Anna Quindlen has advice for the Republican Party: Throw religious conservatives overboard. In her Sept. 3 Newsweek column. "Disinvited to the Party," she lauds the heartland's apparent embrace of Rudy Giuliani despite his serial marriages and "quasi-liberal positions on abortion, gay rights and gun control." To Quindlen, "quasi" means not adopting the actual platform language of the Democratic Party.
Quindlen's rant is a typical leftist smear, lamenting the rise of the Religious Right and blaming it on ... sheer malice. She fails to acknowledge the political and cultural forces that have assailed every traditional institution from church to the Boy Scouts. She fails to recognize that social conservatives could possibly be human beings with real interests who don't want to turn all personal responsibility for their lives over to government bureaucrats.
Here's her nostalgic look at the Republican Party she used to love:
"Once the GOP was moderate and secular. But then the ‘60s arrived. Society divided itself neatly into the button-down and tie-dyed, and the Republican Party rallied around something called ‘family values.' It's a phrase that has appeared in every party platform since 1976 and is often accompanied by the adjective ‘traditional,' which translated means that if you don't have a stay-at-home mommy, a dominant daddy, some kids, a marriage license and a church membership, you're disinvited to the party."
Oh, please. What about Roe. v. Wade? Or the Supreme Court opening the floodgates of pornography? Or the rise of the Great Society welfare state that shattered the inner city family? Or the relentless liberal campaign to disarm law-abiding Americans and give criminals and illegal aliens more rights than the average Joe? You get the picture. The Right came out of nowhere just to be mean. There's nothing rational here folks, go home.
In Quindlen's world, religious conservatives are just Bible-thumping monsters that the GOP must spew out if it's to become, uh, what? More powerful? Is that what she wants? I have read this type of column probably 100 times in the past 10 years, in different forms and by different leftist "thinkers." And they all give the same advice to the GOP: throw your base overboard. Gee, why would a liberal Democrat want the GOP to do that? And why would Newsweek give a platform to someone who writes like this? Maybe I won't believe everything I read in Newsweek anymore.
