This video, shot by self-described “gay, libertarian, Catholic, Republican” blogger Rick Sincere at yesterday’s “Tea Party” convention, is hilarious on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin. George Allen is asked an excellent question by Sincere, whether there’s room in today’s Republican Party for a Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater. In response, Allen responds that, yes, there’s room in the GOP “for all sorts of Republicans!” This is very funny, for several reasons.
First, it’s hilarious because of who Allen is standing right next to – Steve King, one of the most hardline conservative (not to mention extremely controversial Republicans – out there. The concept that there would be room in Steve King’s Republican Party for a Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater is simply laughable. Why do I say this? Because, very simply, Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater are people who:
*raised taxes (multiple times in Reagan’s case)
*as Karl Rove himself pointed out, “signed an immigration-amnesty bill” (Reagan)
*negotiated with the “Evil Empire,” offering to scrap U.S. nuclear weapons
*increased deficit spending by leaps and bounds and the debt by over $1.5 trillion (Reagan)
*oversaw development of Medi-Cal, the largest Medicare program in the country (Reagan)
*who “established the Air Resources Board to battle California’s smog problems and supported aggressive government intervention where the market had failed to protect the environment” (Reagan)
*who “was a former union president who campaigned against the Taft-Hartley Act and other restrictions of the right of unions to organize” (Reagan)
*sold weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran (Reagan)
*”signed into law the most liberal abortion statute of its day” (Reagan)
*supported the Brady gun control law (Reagan)
*as Barry Goldwater did, “saw the religious right’s views as an encroachment on personal privacy and individual liberties”
*”voted consistently to uphold legalized abortion” (Goldwater)
*”criticized the military’s ban on homosexuals” (Goldwater)
*said that “[e]very good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass” (Goldwater)
*ripped Pat Robertson as a “radical right” moneymaker trying “to take the Republican party and make a religious organization out of it” (Goldwater)
How would any of these views fit in with today’s Steve King/Sarah Palin/Steve King/Tea Party Republican Party? Let’s be serious – not well, if at all. In fact, this cycle, the GOP has just finished purging its ranks of many members considered not conservative enough, yet who are arguably far more conservative than either Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater. Given that fact – and it is a fact, not an opinion (look it up!) – how can “Felix Macacawitz” claim that there would be room in today’s GOP for Reagan or Goldwater? Most likely, he simply has no clue what he’s saying, but he’s probably also pandering in a big way. Either way, he’s simply wrong – there is absolutely, categorically, no place in today’s Republican Party for people who believe and do the long list of things set out above. Think about it.
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