democracy

Leonard Cohen is one of my favorite artists - he is a brilliant poet and a great entertainer - I was (ironically) listening to Democracy as I was reading the news:

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

The NY Times reported that Dede Scozzafava (R) suspended her candidacy for an upstate New York Congress seat this weekend. Scozzafava's support of gay and abortion rights caused conservative interest groups to embark on an extensive radio and advertising campaign against her (despite he being a fellow Republican). Without missing a beat, the RNC switched its support to a more "mainstream" conservative candidate, but they never consulted the district in question, which of course is upset because the new candidate is a national choice and not a local one.

This is not about calling out the Republican party - this could just as easily have happened with the Democrats if a candidate wasn't "on board" with one of their core issues.

I'm not an alarmist, but the first thing I thought of after reading this article was these words: "Our job as Americans and as Republicans is to dislodge the traitors from every place where they've been sent to do their traitorous work." -- As spoken by Senator Joseph McCarthy in a 1952 speech at the Republican National Convention.

Those were complex times, when fear prevailed in the face of a very scary enemy and the government felt empowered to do whatever was necessary to win. Sound familiar? As today (with Newt Gingrich in the NY Times article), there were cautionary voices that spoke out, most notably:

Sir, I detest, I abhor their [communists'] philosophy, but I detest more than that their tactics, which are those of the fifth column, and are dishonest, but at the same time I never as a citizen want to see our country become urged, by either fear or resentment of this group, that we ever compromise with any of our democratic principles through that fear or resentment. I still think that democracy can do it.
–Ronald Reagan, testifying to HUAC as president of the Screen Actors Guild (1947)

It's easy to understand why the conservative Republican community is so bent on protecting itself. After years of dominance, the last months have been a struggle. When you face this kind of test, you think about what got you here (your last win) and try to recreate it or protect it. In the corporate world, it's strategic entrenchment - where a company tries to milk its cash cows to the last drop, forgetting how they began in the first place, and as a result allowing others to eat their lunch, their dinner, and future meals as well.

A set of principles galvanized a group of people to form the Republican party. If I were in their leadership today, I would remember that moving away from a successful approach is incredibly difficult, and requires serious conviction. But the alternative is someone else eating your lunch, dinner and all your future meals...

As Cohen said:

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.