Not everyone invited a DeLay attack the way Clinton did. The nadir of DeLay’s career came in 2005, when he led the demagoguery surrounding the removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube, which he reviled as “an act of barbarism.” In his book DeLay again cites lofty principle as his guide in the Schiavo case. “My faith teaches me that life is sacred because human beings are made in the image of God,” he explains. Never mind the previous revelation by the Los Angeles Times that DeLay and his family had quietly pulled the plug on his father in 1988, less than a month after a freak accident left the elder DeLay vegetative. No Retreat makes no mention of such politically inexpedient truths.
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"Gay Republican" isn't an oxymoron. But being one means that sometimes, you live in a baffling world.
~Snip~
Such were scenes from the Log Cabin Republicans national convention earlier this month,—held not in the GOP stronghold of Colorado Springs, but in Denver. In many ways it was a trip back in time, to the days long before the party of George W. Bush, when being Republican stood for personal responsibility, limited government — and staying out of people's bedrooms.
~Snip~
Simpson also spoke with frustration about members of his own party, whose focus on Terry Schiavo and gay marriage and opposition to stem-cell research, he says, all contributed to GOP losses last November. Those fringe issues, Simpson said, "don't settle well with regular Republican or Democratic voters."
For that matter, "What the hell is [criminalizing abortion] doing in our platform?" he asked.
Though Republicans lost the majority last November, the election was actually a good thing, Simpson said, as it resulted in "shaking some of the goofies and the zanies out of the trees."
And, he noted, gays and lesbians have come light-years in terms of being accepted, just in his lifetime. Call it a "creeping maturity," he said.
He spoke of his mother, who always said that hatred corrodes the containers it comes in. And "those people," Simpson said of the religious right, are filled with gas and body odor and heartburn.
"They smell bad," he said, ultimately drawing an extended standing ovation.
Public Eye Cara DeGette Gays shake out the GOP zanies
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