what sort of people they want to see in office. Attilla? Ghengis? Adolph?
Well guys. This just goes right along with the conservative buzz right after Obama won the election. The big question was: “Why did we fail?” The quorum answer was:
“We failed because George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, etc. were not conservative enough. To get back to where we were and beyond it, we have to be far more conservative, far more right wing, and far more nutty. We have to quadruple our efforts to move in this direction.”
If the classic Republican’s don’t succeed in taking back their party from people like Cathie Adams, 2010 and 2012 will be two of the biggest fruitcake festivals in American history—-nay—in the world—in 1000 galactic systems. Poor old Dan at TFN will bloody his fingers raw on the keyboard just trying to keep up with this tragicomedy.
What ‘classic Republicans’ Which is ambiguous, and I am asking both parts. Which group of Republicans are you talking about, Eisenhower/Rockefeller Republicans, who would be about the center of today’s Democrats, or even further to the left? Ain’t many of them walking around. Not enough to win a district if they all moved into it.
Goldwater Republicans, who started the ‘purge of the moderates’? (I actually remember the 1964 Convention.) I still admire Goldwater’s honesty and general integrity, as much as I disagreed with him, and John Dean, who still calls himself a Goldwater Republican, but his folowers paved the way for Reagan, and worse. The honest ones, like Dean, have given up on the party.
Reaganauts? Last September showed what they wrought, and they are still complaining about the bailout that only saved the economy. (And GWB has now started apologizing for it, because the party hates him for it.)
Those people who complain that Bush wasn’t conservative enough — they aren’t a minor faction, not when we get complaints that Graham and Inglis are too liberal.
Show me one important figure whose made his appearance who has the slightest hope of even keeping the craziness at the Gingrich level and I’ll believe you.
Until then, ‘pass the popcorn.’
No, no, no, no. I said “if” the classic Republicans don’t succeed in taking back their party. There are some out there who would like to try, but I have not taken a census of them. It might be that their numbers are so small that they would never have any chance of succeeding. They may just be old and very nearly dead white guys like Howard Baker, Jr.
Charles, when the results of that little litmus test came out, I admit that I was crestfallen, which surprised me a little. I guess I hadn’t realized how much I’d hoped that those on the right would come to their senses. Instead they went full retard.
You never go full retard.
Prup, I concur completely. Divisiveness will only get worse, from where I’m sitting.
This reminds me of something I wrote the other day. While some believe that the pledge should have the words “under God” removed, the word “indivisible” seems to be a throw-away as well.