Why I Despise Modern Republicans

In Mother Jones http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/06/8689_a_righttolifer.html we see a section entitled MoJo Blog: A Right-to-Lifer and the GOP's Nursing Home Dilemma When Ken Connor was on Capitol Hill earlier this week, it was clear that people in his party deeply wish that he would go back to worrying about the unborn. The conservative Christian Republican trial lawyer had come to Washington to testify in support of a bill that would ban the use of mandatory binding arbitration clauses in nursing home contracts. Most nursing homes today, as a condition of admission, require vulnerable elderly people and their families to waive their right to sue a facility in the event of a dispute. Instead, they must take any complaints about medical malpractice or abuse to a private arbitrator, chosen and paid by the nursing home, in secret proceedings where any awards are much lower than they would be from a jury. The arbitration agreements are often buried in a stack of complicated paperwork, where in some cases, they have been signed by blind people and those suffering from Alzheimer's... For three years, Connor served as the president of the Family Research Council, a leading social conservative outfit, and became a rock star among the GOP’s evangelical wing when he went to work in 2004 for then-Governor Jeb Bush to defend a Florida law that would have prevented doctors from removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. For Republican legislators, Connor has moral authority. He also gives money to many of them, so Republicans have to tolerate him, even as he forces them into a corner where they have to chose between devotion to industry and devotion to God and life... He described a nursing home industry that routinely faked medical records and staffing documentation to cover up for its shoddy treatment of its frail residents. And while Connor invoked the standard trial lawyer arguments about the need to keep the courthouse open to those who've suffered at the hands of heartless corporations, he did it in distinctly evangelical language. "Our society,” he said, “is rapidly embracing a quality-of-life ethic in the place of a sanctity-of-life ethic. But, old people do not score well using quality of life calculus and they perform poorly on functional capacity studies. They cost more to maintain than they produce and they are vulnerable to abuse and neglect by unscrupulous nursing home operators who are willing to put profits over people."... Still, Republicans demonstrated that, despite making nice with Connor, they probably weren't going to get on board. In a desperate attempt to find an alternative to the bill, the committee's ranking Republican, Utah Rep. Chris Cannon, at one point suggested that nursing homes install granny-cams, so that the residents’ loved ones could keep an eye on them remotely, as a way of improving the quality of care, rather than eliminate arbitration clauses. Connor thinks the Republicans' performance on the issue illustrates what’s wrong with his party these days. "[Republicans] failure to support this is, in my judgment, a failure of first principles," he said in an interview after the hearing. He noted that “Republicans would be the first to say we should hold the welfare queen responsible," but they never hold corporations to the same standards. "Protecting wrongdoing has become what our party is all about,” Connor added. “And they wonder why they're getting their clocks cleaned on the electoral map. The hypocrisy is breathtaking." The Republican Party had a Contract With America. Their success here made their frail egos swell with arrogance and led to the Impeachment Frenzy. Their continued degradation eventuated in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, effectively suspending habeas corpus any time they felt like it. Finally, in the elections of November 2006, they lost their majority and the country had that 800 pound monkey off its back. PS: I am not the only one to notice how modern day conservatism, not neoconservativism alone, has wrought disaster throughout the country. In Blog For Our Future: Atlanta: Finishing What General Sherman Started By Rick Perlstein June 21st, 2008 - 2:18pm ET http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/atlanta-finishing-what-general-sherman-started

In an article dealing with the continuing water problems of the South East, particularly Atlanta, Georgia, whose Lake Lanier was much in the news last year: Atlanta magazine could no longer ignore it. The cover of their "The Water Issue," which I picked up on a recent swing through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, is graced by a water glass that's one-quarter full—scratch that, three-quarters empty. The entire magazine is a fascinating document, a potsherd for future archeologists seeking answers to the kind of neuroses that allowed a civilization let itself be run according to an ideology—conservatism—so singularly unfit to govern a complex, modern society... "Eighteen years, fourteen governors, and endless posturing and finger-pointing" brought on his "tri-state water war," we learn; what we don't learn is that Roy Barnes, the guy who actually stuck his neck out to solve the problem, was a Democrat, and the man who replaced him was the Confederate Flag-baiting Republican; and that besides Barnes, eight of these eleven governors were Republicans; and that the remaining three Democrats were either conservatives or hobbled in whatever enlightened reforms they might have proposed by conservative and/or Republican legislatures... Reagan is gone. Reagan Republicans are the shallow fools you see today.