The GOP's Shrinking Future
Two pieces in the Times today suggest that the Republican Party is so enslaved to its bigotry that it'd rather commit political suicide than abandon old biases.
The first news, of course, is that Republicans in the Senate killed the immigration bill, and now resolving the immigration problem has been put off indefinitely. American Latinos will get the message: the GOP just doesn't want them here. Though there are plenty of reasons why this largely religious, socially conservative group of immigrants could gravitate toward the Republicans, the GOP seems determined to push them away. It's political suicide.
The second issue is the continuing division between the two parties on "don't ask, don't tell." Democrats are repudiating it; Republicans continue to endorse discrimination against gays in the military. John McCain says that reconsidering the issue would be a "terrific mistake." Rudy Giuliani, who surely knows better—who shared an apartment with two gay men after he cheated on his wife and left her—says that "at a time of war, you don't make fundamental changes like this." This despite polls saying that a majority of men and women in the military no longer care, not to mention a severe shortage of soldiers. In any case, the supposition presupposes a logic that it does not contain. Why not make fundamental changes in a time of war? We've made fundamental changes in other means of conducting the war—the "surge," for instance. Why not this one?
Imagine a conservative who wasn't a bigot but advocated fiscal and foreign policy caution—he or she would be a very powerful candidate. But perhaps those primary voters just won't accept such a trailblazer.
In other Republican news, Alaska senator Ted Stevens turns out probably to be a crook. No surprise there, but...good! For four decades in the Senate, Stevens has done nothing but funnel pork barrel dollars to his home state and agitate against every pro-environment measure to come before that body. Stevens is, simply, an awful senator, and anything that could get him out of office is a good thing.
