Republicans---Don’t Be Hypocrits
Savor the moment. This whiff of fresh air will not last long.
Clearing the air waves and opening space in mail boxes resulted from the final vote in the local primary elections. The media and postal routes will now be free of local political ads for about three months.
What a relief. The last contest for Texas House of Representatives District 13 was dirty politics at its worst. There was an ad on the local radio station for each of the candidates every ten minutes and every mail delivery contained at least one elaborate color ad for each of them.
The ads of one candidate were particularly irritating. These ads attempted to make the election a one issue contest. Her primary qualification for the job seemed to be that she was the most pro-life candidate.
Her ads treated pro-life, conservatism, and Christianity as synonymous.
Those ads bundled together and summarized frequently with “Anti-Life, Anti-Liberty” is an excellent example of the transformation of a significant part of the Grand Old Party.
Today, the most vocal Republicans, particularly in Texas, say conservative when they mean pro-life and vice versa. This means they believe the government should make the most personal decision of women instead of letting them decide their own destiny.
This transformation of the party of freedom to one of oppression occurred in a mere 35 years,
As noted in this paper several months ago, “On March 20, 1854, the Republican Party of the United States was founded by slavery opponents at a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin.”
This party remained the one dedicated to personal freedom until the late 20th Century. In those days, its mantra was to keep the government off our backs. The basis was a belief in smaller governments, less government regulation, and a lighter tax load.
That was the party I started supporting when I became a voter. That philosophy of freedom prevailed when I, Doctor Thomas Giddings, Pankey Hall, and several others began the resurrection of the Washington County Republican Party in the early 1980s.
At that time, there was no Republican office holder in the county and there was only one Republican primary voting location for the whole county.
This small band of organizers, plus the Grand Dame of Washington County Republicans, the late Bo Peep Fischer, were the only ones who would publicly claim to be conservatives. Our most frequently used arguments were for less government and lower taxes.
We were surprised, therefore, with the number of citizens who began showing up at precinct and county conventions. Even more surprising was that almost everyone of the new members had only one thing in mind. Their sole contribution was a resolution to include a pro-life plank in the Republican State Platform.
For them, conservatism meant only one thing, being anti-abortion.
Unfortunately, that sentiment spread among activists throughout the state, and having the government interfere in our personal lives is the sine qua non of the Texas Republican Party.
That party now spends an inordinate amount of time trying to dictate to women what they can do with their bodies, telling homosexuals they cannot lead a normal life and be married, and now debating the ridiculous bathroom bill, which is their solution to a problem that exists only in their own minds.
In summary, the old freedom party, the party founded on freeing the slaves, now stands for curtailing the freedoms of everyone who does not fit their antiquated belief that every human being has identical physical, psychological, and sexual makeup.
So here’s the perspective.
Several weeks ago, this column was on the hypocrisy of pro-lifers who did not fill their homes with abandoned and neglected children. The paragraphs above are about the hypocrisy of the Republican Party of Texas claiming to be the party of freedom, i.e., conservative, when it is marching in lock step to tell women what they can and cannot do with their pregnancy, to tell homosexuals they may not marry, and to control the facilities of transgender individuals.
That is not conservatism. That is hypocritical dictatorship.
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