A GOP Problem: "personal freedom" vs. "legislating morality"

As Minnesota's long-winding senatorial race wraps up today, and Democrats look to have the official "filibuster-proof majority" early next week, its worthwhile to take a step back and look at where the GOP is now and what future election contests will look like.

I won't begin to regurgitate the the myriad theories about The Problem with the GOP, or one of my personal favorites, the There Is No Problem with the GOP theory. The GOP is out. How will it try to get back in?

I DON'T believe that the Democrats are in power because the country has suddenly become more liberal. I don't have faith that Republicans and Independents have shifted because suddenly they see the Progressive light.

Many of them, I'm convinced, voted Dem because that was the only other thing to vote. They voted against Bush. Now that Bush is gone, what's to stop them from voting against Obama?

Democrats could answer that question in a way that I think could be devastating to the Republican brand. Its an angle they really haven't tried yet:

How can the Republican party stand for personal freedom (Independent/Libertarian) while trying to legislate people's morality (Christian Conservative)?

In his column last week, MSNBC's Chuck Todd summarized the problem exactly:

...From the legislating of morality (Schiavo as the prime example), to the various conservative-led state bans on gay marriage, the Republicans did very little to expand personal freedoms and if anything looked like the party trying to take freedoms away.

Sure, on certain issues, like guns, the GOP stood by their personal freedom mantras, but there are few other examples.

If Dems hope to solidify their majority generationally as Regan's GOP did in 1980-1984, they cannot rest on their laurels and satisfy themselves with their new "Party of No" slogan. They need to exploit this rift and align the Democratic party with personal freedoms.

The country is at a moment of redefinition, willing to entertain the idea that government has a real, useful role (healthcare, financial regulation), and willing to admit that Christian Coalition values are out of the mainstream. If the Democratic party doesn't stand for something bigger than tired partisan arguments at this critical moment, this hold on power will be fleeting indeed.

The Sonnets of Mark Sanford

Well, you have to give Mark Sanford credit. In his newly exposed, elicit love affair with an Argentinian woman, at least he tried to be deep and heart-felt. I give Gov. Sanford credit for at least showing some class in his escapades, unlike the truly cringe-worthy, often gross quotations attributed to Bill Clinton and his peccadilloes.

Here is an email from Sanford to said mistress, published at The State.com:

From Gov. Sanford,
Date: Thursday, July 10, 2008, 12:24 a.m.

“One, tomorrow leave at 5 a.m. for New York and meetings. Will think about you on its streets and wish I was going to be there later in the month when you are there. Tomorrow night back to Philadelphia for the start of the National Governor's Conference through the weekend. Back to Columbia for Tuesday and then on Wednesday, as I think I had told you, taking the family to China, Tibet, Nepal, India, Thailand and then back through Hong Kong on world wind tour. Few days home then to Bahamas for 5 days on a friend’s boat for the last break of the summer. The following weekend have been asked to spend it out in Aspen, Colorado with McCain - which has kicked up the whole VP talk all over again in the press back home ...

Two, mutual feelings .... You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light - but hey, that would be going into sexual details ...

Three and finally, while all the things above are all too true - at the same time we are in a hopelessly - or as you put it impossible - or how about combine and simply say hopelessly impossible situation of love. How in the world this lightening strike snuck up on us I am still not quite sure. As I have said to you before I certainly had a special feeling about you from the first time we met, but these feelings were contained and I genuinely enjoyed our special friendship and the comparing of all too many personal notes ...

Lastly I also suspect I feel a little vulnerable because this is ground I have never certainly never covered before - so if you have pearls of wisdom on how we figure all this out please let me know... In the meantime please sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul.”

Witnessing death

I've said her name once (wrote it, actually) and I don't want to say it again. I didn't know her, or her family, or what she stood for or who she loved or what she was thinking when she died.

But I did watch the death of an Iranian woman on a video on the internet. And I cried. And I can't look at her picture any more. And I can't help feeling that people using her name (referring to her by first name only) are talking about her as though she is an idea or a brand.

She was a woman that we don't know. And her death is being co-opted by the world. And her family is being prevented from mourning by their government.

Does that mean we should not watch?

I've been thinking about that a lot. I feel like something sacred has been defiled in her death popping up all over the internet: blogs, news feeds, editorials. The most dramatic images posted brazenly.

I think sometimes we need to see. Sometimes we forget what death - murder - is. We forget that it isn't corn syrup. It isn't scripted. By leaving their homes, some people stare down death every day. And that is what it looks like. And it is horrible.

I watched the events of September 11 happen in real time on television. I remember what I was doing and how I felt and who I was with. But the images I saw on TV were not the whole truth.

Some years later, when I saw a documentary on the history of New York, a segment at the end showed things we did not see on TV that happened on that day. I watched people jumping out of the top of an impossibly tall building. That is part of the truth of that day that I had been spared.

We cannot say we bear witness unless we are truly willing to see. We cannot say we understand the cost of war if we are not willing to look at the dead or the wounded or the maimed.

And, if we see, we are witnessing something sacred. We must treat it as such. I don't like to post images of my most sacred moments, or call it by its first name.

The Constitution and what it means

With the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearing coming, the debate over Constitutional "originalism" vs. "living constitutionalism" is heating up again. NPR put up a piece on the PR aspects of the battle.

I'm having a hard time understanding how either argument is practical. On the one hand, it is patently ridiculous to suggest that the Constitution either is or was intended to be a final document for the ages.

On the other hand, one cannot responsibly suggest that all aspects of the Constitution are subject to interpretation.

However, I don't think that that is really what anyone is suggesting. I don't think either side is really absolutist in its definition, if you get down to it. But it sure does make a good media story if we can frame it as an epic battle of clashing ideas.

Cripes, people. Have a conversation, would ya?