Whatever a Man Sows, That He Will Also Reap

Rick McKee cartoon, (c) 2015 Cagle Cartoons

The Republican Party is in trouble, as is indicated by their current representative vying for the highest office in the land. When trying to find out why they went wrong, however, the most useful tool would be a mirror.

Donald Trump has gone from entertaining sideshow to dangerous demagogue. I'll admit at first that I fell into the attitude that he was a flash in the pan; something that, like summer, would be wrapped up by Labor Day.

Not so. Today, Trump's numbers are as high as ever. The media is tripping over themselves to let him on their shows, just so he can lie over and over again while saying that the media is scum. It's a form of self-flagellation that not only hurts the media, but hurts the entire political atmosphere in America.

The problem is that the American echo chamber, when replayed abroad, is portraying Donald Trump as speaking for the U.S. If every time someone overseas turns the television on and sees Trump bloviating on banning Muslim travel to the U.S., or saying the Paris attacks would have gone differently if the victims had been armed, or that Muslims need to carry special ID, what else are they supposed to think?

In the same way that so many people think that ISIS and Al Qaeda represent Islam, many people abroad are beginning to think that Donald Trump represents America. Neither are true, but the truth gets lost in perception time and time again.

The GOP should not be surprised that the three current leading candidates to represent them in the 2016 election are Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Ben Carson. Three people that, if they boarded a New York subway and went into their stump speech, would have rational people rolling their eyes and wishing for Showtime.

The Republican Party took a hard right when it came to religion and perceived morality in the 1980s with the election of Ronald Reagan and his use of the Religious Right. Barry Goldwater - the epitome of a pre-Reagan conservative - predicted the fall of the GOP 20 years ago, when he warned Republicans about letting the extreme religious portion of their party take over.

They didn't heed that warning, and the result is that decades of sowing that side of the party has reaped them with three national embarrassments as their best candidates. The party's reliance on partisan media, their willingness to court white voters almost exclusively, and their inability to criticize Trump because they think he's a victim has led them to their current position. And they have no one the blame but themselves.

Kristol Monday: Potshots at the Left, Backhanded Compliments for Obama

It seems that every Monday Bill Kristol's column in the New York Times just spews right-wing propaganda into the media atmosphere while dismissing liberals as "the intolerant left" and who, at the same time, belong to "finger-wagging nanny-state-nagging liberalism." Oh, Bill, does it ever end? Calling the left "intolerant" loses some of its value when one of the frontrunners to take over leadership of the RNC distributes a CD to RNC members with a track entitled "Barack the Magic Negro" and then defends it. But these potshots take away from Kristol's main point: Obama is having an inauguration soon and the fact that he picked Rick Warren for the invocation means that Kristol does not completely hate Obama.

As always, however, Kristol's column has some factual issues with it (or more just some common-sense issues). To begin with, for some reason he absolutely despises Maya Angeloum, but for an inane reason. Take this gem from his column: "I still remember watching Maya Angelou read 'On the Pulse of Morning' at Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993 — and thinking that American culture really was in a state of irreversible decline, as she indulged in that multicultural cataloguing." It seems Kristol took offense when Angelou decided to list a variety of ethnicities and religions in her poem about America - you know, that great melting pot of diversity where people are different but all distinctly American? What does the Statue of Liberty say? "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Yet celebrating differences is an indication of a society whose culture is in "irreversible decline." And Kristol calls the left intolerant.

Then Kristol goes on to praise Abraham Lincoln, saying that his "actions exemplified the prudent and skillful pursuit of a principled end." Do not get me wrong; Lincoln was a great president and one of the main reasons that the Union remained a union at all, but to say that his Emancipation Proclamation and his fight to end slavery was based on principle - and not politics - is a bit misguided. First, his Proclamation freed slaves in the southern states during the Civil War, essentially doing nothing because he had no control over it. That would be like a president today saying that all political prisoners around the world are now free - a nice gesture, but there's no way to enforce it. Secondly, Lincoln was far from an equality seeker. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates he was quick to point out that he did not want to "set the niggers and white people to marry together" when Douglas hinted that Lincoln wanted an "amalgamation" of the races. Additionally, Lincoln stated that "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about the social and political equality of the white and black races." To top it all off, Lincoln stated, "I am not in favor of Negro citizenship." So while Lincoln saw slavery as a horrible institution - anyone with a speck of morality did - he was not exactly fighting for equality between whites and blacks.

Then there's Kristol's backhanded compliments of Obama. Don't take Kristol's few positive words of Obama as genuine praise. Kristol thinks Obama may be a bit too proud, saying that Obama should have the "Good Book" opened up to Proverbs 16:18, which reads, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." Then he goes on to criticize those who point out Obama's smoking habit, right after he pointed out Obama's smoking habit. Mentioning something by saying you should not mention it sets up the thinnest of smoke screens to take a critical shot at someone - you want to criticize someone, just do it; don't give me this passive aggressive crap.

Kristol is a symbol of the old Republican party - hawkish (while being misinformed) with too much of a focus on religion. He even says, "And having Warren there will, in fact, be a welcome reminder of the strides the evangelical movement and religious conservatives (broadly speaking) have made in recent decades." Many believe that religion is killing the Republican party and the party's true symbol before the religious right took over during Reagan's administration - Barry Goldwater - would agree: "When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye." If Republicans want to wrest the White House away from the "intolerant left" and nagging liberals, they need to change their outlook and what it means to be "conservative." Until then "Barack the Magic Negro" and Bill Kristol columns will have to do. Peace.

Photos - Bill Kristol on the "Daily Show" (Huffington Post), Honest Abe (Civics Online), Barry Goldwater (Official Site of the Presidential Medal of Freedom)