One writer puts it this way today:
Taking the GOP Back From the Radical Right
By Michael Stafford | August 3rd, 2011 | 71 Comments
With the debt ceiling crisis resolved, it is appropriate to pause and reflect on how America was brought to the precipice of a potential catastrophe. The answer can be found in two lines from William Butler Yeats’ famous poem “The Second Coming.” In the poem, Yeats’ wrote: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” Today, Yeats’ words are an apt description of the state of America’s poisonous public discourse.
More:http://blog.cagle.com/2011/08/taking-the-gop-back-from-the-radical-right/
I'm old enough to remember Dwight Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, William F. Buckley, and a host of other East Coast Republicans, who --- while right leaning to varying degrees --- understood and respected the democratic tenets of civilized discourse and compromise, and the patriotic imperatives of public service and personal sacrifice.
I thought we had such a Republican in John McCain... until he cynically and recklessly plucked Sarah Palin from relative obscurity, merely to get a "bounce" in the polls.
Patriotism may indeed be the scoundrel's last refuge, as Dr. Johnson claimed. But it is also a crucial attribute of a successful nation, an attribute the US seems to be sorely lacking at the highest levels of power, where sex, money, and notoriety rule. The Wall Street pigs swill more and more at the trough, while their GOP legislators jealously guard their ill gotten gains from even a modest tax hike. Meanwhile, Tea Partiers wallow in their illusion of a rugged individualism that hasn't existed for more than a century. Frankly, I think that's just as excuse to justify the abysmal selfishness that is the only real trickle-down effect of our inequitable tax code.
Recalling some of the "greats" of the Grand Old Party:
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