You don't often see a Republican unloading on his own party like moderate Republican Wayne Gilchrest of Maryland's eastern shore does in today's Washington Post column by Marc Fisher. Here are a few of Gilchrest's pointed remarks:
*On John McCain vs. Barack Obama: "one guy [McCain] just recites what's in front of him, and the other [Obama] has initiative and reason and prudence and wisdom." [Lowell's note: Why don't we hear more Republicans saying this, when it's so patently true? C'mon, Susan Collins, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, Chris Shays, and SUPPOSED "moderate" Frank Wolf, let's hear it!]
*On his House GOP colleagues: They "not only don't read the Financial Times, they have never heard of the Financial Times." [Lowell's comment: I wonder what Gilchrest thinks of Sarah Palin, who says she reads "all" the newspapers, "any of 'em," but can't/won't name a single one.]
*On the GOP in general: "...has become more narrow, more self-serving, more centered around 'I want, I want, I want.'" [Lowell's note: as a former colleague of mine used to say, the Republicans have become the "I've got mine so f*** you" party.]
*On why people vote GOP: "...because of the evangelicals, the neocons, the nasty, bitter and mean . . . very clever ideological groups that use money, technology, fear and bigotry to lead people around." [Lowell's note: See "What's the matter with Kansas" by Thomas Frank.]
*More on why people vote GOP: "...a country that sits down in front of the boob tube and listens to people shouting about freedom, but now people equate freedom not with the acquisition of knowledge but with comfort...a complete lack of responsibility." [Lowell's note: Yeah, I blame TV - and couch potatoes - for a lot of our problems in this country. Turn it off, read, learn, go outside, get involved in your community; anything but passive "boob tube"/"idiot box" land.]
Anyway, I really wish that Congressman Gilchrest would tell us how he REALLY feels! Ha. On the other hand, we all know that the Marines don't mess around, so what else would we expect?
As if Gilchrest's comments weren't damning enough, Fisher also cites three members of that dying breed known as "Virginia moderate Republicans."
Tom Davis: The Virginia GOP "gave me the middle finger" and won't accept "[a]nybody who compromises...you're an apostate."
Vince Callahan: "We can't be a party about immigrant-bashing or gay-bashing or any other bashing."
Finally, I believe that Fisher misattributes a quote to Wayne Gilchrest that really is by John Chichester, but either way it's a good one:
"The party has stepped away from Eisenhower and Goldwater and Nixon and Ford and even Ronald Reagan. It's been driven away by this anti-government combination of Milton Friedman and Jerry Falwell."
Couldn't have said it better myself. I know that's why I left the Republican Party back in 1980 (after starting off as a Teenage Republican who campaigned for Gerald Ford, sat on a stage with George HW Bush, and attended a Ronald Reagan rally!), and since then it's only gotten worse and worse, deteriorating to the point where Jeff Frederick is the head of the Virginia GOP and unpopular right winger Jim Gilmore can barely fend off utterly bonkers right-wing extremist "Sideshow Bob" Marshall for the US Senate nomination (after they ditch Tom Davis, who could have won or at least given Mark Warner a run for his money). Stupid AND pathetic are not a good combination, now are they? Ha.
Also curious how the GOP views their super awesome senate candidate now. What's his name again?
I'd love to be an independent voter, but as long as the GOP is in bed with the religious, hate-filled fanatics of the wingnut variety, they can forget about ever seeing my vote again.
What is sad is that the failures of these policies, which I rather call Neoliberal or Friedman economics because "free" is a misnomer, had widely failed around the world. And with the exception of a few countries such as Britain and Chile, the policies produced consistently the same results: stagnating wages, huge concentration of wealth on fewer and fewer people and less competition.
Real Neoliberalism should be declared dead now, just as real Marxism was declared dead almost 20 years ago. And hopefully, those who supported it until the last moment will engage in the same soul searching that former Marxists engaged after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
He seems to have replacement of every moderate Republican in his sites and will pay to "primary" any that don't knuckle under, no matter what their constituancy need and want.
You are correct, it is time to declare Friedmanism as much a failure as Marxism. Newer economic models are being develoed which take into account more of the bottom-up factors. What worries me is that, faced with our current meltdown, surviving Friedmanite "experts" will mangle the reforms needed because they will be operating from the old Friedman dogma, and we will not get true reform because the underlying philosophy is exactly the same thing which got us into the mess.
And about Chile and the UK, you are right as well. I often have the same conversation with a Chilean that I know about this. He thanks the neoliberal changes for the prosperity in Chile; I tell him that it has more to do with Chileans because other countries tried more radical versions of the same policies and they got terrible results.
I assume the same applies for the UK.