Photo by judhudson via Flickr

This morning, the New York Times reported that “Republican leaders are circulating a resolution listing 10 positions Republican candidates should support to demonstrate that they ‘espouse conservative principles and public policies’ that are in opposition to ‘Obama’s socialist agenda.’” What’s more, reported Adam Nagourney, anyone found to be in disagreement with anymore than two of these principles “would be penalized by being denied party funds or the party endorsement.”

Now why, exactly, would any self-respecting intransigent apparatchik want to be associated with a colleague who could pass their purity test by a margin of only 80 percent?

‘Cause Ronald Reagan said so, of course.

Quoth Nagourney: “The resolution invokes Ronald Reagan, and noted that Mr. Reagan had said the Republican Party should be devoted to conservative principles but also be open to diverse views. President Reagan believed, the resolution notes, ‘that someone who agreed with him 8 out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent.’” In other words, these principles are the Ten Commandments according to the Gipper — except that, in these tough times, eight, apparently, is enough.

So here you go, young conservatives (again, courtesy of Nagourney and the Times). Remember, you can only ignore two:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

None of the items on the list is surprising in itself, but the intent here did catch us more than a little off guard. After all, Chairman Mao sent his red guards against any citizen deemed to have suspect or wavering beliefs.  Josef Stalin engaged in regular violent purgings designed to purify the so-deigned disbelieving sections of his communist party. More recently, the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has engaged in a wave of purifying executions, which, when viewed in context with this past summer’s civil unrest, can be seen as a sort of come-to-god-moment for any stray opposition members. The Saudis still execute homosexuals in what looks like an attempt to keep the race pure; in ancient Israel, the punishment for improper speech was isolation, etc., etc.

So, looked at historically, this brand-new G.O.P. purity effort could be seen as nothing out of the ordinary for a strong central power looking to consolidate its interests — but that’s something that should be completely anathema to any true Republican.

Of course the real issue for Republicans may just be who to worship. There may not be any specific mention on the purity list about the need to be Christian, but everybody knows you’ve got to be one to get anywhere in the party. But, at the same time, you also have to be a devout Reaganist. The G.O.P. has become the servant of two masters, the follower of two different sets of 10 commandments. You don’t just have to say you support the Reagan approach to Republican policy, you have to believe in the man himself.

After all, his off-the-cuff comments are now being sanctified and hammered into stone tablets, just like hundreds of religious figures before him; his aside hath become dogma. But it’s a wishy-washy kind of dogma, one that goes easy on sinners and fallen acolytes. What can one say about an ideology that allows even its would-be apostles to subvert its ideology 20% of the time?

And that begs the question: Why have a purity test at all? Why not just let anyone in? Sure, Jesus said, “blessed are the meek” and “blessed are the poor,” but didn’t he also say that “the meek aren’t necessarily blessed given such circumstances that  the legitimacy of one’s meekness has been called into question and public opinion finds that peacemakers and the pure at heart are more in favor currently and should therefore be granted easier access to blessedness, vis a vis those who hunger and thirst after righteousness or are weeping, who, it has been decided by this committee, are no longer eligible to receive blessings”?

4000 years ago, Moses came down from Sinai with 10 Commandments, and now the Republicans have come up with 10 of their own. Only difference is, Moses expected you to follow all of his, whereas the GOP is fine with 80%.

Maybe it’s time for a new spin on the old spiritual: “If it’s good enough for Reagan, then it’s good enough for me.”

Image by Damien Baldino via Flickr

In his New York Times Op-Ed piece this morning, regular contributor Paul Krugman is perhaps overly eager in his quickness to assign to the entire Republican Party the “emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.” There, though he may be generally correct in using that characterization to describe the reactionary response of a handful of media blowhards to the city of Chicago’s loss of the 2016 Olympics (a loss for Obama is a win for Rush!), he ignores what looks to be the central internal issue for the G.O.P in advance of the 2010 mid-terms and, worse, in so doing, commits a classic U.S. lefty (if there really is such a thing) sin: underestimating the capability and draw of the conservative movement.

Krugman seems to have missed Lindsay Graham’s on-going take-down of Glen Beck. As the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein reported on Sunday, Graham, in an appearance on Fox News Sunday “didn’t mince words or, for that matter, duck the question when he was asked why he said Beck was ‘aligned with cynicism’ at a conference earlier in the week.” Nope. Instead, he continued his attack, implying that the teary-eyed Fox News anchor was a backward-looking malcontent who “doesn’t represent the Republican Party.” What’s more is that this came on the heels of a Politico report (perhaps also overlooked by Krugman) that detailed the attempts of aging Senator and Obama-’08-shellac-ee John McCain “to reshape the Republican Party in his own center-right image.” “Those familiar with McCain’s thinking,” writers contributor Alex Isenstadt, “say he has expressed serious concern about the direction of the party and is actively seeking out and supporting candidates who can broaden the party’s reach. In McCain’s case, that means backing conservative pragmatists and moderates.”

Let’s take a minute to put all of this together. Graham, a key McCain ‘08 lieutenant, and McCain, a veteran conservative — who, let’s remember, is that, despite any of his claims to maverickness — are taking steps to tell the voters that, as loud, ugly, and (therefore) fun to look at and listen to as the Becks, Limbaughs, and Savages of the world are, they are not a part of the Republican establishment — and so their hyped-for-the-public overreactions can’t be assigned to the greater Republican party. In fact, it’s fair to say that a good portion of the elephant clan seems so nauseated by the appearance of such a possible characterization, they are getting ready to do battle to make their less-angry vision of the G.O.P the dominant race of the red-stater.

Which is to say that, superficially at least, Krugman has committed only a sin of the semantically debatable variety. And that would be a whatever if it wasn’t for the fact that, by failing to understand the complexity of the issue — read: making the character of the over-dramatic attention whore the target of his attack — he attempts to marginalize something that, if the U.S. left were a cohesive, strategically-capable group (you know, something that might even resemble a political force), would not be so easily dismissed. Why, Krugman should have asked himself, do the rightist media personalities so cater to the emotional, angry side of the voting populace? And better yet, why is that segment of the population so angry — particularly so at a party that is such a non-threat that it hasn’t been able to seat a capable executive since 1968?

But instead, Krugman settled for the easy, unprobing approach — the one that succeeds in only engaging the most superficial attributes, and therefore a quick dismissal, of a very complex and very capable organization. The trouble for the Democrats is that, in doing so, he joins a long list of underestimating political hacks, who, in their failure to completely understand the opposition are almost assuredly setting themselves up for another quick loss of power. In this light, Krugman’s mischaracterization goes far beyond something that might be debated at a cafe, at least if the Dems ever want to achieve true post-partisanship.

On the House Schedule page that’s attached to its web home, the U.S. House of Representative employs what might normally be considered a … creative description of its summer recess. It’s fitting then that, in a year when the phrase “summer district work period” could actually be applied without a wink, a nudge, and an unfettered trip to the beach, the work being done by House members seemed to be on the painful side of things: The Democrats — dispatched to promote the President’s health care plan — were met with angry resistance from mobs of conspiracy hacks, while the Republicans — dispatched to prove that the citizens of the United States don’t want anything to do with that sort of reform — were working just as hard to drum up protest against the administration’s plans.

According to the New York Times, first term South Carolina representative Jim DeMint is doing his part. “Taking questions from a friendly crowd of 500 people here the other day,” reporter Katharine Q. Seelye writes, “Mr. DeMint did little to correct their misimpressions about health care legislation but rather reinforced their worst fears.” At the suggestion that the administration’s health care proposal would “give the government electronic access to bank accounts,” for example, Seelye reports that DeMint offered a reply that implied the Obama team might look to do just that — or to perpetrate a host of any other conspiracy-nightmare, big-government crimes: “This is about more government control,” Sellye quotes DeMint as saying. “If it was about health care, we could get it done in a couple of weeks.” It begs the question: Is a man who, along with his colleagues, seems unashamed to leave his constituents with such a dramatic example of wrong-headedness fit to govern?

For their part, the Democrats (with the ever-charming exception of Barney Frank) have been no better. As my Unfit colleague Josh Rosenblatt has pointed out, the pathetic effort put forth by the party in defense of the health care plan serves only as an example of its continuing inability to take a political stand (thanks for the legacy, Bill). In fucking-up so royally, they may have ruined more than just the pending health care legislation. Which begs the question: Are such cowards fit to govern?

Post-Bush II, the Republicans are generally returning to their familiar complaints about the size and reach of the federal government. In terms of health care this manifests itself as death panels, socialism, and Obama requesting access to your bank account. Federal involvement in everyday life is, to these folks, something of a parasitic action — never mind the fact that they rely on the stuff to pay for the luxury trimmings that come with being a representative of the people. Meanwhile, the Democrats (or at least the head of that party) hope to effect the most major collection of policy changes since the New Deal while remaining on speaking terms with the entire country, right and left. Politics may indeed make for strange bedfellows, but it’s not often that everyone squeezes into the Lincoln Bedroom all at the same time.

For both parties, it seems, extra-ordinary duplicity is the order of the day.

Either way, it’s all wrapped-up in the two-party system that serves to monopolize what used to be the American Experiment — and the fact that the notion that very few of our politicians are actually fit to serve is an open acknowledgment that is broadly used by candidates to justify their asking for votes seems to beg for a change in business is usual. This, of course, is both the issue that Obama ran on and the reason that some of us worried that whatever fresh start he promised (earnest or not) would be short-circuited by the system. Worse, things are so stacked against outsider political parties that a defensible organized challenge to the status quo works better as a myth (see Roosevelt, Theodore and Perot, Ross).

Maybe it’s time to stop worrying about the set-up of other people’s democracies and start thinking about the nature of our own. A good place to start might be with a question about why the “summer district work period” has morphed into “summer recess.”

The Republican Party Casts Out the Infidels, Goes the Way of All Flesh

The last few months have been a bit of a catastrophe for the Republican Party. From the defection of Arlen Specter to the ideological battles between popular moderate Colin Powell and Prince of Darkness Dick Cheney to the firing of small-time party officials who dared to question the words of Rush Limbaugh, the Party has managed to shrink its tent down to the size of the Confederacy (minus Virginia and North Carolina and Florida) and a few Plains States, give or take. Of greatest concern isn’t why Specter left, or who’s speaking for the party, or even how these events just might give Democrats the elusive filibuster-proof majority that will finally allow them to push through all their favorite Marxist,  Stalinist, and Maoist pet projects. The real issue for Republicans is the fact that they have successfully purged from their party almost everyone with even a hint of moderate feeling in them. Cut Maine out of the Union and the Republican Party might as well  be the political wing of the 700 Club.

The most amazing thing is that conservative Republicans appear to be happy about the situation. From RNC Chairman Michael Steele to Senate leader Mitch McConnell, from Jim DeMint to Newt Gingrich, from Sean Hannity to Rush Limbaugh, conservatives are celebrating the expulsion of the infidels from their holy army, as if purity and not political viability were the name of the Washington power game. Recent events go beyond the triumph of conservatives over moderates. They even go beyond the triumph of righteousness over compromise. What is really frightening for moderate Republicans worried about their party becoming an irrelevant fringe group is that the events of the past few months signify the triumph of orthodoxy over political competence, a doomed approach to democracy if ever there was one. Just ask Barry Goldwater.

Tossing the notion of a broad-based coalition out the window, the Republicans have staked everything on ideological fundamentalism, choosing to view political pragmatism and wide appeal as heterodoxy and sins worthy of banishment, even going so far as to promote the insane belief that it’s more important to win a primary election than it is to win the office. Former moderate Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee, who underwent a serious primary challenge from the conservative zealots in the Club for Growth back in 2006 (just as Specter would have in 2010), mourns this approach as “the celebration of ideological purity at the cost of winning elections.” Carrying on that tradition, Limbaugh celebrated Specter’s defection by pleading with the senator to take John McCain with him. And then there’s Republican strategist and Fox News contributor Andrea Tantaros, who was able to put an optimistic spin on Specter’s leaving the same way she rationalized the switching of some 200,000 registered Republicans to the Democratic party during last year’s presidential primary: by claiming that “the pool has been skimmed of its lukewarm constituency.” Translation: We may never win a national election again, but let no one ever question our purity.

If the whole tone of this discussion is starting to sound a little religious, it’s because the Republican Party’s current struggles begin and end with religion. Particularly Christianity. And even more particularly, Evangelical Christianity. The Christianity of Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed. The Christianity of the Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family. The Christianity that got George W. Bush elected twice. With the rise of Obama, the loss of Specter, the defiance of the centrists, and the decline of the Republican Party to a regional regime serving cranky creationist white men who feel besieged by a rising tide of Other-ness (including, but not limited to, brown-ness, gay-ness, and science-ness), the chickens born out of the conservatives’ 20-year love affair with the Christian Right have finally come home to roost.

These days the Republican Party is almost exclusively the stomping ground of religious ideologues and moral arbiters. Gone is the necessary backroom dealing and clever compromising of politics, the oil that greases the wheels of the republic; gone is the strategic big-tent pragmatism of the Reagan years, replaced by the un-nuanced sermonizing, unquestioning devotion, and self-assured moral purity of a religious sect. For more than 10 years, the Republican Party has been led by men who either sprang from the Christian Right or were swept into power by them, so it makes sense that their approach to politics would take on a tone of zealotry. Take that, subtlety! Move over, compromise! We’ve got God on our side, and God does not make deals!

No wonder the Republican Party is so ill-equipped to deal with changing demographics, shifting landscapes, internal defections, and evolving voter priorities: Religious fanatics don’t tolerate changes, shifts, or defections, much less evolution. It’s a political philosophy that seeks for unambiguous fundamentalism in a world of messy reality. And what could be more Christian than looking for meaning and order in the meaningless and the chaotic?

Let’s take that notion a step further. Republicans have argued that a Jim Toomey loss in Pennsylvania in November 2010 would be better for the Party than a Specter win, for the reason that they will have proven the strength of their convictions and inspired fellow conservatives to double their efforts for the cause. But a Toomey loss wouldn’t be merely better; it would be glorious – an act of ritual sacrifice performed in the name of righteousness and the realization of God’s will.

In Christian theology, the ultimate loss is also the ultimate gain. Jesus was willing to sacrifice himself, to lose everything, in order to save the world. As such, Christianity is a religion predicated entirely on the idea of the triumphant defeat. Martyrdom, sacrifice, liturgical devotion in the face of secular temptation: These are the tropes of the Christian faith. So it makes perfect sense for a political party that’s been devoted to the tenets of that faith to see virtue and redemption – even godliness – in defeat, so long as that defeat comes at the hand of infidels and is suffered in the name of ideological purity.

Republicans are now facing a perfect storm of political irrelevance, a confluence of two inevitable and destructive outgrowths of their generation-long courtship of Christian fundamentalists. Not only have they grown political unsavvy as a result of all that ideological complacency – dooming themselves to appeal to an ever-shrinking constituency – they’ve also driven away the very constituency they grew so unsavvy courting. After years of disappointment in the party and their theologically imperfect approach to legislating, Christian conservatives have grown impatient with even the minor compromises Republicans have had to make in order to stay politically relevant, and, as a consequence, they’re starting to flee politics in droves. According to a recent article in The Washington Post by Kathleen Parker, there’s a war brewing among Christian conservatives, with the old-school, politically motivated wing of the movement, exemplified by James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, losing ground to a new generation that views the impiety and shaky morality of the political world as the devil’s playground. As a result, more and more Christians are leaving the Beltway and retreating to the home, the church, the family, and the soul – where unspoiled idealism actually stands a fighting chance.

Once Christian conservatives realized they were only choosing a slightly lesser evil by siding with the Republican Party, while getting almost nothing in return – once they figured out that George Bush wasn’t going to make abortion illegal; once it dawned on them that Congress wasn’t going to push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage; once they saw that opposition to federally funded stem-cell research was a millstone around their party’s neck; once they realized that they were being taken for granted by a cynical political force looking to gain an advantage in the electoral math – they were bound to pack up their things and leave Washington. Because unlike gun-rights advocates or environmental lobbyists, evangelical Christians don’t need the political realm to do their work; they can afford to be idealistic. If that group of Republicans couldn’t get the job done, they’re starting to realize, then no one in Washington ever will. So it’s farewell Babylon, and back to Jerusalem we go. Back to our homes and our churches and our shelters, to do whatever quiet work pleases Jesus best.

So where does this leave Republicans, that once-proud coalition now teetering on the edge of political irrelevance? With a party that’s not pure enough for the religious constituents that make up its base yet too pure for the rough-and-tumble, philosophically malleable, morally questionable world of politics.

Caught, it seems, between the sacred and the profane.