GOP Cracks Are Showing

We seem to have gotten used to the Democrats being the party of disharmony while the Republicans walk in almost perfect lockstep. However there have been signs of late, some of which I have mentioned on Newshog, that the cracks in the GOP were beiginning to show. The Bush tapes showed the division between the religious extremists and the rest of the party; recently there have been hints of a big oil vs. neocon feud affecting White House policy; bloggers like John Pike and even Glenn Reynolds have expressed misgivings over their party's direction; Condi Rice told the world she doesn't believe in the "War of Civilisations" crap the neocons spout...and now an old-fashioned Republican has come right out and said it in the national press.

When I was a Teenage Republican, all Republicans knew the 10th Amendment by heart and Republicans resisted the increasing power of the central government. Now Republicans leap over one another to make the federal government ever more powerful. It is Republicans at the federal level who now want to tell states whether they can allow medical marijuana or assisted suicide, or even who can have a driver's license. They want to tell the states who can get married. Imagine a Republican of my youth thinking the federal government should dictate policy to local school boards.

When I was a boy, Republicans cherished personal liberty. Creating secret no-fly lists and spy-on-your-neighbor programs, turning medical records over to police, holding people without trial in hidden military compounds, saying it's legal to torture them -- that's how we thought only Communists would behave.

Above all, the Republicans back in those days were the party of responsibility. They understood a balance sheet. "Yes," they would say, like a patient father with an immature child, "we'd all love that, but we can't afford it. Look right here at the numbers." Fiscal discipline was a value held almost as deeply as family and religion. Republicans knew that nothing works if you can't pay for it, that only ruin and shame can come from laying out more than you take in.

Where have all those Republicans gone?

Ohhhhhhhh yeah!