In Despite state mythology, Texas lacks right to secede (Dallas Morning News, April 18, 2009), political consultant Bill Miller intimated that Republicans are nut jobs.
Bill, a partner in HillCo Partners LLC and supporter of discredited former House Speaker Tom Craddick, said the following in response to Governor Rick Perry’s moral support of secessionist nuts:
Clearly, he’s playing their song. And he was tone-perfect actually, for that group.
[When it comes to the GOP base] there’s no downside for him [using the secession argument]. He can ride that horse all day long.
Um, Bill, most Republicans aren’t insane. The vast majority of us laugh (or cry?) at this secession talk.
It’s unfortunate that this kind of view gets any press. But maybe it’s accurate when the party platform has provisions that would:
- Criminalize use of oral contraceptives.
- Eliminate use of Presidential executive orders.
- Allow religious organizations to break current 501(c)(3) restrictions on political activism.
- Allow party bosses to effectively disqualify candidates because of their adherence to certain platform issues.
- Punish certain forms of free speech.
- Require teaching of religious viewpoints in science classes.
- Enforce values of certain religious sects on all Texans.
- Ban termination of unnatural life support measures (e.g., feeding tubes on brain dead patients who cannot possibly recover).
- Withdraw from the United Nations.
- Etc.
To be clear: I am a Republican. I am a Christian (and an unusual one since I attend church!). But as long as extremist views like these are in our platform, how can we be taken seriously?
I support the calls for a new generation of Republicans, ones who see beyond the last generation’s radicalism. If we don’t, we’ll get the failure we deserve.