PERSPECTIVE FROM 2012-AUSTRALIA-Radicals Push Members Out on a Wing
“And I don’t think it is a coincidence that the Republicans have become the party of religious fundamentalism,” he says, arguing that once you have accepted a set of ideas that are founded in belief rather than reason - such as in one’s religious life - it is easier to transpose similar thinking to other politics.
This is why, he says, many in the new right believe ideas that seem preposterous to those who live outside its circles.
“In a recent poll only 31 per cent of Republicans believed Barack Obama was born in the United States.
“Who are the others? They are either stupid or crazy.”
These others, he says, get their news entirely from right wing media, which magnifies their dislocation from the real world.
Anyone within the party who challenges the dogma is ostracised, he says.
“It’s like the Middle Ages where people were jailed for saying the Earth revolved around the sun.”
Bartlett’s own ostracism dates back to 2005 when he was sacked by the National Centre for Policy Analysis for his criticism of George W. Bush.
David Frum, the Bush speech-writer who gave us the term “axis of evil” in the 2002 State of the Union address was forced out of the conservative think tank The American Enterprise Institute in 2010 after he dared challenge the campaign against President Obama’s healthcare reforms.
It was not that he entirely supported “Obamacare”, just he thought the blanket opposition was poor politics, and improving America’s healthcare system was a goal noble enough to warrant some compromise.
Writing in New York Magazine last year, Frum explained, “I’ve been a Republican all my adult life. I have worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at Forbes magazine, at the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes …
“I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government … But as I contemplate my party and my movement in 2011, I see things I simply cannot support.”
… .
“Us public policy analysts aren’t meant to make comparisons with the 1930s, but it is beginning to look like the Weimar Republic.”Fumento’s view is equally bleak, though he looks to the Bible for analogy.
“If King Solomon was in the United States today and threatened to kill the baby, you know what the Democrats and Republicans would say?
“They’d say cut the little bastard in half.”
More: Radicals Push Members Out on a Wing
A while ago I posted a photo to a photo blog to which I am a member for critique and criticism. It is a an international blog that includes members for which English is a second language. About half the responses I got were political regarding the state of our Country reflected in the photo.
Sometimes others can see what we cannot or will not.