Tolerating the Intolerant is Bringing Us All Down By: Mark W Adams

Mike Lofgren has written a piece I would consider required reading in any Political Science course that teaches how our government really works and why it doesn't live up to the promise it's institutions inspire when you study them in all your other government classes. Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult:

I have joked in the past that the main administration policy that Republicans object to is Obama's policy of being black.

As they say, Read It All.  Go ahead, I'll wait....

Back in the good old days, like the Summer of 2007, I attempted ever so feebly to make a non-racist, non-sexist argument for John Edwards as a superior presidential contender than either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton based in no small part on the innate racism and misogyny of the Republicans in our midst. 

The idea was that Edwards, as a white Southern gentleman, A) was more "electable" and B) almost as an afterthought, that his policies would be easier to get through an otherwise hostile Congress that would constantly filibuster Hillary in a replay of the Clinton Witch Trials of the late 1990s -- and they simply wouldn't be able to deal with a Black guy in the Oval Office emotionally/rationally.

I never actually put that argument to digital paper beyond the flame wars at Daily Kos, and I most certainly did not flesh it out completely. The ability to govern effectively was a throw-away line, a "By the way..." thing since we were immeasurably more obsessed with the idea of insuring an end the nightmarish Bush administration by any means necessary than the difference between a public option and single-payer. 

Others were making that argument anyway, and getting righteously slammed for being intolerant themselves, only making the argument that it was the Klansmen on the right we needed to fear as a mask covering their own bigotry -- on of the most horrific things you can ever call a true liberal.  Treading among those minefields just wasn't appetizing.

Not that it really would have made any difference, and besides ... my crystal ball is a shattered remnant of it's former splendor from whence it told me Jonny E. was someone America should trust.  However, I do wonder sometimes.  We proved that America was indeed ready to elect a black President, and I certainly believe it's past ready to elect a woman to the White House.  We also have proved these last couple of years that, sadly, America is far from ready to be run by a black President. 

And if disaster should occur and Palin or Backman are able to prove that we are okay with electing a woman as Chief Executive, we will also prove that we are in no way a mature enough society to be run by a Female Commander in Chief, and least not either of those two idiots.  Hillary sure, and dozens of other women I could rattle off would be fine Presidents and effective ones too, but not those T-bagger supported screeching harpies.  I just can't imagine.

And that's the problem. I couldn't imagine just how cravenly GOP operatives would manipulate the public's natural xenophobia and authoritarian tendencies.  I mean, I know they do, and will again.  I just lack the evil genius gene that seems required to second guess how low they can go.  That is the very weakness they exploit in all liberals, and short of becoming what we hate, I don't know how to defeat them.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to give up trying.