Excellent article online from GQ about Don Rumsfeld and the problems he caused within the Bush Administration. Most interesting was his resistance to helping out with Hurricane Katrina. He didn’t want to deploy anything but National Guard troops, and kept a whole fleet of nearby helicopters idle, while the pilots wondered, “Why aren’t we being sent in to rescue people?” Finally, George Bush basically read him the riot act–good for him–and got things moving. The article tells about another time, involving Abu Graihb, when Bush called Rummy on the carpet.

I’m reading similar things in “Fiasco,” Thomas Ricks’s book about the Iraq war. Rumsfeld wanted to disprove the Powell Doctrine–go in with overwhelming force. So while the generals said we would need several hundred thousand troops, Rumsfeld started the “negotiations” by saying we would need just 10,000 troops to conquer Iraq. Rumsfeld’s stubbornness and arrogance cost a lot of lives, and led to the chaos which soon engulfed us in Iraq.

The conservative stranglehold on the Republican Party tightens. Now Colin Powell, once a star in the party whose name regularly came up as a Presidential candidate, is persona non grata.

Rush Limbaugh said, “What Colin Powell needs to do is close the loop and become a Democrat instead of claiming to be a Republican interested in reforming the Republican Party.”

If you don’t hold the approved views, the Republicans don’t want you. I predict that John McCain and Olympia Snowe will soon be ushered to the door. And no doubt others. I guess I might as well get in line. If Powell doesn’t meet the litmus test, then I certainly don’t.

Senator Specter: Welcome to the bottom of the barrel, the lowest rung of the ladder, the ground floor, the rookie room, irrelevance, powerlessness, Death Valley. Happy now?

Here’s a fascinating statistical run-down of Obama’s first 100 days–trips, states visited, proclamations, bills signed, visits to Camp David–everything you do and don’t want to know. 

I’ve always liked Arlen Specter. He can articulate a nuanced position, and sticks to his personal principles and beliefs above partisan politics. But yesterday, in explaining why he was jumping to the Democratic party, he showed himself to be consumed with self-preservation. He changed parties so he wouldn’t be voted out of office. He made no bones about it. It was about pride, ego, legacy. Very dissappointing. 

However, Specter’s decision points out a huge problem in the Republican party. Moderates are no longer welcome. In fact, if you listen to the right-wing media, there are no Republican moderates, only conservatives and liberals. If you hold moderate views, you’re not a true Republican. You’re a liberal, a Republican in name only. 

I’ve heard various Republican leaders talk about increasing the size of the tent, but they seem to get shouted down. Instead, the tent is getting smaller, while the Democratic tent continually increases in size. Remember how Rush Limbaugh lambasted John McCain during the primary? He didn’t consider McCain a proper Republican; his voting credentials were insufficiently ideological.

I’ve been a Republican most of my life, but it’s hard for me to find room in that tent. Likewise for the growing number of what are being called “progressive evangelicals,” people like me whose biblical convictions about the role of government extend far beyond the Big Three of the Religious Right–abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research. 

I oppose the death penalty, favor reasonable gun control, care deeply about economic injustice (favoring the rich, screwing the poor and the middle class), believe climate change and energy independence must be dealt with, think that in a modern civilized country, everyone should have access to health care. But Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, our media-age gurus, would tear me apart. Their Republican party has no room for my kind; we’re ideologically impure and cannot be tolerated. We are to be demonized and ridiculed, labeled as traitors. We are not what they consider conservatives.

The Democratic party isn’t attractive to me, with their nutty left-wing. and yet, they are making room for progressive evangelicals. It’s probably the reason Obama was elected.

Interestingly, the senators I admire most are all Republicans–John McCain, Dick Lugar, John Warner, Olympia Snowe, Lindsey Graham…and Arlen Specter. Most, if not all, of them are political moderates. But if the loudmouth right-wing media continues its stranglehold on the political conversation, excoriating Republicans like me, the day will come when a Lindsey Graham or a John McCain–not just an Arlen Specter–cannot find a home in the Republican Party. And that will be sad.