(From the Buster Gammons column of 10/18/08)
At this late date, there aren’t many “undecideds” left. The party faithful on both sides will be just that – faithful. Race will play its role on both sides – those who’ll never vote for a black man and others who’ll vote for him just because he is. But the bigots are fewer and fewer, and the tide seems to be turning.
The last 8 years of Bush, Cheney, et al. have left us a legacy of lies and fuck-ups: Iraq, Katrina, Gitmo, Abu Gharaib, warrantless wiretapping, bank failure, recession, and on and on. The Bush record is so odious that “change” is the big theme for both sides. By that measure, Obama is clearly the more credible candidate.
(Full disclosure: Obama is a distant relative – and I do mean distant – of your humble correspondent. Time magazine reported that Obama is a cousin, many many times removed, of Gabriel DuVall, a Supreme court Justice from 1811-1835, and my 4th great grandfather. Of course, each of us has 32 4th great grandfathers, so the connection is pretty thin. And as my father always said, “If you go back far enough, we’re all related.”)
Over the years, Buster has quietly been all over the political spectrum. I’ve voted for Republicans, Democrats and Independents and have had very little to say about it, sticking to the old advice that politics and religion should not be discussed in polite company. But now I’ve obviously (and please forgive me for being obvious) become disenchanted with the R’s.
The quick and easy reason is Dubya and the last 8 years, but it goes beyond that. It just seems to me that the party of Lincoln has sold its soul. Genuine Republican values have become corporate largesse and tax cuts, and otherwise just say and do anything to get elected. Their true constituency is the Multi-Millionaires Club, but there aren’t that many of them. So great effort is expended by the R’s to “energize their base” with cynical lowest-common-denominator pandering and scare tactics.
Thus the Republican “base” is now populated with fundamentalist Evangelicals who’re sure they’re going to heaven and you’re not, egregious gasbags who claim to know God’s will, Puritanical crusaders who want to legislate morality, gay-bashing chickenshits, zero-tolerance anti-abortion Nazis, gun loonies who believe the right to bear arms means they can “hunt” with assault weapons, stiff-dick law-and-order prosecutors who incarcerate and execute with reckless abandon (see “Texas”), dentally-challenged “love it or leave it” rednecks, and other mean stupid cocksuckers.
The party of Lincoln has devolved into the party of John Hagee, Karl Rove and the NRA. It’s just not right and I won’t have any part of it.
And I’ve never forgotten something an old friend once told me: “You don’t have enough money to be a real Republican.” It’s true, I don’t. Do you?