In which I right a long-standing wrong

I really should have added John Cole to the blogroll a long time ago. I'm not sure John even qualifies as a conservative any longer, now that "conservatism" involves stuffing billions of dollars in taxpayer cash into the pockets of crony corporations, and when "privatization" involves replacing the accountable military with mercenaries who fire indiscriminately at civilians, and when "freedom" means agree with the president or we will destroy you.

The right's attempts to destroy the Frost family for their "crime" of pointing out that sometimes even families who play by the rules and aren't "welfare queens" cannot get health insurance on their own seem to be, for John, the last straw:

[The Frosts] are a white, lower-middle-class, committed family, who is doing EVERYTHING the GOP Kultur Kops would have you believe people should be doing. They aren’t gay. They aren’t divorced. They didn’t abort their children. They aren’t drug addicts or welfare queens. They are property owners, entrepeneurs, taxpayers, and hard-working Americans. I bet nine times out of ten in past elections, if you handed this resume to a pollster, they would think you were discussing the prototypical Republican voter. Hell, the only thing missing from this equation is membership to a church and an irrational fear of Muslims and you HAVE the prototypical Bush voter.

They are, however, not without fault. They are unable to afford insurance through normal means (and now that they have pre-existing conditions, probably couldn’t get traditional insurance anyway), and managed to get several of their family members injured in a traumatic accident. And, it appears, those are the big blind spots for compassionate conservatism. That, and the real big sin- allowing themselves to advocate for a policy that the Decider was going to veto.

[snip]

I simply can not believe this is what the Republican party has become. I just can’t. It just makes me sick to think all those years of supporting this party, and this is what it has become. Even if you don’t like the S-Chip expansion, it is hard to deny what Republicans are- a bunch of bitter, nasty, petty, snarling, sneering, vicious thugs, peering through people’s windows so they can make fun of their misfortune.

Jump on over to see some of the comments that some of these bitter, nasty, petty, snarling, sneering, vicious thugs posted at Michelle Malkin's blog. John's right. This is what the Republican Party has become. Where I differ from John is in the notion that this is somehow something new; something that's just come about in the aftermath of 9/11; that it's a reptilian brain response to a genuine threat that is oozing over every other aspect of American life. One could argue that it goes back to Barry Goldwater, but I'd say it has its birth from the loins of Ronald Reagan, who voiced his "hate the poor and the different" rhetoric with a kindly,, smiling face. It was honed by Lee Atwater, who perfected the art of destroying the opposition through half-truths, innuendo, outright lies, and playing on fear. In the infamous Willie Horton ad of 1988, we saw the kind of campaign tactics that would eventually become the equivocation of a Vietnam veteran who left three limbs there with Osama Bin Laden and the Swiftboat Veterans for Lies smearing a presidential candidate based on nothing but their own bitterness.

There IS a difference between Republicans and Democrats, at least in terms of how they think. Republicans are about greed, fear, xenophobia, white supremacy, and male power. The Republican Party creed really IS "I got mine and fuck you." Democrats think about what the world could be. They believe in the essential decency of humans in general and Americans in particular. That's why it's so sad to see Democrats in Washington cave in again and again to the Republican doctrine of fear and hatred -- out of their own cowardice. The Democratic heritage IS of a better way, of a way that has for the most part had Americans living a better life with less anxiety and less rage. Republican rule seems only to result in an angry, vengeful populace. One wonders, then, why anyone wants these vile people to rule anything -- and why Democrats have allowed them to do it.

UPDATE: Unrelated, but relevant. Brandon Friedman isn't a 12-year-old, but he is an Iraq war veteran. If you think that what Rush Limbaugh says doesn't matter, check out some of the hate mail that VoteVets has received.

This is Republican America, folks -- where it's not just acceptable, but mandatory, to harass and threaten a 12-year-old and where war veterans are branded as pussies by guys too chickenshit to enlist to fight the very wars they love.