Posted on 05/09/2012 4:06:17 PM PDT by presidio9
While, in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” Mark Antony said that the evil men do lives beyond their deaths, we now also see how quickly mean spirits can be exposed in the wake of the wickedness they have committed. The result is “Hell to tell the captain,” as they used to say down South.
In jangled visions of entitlement, former Rep. Anthony Weiner, former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and those of President Obama’s Secret Service men who pulverized their careers in the Colombian prostitution scandal, all showed us something we need to know. They proved they were fools who were crushed for their insipid “boys will be boys” beliefs.
But even bigger fish, or sharks, are being fried. Those hot pans are now roasting Rupert Murdoch’s sordid media empire, with British lawmakers having come to the conclusion that the billionaire is “unfit” to run a corporation.
And those same hot pans are blackening the bottoms of an entire political party — the GOP — for lacking the courage to stand up to or argue with the Tea Party extremists who propelled so many of them to office in the 2010 midterm elections.
Even some supposedly principled Republicans are hemorrhaging support as the public learns who they really are and what they really want to do.
Take, for example, Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul Ryan, the free-falling Irish Catholic pretty boy and radical Republican, dripping draconian porridge for the poor. He offers a wide smile while espousing the dark principles of Ayn Rand, which have made him a favorite candidate to join Mitt Romney on the Republican ticket.
But the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops took such offense at his budget plan that they wrote him a letter that said, “A just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor and vulnerable persons.”
He has even arrogantly denied his love of Rand, though audio of him gushing about her at The Atlas Society makes that an uphill climb.
Ryan’s new theme should be a variation on the defense told to young boys in the old days of the corner pool hall, “Are you going to believe what I say I said, or your lying eyes and ears?”
The overall impact of all this is a shot in the arm of optimism, especially important for those who feel obligated to take a dismissive and defeatist stance in the face of the corruption, ethnic hostility and disdain for modern freedom that has become the playbook of the Republican Party. All is not lost just yet.
It is crucial that we keep our faith in the democratic belief that our nation will set itself straight once it has all of the facts and can tell the difference between the truth and pure factoids.
Murdoch may have fallen so far that, some speculate, American holdings like Fox News could come under investigation. That would be an ironic response to a naturalized citizen whose wealth grew as he treated the American public to every right-wing lie his network could pass off as fact.
At the same time, perhaps the Republican Party will learn what time it is for conservative thinkers with integrity. It is their 1964, the time that Lyndon Johnson chose to stand up to the redneck South and move the country toward a fairness that would, in the long run, strip his Democrats of power.
That took much courage for a man who so loved power, as Robert Caro’s “The Passage of Power” shows. But he stood up to the threatening grand dragons, as we must do again today.
Oh, my, this queer has jumped the shark.
This author is a jerk. Pure propaganda. Doesn’t have the first clue.
Thanks for the heads up. The comments rocked.
He is, for example, more than a little vague as to precisely which of Miss Rand's principles he finds so dark, and why. Apparently the mere invocation of her name is enough to disqualify a candidate for political office, the reason being so unquestionable as not to be specified. It's an argument I'd be more impressed with if I even suspected he had read her novels, which I do not.
More to the point is the overall thesis, or at least those inchoate points I have managed to package into something resembling a thesis - that some Republican to, heaven help us, Lyndon Johnson, who stood up - did he really? - to extremists within his party, should do so to the Tea Party "extremists" who are fostering lies - we'll have to take that on credit as none are actually named - and whose extremism is somehow keeping the Republican party from being the grand repository of tasteless political tapioca that Crouch thinks is political rectitude. If Crouch can't name the lies I do wish he'd name the brand of hooch that was behind this train wreck of a column, so I can avoid it.
That should be “some Republican counterpart to” Lyndon Johnson. Good Lord, is he thinking of Mitt Romney? Even considering how I feel about Mittens, that’s pretty nasty.
So unfit he is a Billionaire?
ROTFLMAO!
“...and whose extremism is somehow keeping the Republican party from being the grand repository of tasteless political tapioca that Crouch thinks is political rectitude.”
Poetry. Pure poetry. Grand repository of tasteless political tapioca? You sir, have a gift.
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