The Case Against Voting for Republicans

You can trust Republican leaders to do in the future what they’ve done in the past.

1. Prosecuting political opponents.

George W. Bush broke precedents of decency. One precedent he broke was that you don’t use criminal prosecutions to destroy your political opponents.

So U.S. Attorneys have been above politics. Typically, when a new party came to power, U.S. Attorneys would resign, and the new administration would replace them. But once in office, while that administration was in power, U.S. Attorneys typically held their position unless they misbehaved. Then Bush was elected.

Bush fired U.S. Attorneys who were not partisan enough in their prosecutions. For example, David Iglesias, a Republican, was fired because he pushed back against political pressure to prosecute a Democratic state senator before an election.

Question: Do you want political parties to use criminal prosecution as an arm of politics?

2. Shrinking democracy.

Historically, politics was relatively simple. If a party wanted to gain power, it crafted a platform that would appeal to a wide segment of the electorate.

Not so in recent times in the Republican party. A new strategy has emerged in Republican-controlled states. Instead to broadening their platform to widen their appeal, Republicans in Republican-controlled states are shrinking the electorate.

Voter-fraud is a minuscule problem. It rarely happens. But there has been an avalanche of legislation nominally to combat this non-issue. The purpose of these laws is visible in their effect. This legislation discourages minority voters and discourages young voters – constituencies that skew Democratic. The venerable, non-partisan League of Women Voters is conducting no voter-registration drive in Florida this year; the onerous new laws make it too easy to get penalized.

The Republican plan is working.

The American Revolution began, and patriots gave up their lives, for the idea of "No taxation without representation." But in the worldview of Republican leaders, taxation without representation is fine for minorities and young people.

And these are people who might fight and die for America in war, without the voice of their vote.

Question: Do you want politics that shrinks the voting pool instead of making a platform more attractive to more people?

3. Attack on truth.

It’s a peculiar "news" organization that alters photographs of persons to make them seem sub-human. But that’s what Fox News did to New York Times reporters.

It’s a peculiar "news" organization that replaces footage of a crowd at a conservative rally with footage of a crowd of a more popular rally, to make the rally seem more popular than it was. But that’s what Fox News did with an anti-health-care-reform rally led by Michele Bachmann.

It’s a peculiar "news" organization that labels its enemies "socialists" to stir up hatred against them. But that’s what Fox News does. A Fox News person even wondered if Warren Buffett was a socialist, after Buffett said that he and people like him pay too few taxes. Buffett buys and sells companies for a living.

But Fox News is only nominally about news. It’s really a slick delivery system for Republican propaganda. Once, the Republican Party issued talking points about what to say about the improving economy. A Fox on-air personality obediently read the talking points on-air.

Fox News is the network face of the Republican Party, and Republican leaders have it’s habit of casualness about truth. So, the Affordable Care Act will save lives by guaranteeing that people with pre-existing conditions can get insurance. But Republican leaders claimed that it was all about killing grandma.

For the sake of their ideology, Republican leaders won’t dilute their positions. So they can’t broaden their platform to appeal to more people. Instead, they lie.

Question: do you want politics to slip the tether of truth?

4. Attack on Christianity.

You can spend your life improving your Christian walk, but the frame of Christianity can be taken in in a few minutes. Elements of this frame are: love your neighbor, and love your enemies.

But the political frame built by leaders of the Republican Party differs from the Christian frame. Their alternative frame is, basically, "What’s mine is mine, and screw my neighbor."

So: Republican leaders tout the freedom not to pay for health care by buying insurance. To them, this is more important than saving lives of men, women, and children by making insurance available to people with pre-existing conditions. To be clear: the Affordable Care Act will save lives. But it encroaches on Republican notions of liberty, so Republican leaders uniformly side with letting people die.

And the Bible is overwhelmingly on the side of the poor. But Republican leaders are overwhelmingly on the side of the rich and on the side of big banks and big corporations. They routinely top off the cups of the rich with tax cuts that favor those with vast wealth. But they are glad to drain the glass of the working class and the poor – so they resisted extending the payroll tax for workers, until political pressure made them reluctantly yield. They tear the social safety-net. This is not Christianity. This is social-and-political Darwinism.

And since the time of George Washington, America has treated war prisoners humanely. There never was a time when some advantage might not have been gained by torture; but, until recently, there never was a time when we touted torture. But the Bush administration changed that.

Question: Do you want politics to channel Darwinism instead of Christianity and decency?

 5. Conclusion.

Individual Republicans are often lovely persons. But they are dancing with indecency to music that mixes partisan prosecutions, partisan assault on voting rights, partisan lies as a tool of politics, and Darwinism.

The right-wing will probably continue to dance to this music. The left will not.

I hope that the center holds. I hope that the center rejects partisan prosecutions, attacks on democracy, lies, and Darwinism. I hope that the center rejects politicians who reject a fair criminal-justice system, broad-based democracy, truth, and Christianity and decency.