What I find distinctly dismaying this election cycle is the subliminal and not-so-subliminal stigmatizing of the poor and of black people by Republican candidates. Brand them as lacking the inclination to work, consign their kids to janitorial duty, stereotype them as thieves, accuse them of wanting other people’s money, brand them selfish for wanting access to the same health services as everyone else… turn around and deny you ever said any of that even while you support efforts to decrease the fruit of the sweat of their brows… then present yourself as moral for trying to legally restrict abortion?! If the societal deviants of today’s conservative candidates’ rhetoric believed half of those talking points, why would they even want to keep bringing more of themselves into the world?
Surely, among ‘values voters’, the Christian virtue of preaching the Gospel by our lives would take precedence over such expressions of ‘conservatism’.
As a born and raised “cradle Democrat” who once held office in the party, I find myself to the “left” of today’s party in perhaps the most important way. The Democrats had two years in which they could have passed anything they wanted for the benefit of the truly poor, yet they didn’t. Instead, there was only “middle class welfare”. Remember “Cash for Clunkers”? Who buys clunkers? Why, the poor, of course. But they destroyed them in order to give middle and upper class people a tax break and perhaps to aid the UAW. How could they have failed to distribute those cars, most of which were perfectly good, to the people who needed transportation but couldn’t afford it? All they did was make the remaining “clunkers” more expensive.
Obamacare is also middle class welfare. It did nothing at all for the poor. In fact, due to the reordering of “reimbursement”, the emphasis is now on providing medical care to the well, who tend to be those who are better off, not to the sick, and certainly not to those with chronic illnesses. Ask someone who arranges medical care for the disabled. Those with “chronic conditions” are being dumped now. And who’s to thank for that? Well, HHS, that’s who.
Today’s Democrat party is essentially the “Rockefeller Republican Party” of years ago; elitist, disdainful of the truly needy, socially libertarian, mildly eugenecist, servitors to the well-connected super-wealthy.
Are the Repubs any better when it comes to the truly poor? No. Nobody has done a thing for them since Reagan’s “earned income credit”. But improvements to SSI? No. Nothing from the Repubs either.
So, since no one can credibly claim there is any greater concern for the poor in the Dem party than there is in the Repub Party, one has to ask oneself whether there is anything that ought to tip the scale in the favor of either one.
Abortion certainly is one, and would outweigh all others in a moral sense. The Dem party’s wedded devotion to abortion is precisely the reason why I resigned my office in the party some time back. It certainly cost me some friends in high places. Sure did. It’s also the reason why I cannot support any Democrat candidates on my ballot. I do research their records and their statements. Well, I’ll admit, there was one prolife Democrat who ran for sheriff some time ago, and I could support him. That’s it.
And what Repub ever championed homosexuality by officially equating it with heterosexuality in the military? What Repub of national stature supports homosexual “marriage” as the current administration does?
What Repub has told us that our home heat and lighting would cost us dramatically more due to his policies? None. But Obama did, and he’s acting on it. Never mind that the poor also need to keep warm and see after dusk, and wash their clothes and dry them. And never mind that they need gasoline at reasonable rates in order to go find a job or go to work, to the store, or even go to the doctor. No, make them pay more so they’ll be in even worse financial condition. That’s the elitist formulation of this administration.
One could go on and on, but one should never imagine that somehow the Democrat party of today remotely resembles the Democrat party of before. It doesn’t.
(And yes, I know people say “Democratic party” on here. I say “Democrat party” because that’s what I was taught to say by the old party folks in my area, and it is out of respect for them that I still say it.)
