I’ve been poking my nose into an insipid “Big Tent Vs. Wet Blanket” thread about the future of Republicanism over at FSP.
In the course of trying, Yoda like, to lead the blind men to the truth of what it really means to be “pro-life” it occurred to me that while George Bush used the term “pro-life” throughout his presidency, at the same time he was making the Republican Party objectively “pro-death.”
George Bush made a mockery of the notion that Republicans are “pro-life” with his consistently “pro-death” policies like pre-emptive war, torture, and the blood thirsty logic of killing Iraqi civilian to punish the world for 9/11. After Bush, how can anyone who thinks that words having meaning view Bush’s Republican party as anything other than “pro-death?”
They can’t. And while I think Republicans can stand a great deal of cognitive dissonance, every human being has a breaking point where the disconnect between reality and fantasy must be reconciled.
Seeing the “pro-death” president in action time and again taking the “pro-death” course and pursuing “pro-death” policies has really ground down the earnest Republicans who do honestly attempt to “value human life.”
Repeating “we are pro-life” like some kind of sick mantra when the facts were clear that the party had become firmly and resolutely “pro-death” became a kind of Chinese water torture for this Republicans remnant who longed for their party to actually protect the most vulnerable and defenseless humans. The rest is history.
Tangentially Related: Mike Castle has a chance to make history. (It really would be the right thing to do given his performance.)