Or, as it seems to me…
It’s over. The Election that is, slipping behind us in the wake of history, already becoming lost as we move forward into the future. Republicans are wondering what hit them, exactly, as this was supposed to be theirs for the taking – certainly I thought I would wake in the morning of January 7th to a President Elect Romney, a thought that frightened me I will confess.
But that didn’t happen. Romney lost and appears lost. Republicans have returned with control of the House but not the Senate with the White House still home to the reviled Obamas. Never quite got the vitriol they inspired from the right. Starting in 2008 the Republican’s entire agenda was to make him a one term President. Having failed to do that where do they go?
Not more than a few days ago my brother was in a conversation with some folks about the Election. He opened to the fact he voted Obama’s way and was met with disbelief by one who said: you know he’s a Muslim.
How do you respond to that? How do you deal with that level of ignorance, denial and just plain stupidity? And, at the end, should it matter in a pluralistic America? Because that’s what we’ve become – a pluralistic society that is growing only more pluralistic with every election. That is what hit the Republicans this time in the solar plexus because this could have been their election if they had met more in the center. Obama won but he also just didn’t lose. He was on the razor’s edge the entire election, right up to the end and pulled through a narrow popular win while winning big in the Electoral College.
Now understand I gave more to Obama to win than I have ever given any President at any time. I didn’t want Romney to win. I’ve made it clear in these letters I didn’t want Romney to win because I didn’t feel the man could be trusted. And I wanted to like Romney.
Oh, how I yearn for those good cloth coat Republicans of my childhood, when my parents were Republicans and it felt like it was a party that made sense. Now it doesn’t make sense to me and, frankly, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to a lot of Republicans either.
They own the South and much of the center, the broad plains states but owning the South and the not well-populated plains states won’t carry you to the White House. There has to be some sense of the center and that’s not something the Republican Party can quite seem to master right now. And I mourn their inability to do so.
To my great surprise, Republicans have become the party of the crazies, the out of touch folks, the ignorant, the naysayers of our times. I don’t remember Republicans like this in my childhood. Where’s Everett Dirksen when you need him? Six feet under where much of the Republican Party lies buried right now.
And I am praying for a resurrection, not of the Republicans of 2012 but of the Republicans of old, the ones who genuinely cared for the Republic and played for the middle.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Leave a Reply