The Forgotten Republican Rebrand
By Jason Stanford, December 30, 2013
Heckuva
job with that rebranding, Republicans. They started 2013 hoping to
rejoin modern America but ended it once again on the wrong side of
history. By embracing Phil Robertson’s prejudice against gays and
blacks and rebuffing Pope Francis’ call for economic justice,
Republicans have made it clear that they would rather hold onto
unchristian religious views than make the changes needed to win
national elections again.
Almost
a year ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal smacked his own party upside
the head.
“We’ve
got to stop being the stupid party. It’s time for a new Republican
Party that talks like adults,” he said at the Republican National
Committee’s winter convention. “We had a number of Republicans
damage the brand this year with offensive and bizarre comments. I’m
here to say we’ve had enough of that.”
Republicans
quickly made it clear that they had not had enough of that.
Apparently expressing views abhorrent to most Americans has become a
bedrock Republican value. Jindal has since walked the “stupid
party” comments back. He’s walked so far back, in fact, that he
has reached a time when open expressions of prejudice were not
considered socially unacceptable.
In
his interview with GQ, Robertson debated the comparative sexual
merits of different orifices, called homosexuality a sin, and
predicted that equality for homosexuality will lead directly to a
broader acceptance of bestiality. That, and he remembered all the
happy black folks picking cotton during segregation.
About
the same time, Pope Francis criticized the “idolatry of money”
and called “trickle-down” economics an “opinion, which has
never been confirmed by the facts, [that] expresses a crude and
naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power.”
If
you think that your religion teaches you that homosexuality leads to
bestiality, I question your relationship to your God and to your
horse. And I don’t have time to teach remedial economics to those
who still believe cutting taxes for the wealthy leads to greater tax
revenue, job growth, and shrinking income disparity. Homophobia and
supply-side economics are political faiths with no basis in science
or the Bible I studied in Sunday school.
Republicans
think otherwise. Noted moral exemplar Rush Limbaugh called the Pope’s
views “pure Marxism.” Sarah Palin, whose Nobel Prize for
Economics got lost in the mail again this year, said the Pope’s
analysis was “kind of liberal.” And Rep. Paul Ryan, who was
raised on Social Security survivor benefits before he proposed
turning Medicare into Groupon for Grandmas, condescendingly said,
“The guy is from Argentina, they haven’t had real capitalism in
Argentina.” Yes, he called the Pope “the guy.”
Republicans
have to attack the Pope’s views lest anyone notice that they have
just cut off long-term unemployment insurance when there are three
applicants for every job. What would you rather do? Call the Pope
names, or explain why you cut food stamps for 47 million
Americans—that’s 1 out of every 7 of us—during the worst
long-term unemployment crisis since World War II?
Instead
of taking a clue from a recognized churchman, Republicans treated
Robertson’s anatomical analysis as if it were an expression of
religious doctrine. When A&E briefly suspended Robertson,
Republicans treated L’Affaire Duck as if U.N. troops had barricaded
church doors. They compared him to Rosa Parks and hailed Robertson
“as a hero for courageously revealing his self-truth and Christian
ideals.”
“If
you believe in free speech or religious liberty, you should be deeply
dismayed over the treatment of Phil Robertson,” said Sen. Ted Cruz
on his Facebook page.
And
Jindal, the oracle who inveighed against stupidity at the beginning
of this year that celebrated it, completed his redemption when he
said, “The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints,
except those they disagree with.”
Robertson
can say whatever he wants, and Republicans are free to say that a
reality TV star—and a fried chicken franchise, for that
matter—represent their religious views better than the Catholic
Church. But Republicans will never rebrand their party until they
become more like Pope Francis and less like Phil Robertson.
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