Thursday, October 21, 2004
Rational Thought is Not Dead!
I can't tell you how personally affirming it was to read the items below today. I'm not alone in wishing for a more mainstream republican party.
Former GOP Governor Endorses Kerry Former Republican Gov. William Milliken of Michigan endorsed Democratic Sen. John Kerry for president on Monday, saying President Bush has pursued policies "pandering to the extreme right wing." Milliken, governor from 1969-82, accused the Bush administration of rushing into the Iraq war, pushing tax cuts that benefit the rich and blocking meaningful stem-cell research. "I felt so strongly about the direction of this country that in the end, it wasn't a difficult decision to make,'' Milliken said in an interview Monday with Traverse City Record-Eagle reporters and editors.
Women's rights, civil liberties, the separation of church and state, the funding of family planning efforts world-wide - all have suffered grievously under this president and his administration.
The truth is that President George W. Bush does not speak for me or for many other moderate Republicans on a very broad cross section of issues.
Or even more eloquently by Former Kentucky Senator Marlow Cooke, who articulates (albeit much better) many of the thoughts I've tried to express on my little blog. Measure Bush's values by his actions...they are damning.
In 2000, to defeat Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — a man who was shot down in Vietnam and imprisoned for over five years — they used Carl Rove's "East Texas special." They started the rumor that he was gay, saying he had spent too much time in the Hanoi Hilton. They said he was crazy. They said his wife was on drugs. Then, to top it off, they spread pictures of his adopted daughter, who was born in Bangladesh and thus dark skinned, to the sons and daughters of the Confederacy in rural South Carolina.
I am not enamored with John Kerry, but I am frightened to death of George Bush. I fear a secret government. I abhor a government that refuses to supply the Congress with requested information. I am against a government that refuses to tell the country with whom the leaders of our country sat down and determined our energy policy, and to prove how much they want to keep that secret, they took it all the way to the Supreme Court.
Those of you who are fiscal conservatives and abhor our staggering debt, tell your conservative friends, "Vote for Kerry," because without Bush to control the Congress, the first thing lawmakers will demand Kerry do is balance the budget.
http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/editorials/2004/10/20/oped-marlow1020-8060.html
What's even more refreshing is other such guiding lights on the right like Lee Iacocca, Christine Todd-Whitman, George Will, William F. Buckley, Jr. Andrew Sullivan are speaking out. That and the eloquent words of Bill Milliken and Senator Marlow gave me a great surge of hope and pride that there are people in the GOP (people I greatly admire) who value principle over hanging on to power at any cost. People who remember its about empowering individuals not government and respecting private matters on abortion and gay marriage.
To be honest, reading Milliken and Marlow got me a little choked up today. There is hope for our country.
Below is a refreshing sight. With the current crop of radical republican senate candidates, I'm not sure I'm on board with the whole REB concept, but the message should give both Reps and Dems hope.
