It's fairly easy to see that the
Ann Coulter Republicans want everyone to view politics as a game. If we do, it allows them to discount intelligence and experience, two traits largely lacking among Bush-era conservatives. It also gives their meritless arguments better footing in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence. A leg up that represents, I thought, everything Republicans were supposed to
hate. So much for taking the personal responsibility to become a well-informed individual.
Though serious adults realize that politics, most certainly,
isn't a game, I thought, since a
radical minority of Americans view it as such, it's only fair they tell the rest of us the rules. What are the guidelines by which you're playing, Republicans? How do you decide what's right and what's wrong? Who's a patriot and who's a terrorist? Who wins and who loses? Because inquiring minds want to know.
Within the Republican rulebook, is there a rule by which the president can
say the New York Times is doing "great harm" to America, pundits can refer to the paper as a national security threat and talk-show hosts can both
accuse the Times of treason and
support its staffers' executions and everyone looks the other way? Further, that they can do so while a walking
national security threat, Karl Rove, roams free and is able to coordinate a smear campaign against the very paper that aided and abetted the administration on multiple occasions?
And gave cover to the White House while it waged a war against Joseph Wilson, whose wife was working on
actual national security threats, weapons of mass destruction in Iran? If there is, I'd like to know.
Speaking of heated rhetoric, I'm curious to know if there's a rule that gives Republicans carte blanche to
call for their opponents' deaths while still labeling those who criticize them as the
angry ones. That what's good for
Ann Coulter,
Pat Robertson,
Glenn Beck and so many others is fine, but the moment Democrats critique, civilly, the administration, we become a frothy pack of angry wolves, a group not in control of our emotions or our sanity? If there is, I'd like to know.
I'd like to know if there is a rule in the playbook by which the Republican Party can
use deceased civil rights pioneers as photo props,
not go on the record as opposing lynching,
speculate that aborting African American children would reduce the crime rate and
refer to a black congresswoman as a "ghetto slut" and get away with it? Not only get away with it, but be able to
accuse the Democrats of racism for opposing on principle Bush nominees like Alberto Gonzales or Condoleeza Rice, whose minority status is somehow supposed to outweigh their massive incompetence? If there is, I'd like to know.
Also, is there a rule by which a Republican can -
not once,
but twice - run afoul of the law for drug-related violations, only to see another Republican
repeatedly say that there was "no wrongdoing" involved in the latter violation and that the lawbreaker was a victim of "political persecution"? Because I'm wondering if another aspect of that rule involves the second Republican, Bill O'Reilly, having the ability to speak out of one side of his mouth about the first Republican, Rush Limbaugh, while
referring to the residents of New Orleans as "drug-addicted" and "thugs"? Or for O'Reilly to let Limbaugh free while saying previously that he
would have ordered the execution of the Guantanamo Bay detainees and, were he in charge of Iraq,
would shoot curfew violators "on sight"? If there is, I'd like to know.
Finally, is there a rule that allows Republicans to claim that they support the troops while, in reality, the truth would prove otherwise? That allows them to hold sham votes recommending against a timetable that seemingly everyone is calling for? That lets them get away with supporting
granting amnesty to those who would torture, mutilate and murder our troops? That allows them to send others to war while they stay home and
say things like military service "isn't for our kind of people"? That considers supporting the troops
slapping a Rick Santorum bumper sticker on your car? If there is, I'd like to know.
I'd like to know, because I've got the sneaking suspicion that there
isn't a rulebook. At least nothing more involved than a simple, six-word phrase, a phrase that has been used over and over to excuse Republican hypocrisy. To whitewash years of wrongdoing. To allow the right to get away, literally and figuratively, with murder. A phrase so short, yet so harmful:
It's OK if you're a Republican.