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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

On voting against the GOP

I voted for Cory Booker this morning. Until recently, I was an undecided voter in that election, and even after deciding to vote against Steve Lonegan, I wrote that I was voting for Booker "with no particular enthusiasm." But my enthusiasm actually increased since then, as I saw (a) that the conservative DailyCaller was running ludicrous pieces supposedly debunking Booker's residency in Newark and his rescuing of a woman from a fire; and (b) that the House GOP madness continues.

As I've mentioned, my congressman Scott Garrett is one of the farthest-right members of Congress and one of the worst perpetrators of debt ceiling nihilism. Here again is a scene that still encapsulates what the conservatives in Congress have wrought.



So it goes without saying I'll be voting against Garrett next year, and more comprehensively I am on the same page as Rod Dreher in this statement in his piece "The Strangelove Republicans" at The American Conservative:
I cannot believe I’m saying this, but I hope the House flips to the Democrats in 2014, so we can be rid of these nuts. Let Ted Cruz sit in the Senate stewing in his precious bodily fluids, and let Washington get back to the business of governing.
Me: The Strangelove analogy is apt. Here's a scene that demonstrates the various strands of thought that interwove into GOP debt ceiling strategy.

Me: I'm a fairly conservative guy. I admire Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, Alexander Hamilton and Prince Namor of Atlantis. And I've been a registered Republican for three decades. And as far as I'm concerned, this is what things have come to: The Republican Party deserves to be drubbed in congressional elections next year. Whether it's worth voting for in 2016 will depend largely on who it nominates for president and whether that's someone who can and will stand up to the party's conservative wing run amok. Next month I'll be voting for one Republican who plausibly fits the bill. But there's a long, hard road to rehabilitating the GOP from what it has done lately. And we very well may not yet have seen the worst of the current conservative disaster.