For years, the Republicans have laid claim, however speciously, to being the party of God, guns, and the rule of law and order. Younger voters may think the Democrats are a bunch of spineless, gutless, finger-in-the-wind types now, but kids I’m here to tell you it was a LOT worse back in 2000 after Bush seized the White House. After 9/11? HOLY SHIT. Democrats and TV-liberals were always apologizing. “I’m a Democrat — but I believe in free trade” “I’m a liberal — but of course I love America.” “I may be left wing — but I’m no socialist!” And of course, everyone’s favorite refrain, “I’m a Democrat, but we have to do something about SADDAM HUSSEIN.”
The party has come a long way, even if some mangy, old scaredy cats are still slinking around. Let’s not forget that Barack Obama was REVOLUTIONARY and he was so milquetoast, goddamn JOE BIDEN was more progressive on same sex marriage, so go jump in a lake on THAT specific issue Biden haters (we can talk about all the other stuff Uncle Joe can be rightfully taken to task for later, but seriously on that one he crushed it).
So it’s with no small measure of amusement that I present to you the latest from Republicans for Rule of Law, a “never-Trump” organization whose very name indicts the party to which they belong.
Everything about this project is hilarious. “We’re Republicans, But We’re Not Crooks” is right up there with “NAMBLA: We’re Not Killers” so far as bona fides go.
If their online presence is any indicator, Republicans for Rule of Law don’t put a lot of effort into achieving their goal.
Republicans for the Rule of Law is a group of life-long Republicans dedicated to defending the institutions of our republic and upholding the rule of law. We are fighting to make sure that the laws apply equally to everyone, from the average citizen to the president of the United States. We believe in fidelity to the Constitution, transparency, and the independence of prosecutors from politics.
How do they take the fight to their largely unnamed foe? Apparently with a barebones website featuring links to Twitter and Facebook that don’t work properly (the “Donate” page seems to work fine, however). Their “About” page that consists of a list of lawyers (all white men, the youngest of who looks to be in his forties). None of these lawyers have links to their bios, even though some -like Chris Gagin– are kind of interesting. They defend freedom by publishing a few videos, and by asking you to sign a petition (with a convenient box you can click identifying you as a Republican). There is no plan listed anywhere. There is no strategy.
Further investigation of this lonely, sterile little site leads you to Defending Democracy Together, another anti-Trump organization led by some familiar faces. Bill Kristol, the man who brought you Sarah Palin. Mona Charen. Christie Todd Whitman. A few assorted also-rans with political connections.
This, presumably, is the “coalition of Republicans” who believe in the rule of law: nine lawyers and ten disgruntled has-beens who have no home in their party anymore and are utterly irrelevant to Republican internal politics today.
Digging deeper into DDT (that sounds like huffing poisonous chemicals, and in a way it is) you learn that “Republicans for Rule of Law” is in fact one of four projects including “Republicans Fighting Tariffs,” the “Becoming American Initiative,” and my very favorite, Republicans Against Putin. How far we have come! Why, I’m old enough to remember when it was the LEFT that was Russia’s fellow traveler!
“Not all Republicans!” Wonder how long they can work THAT grift, especially in the age of #Metoo?
Biden deserves zero credit for being “progressive on same sex marriage.” Simply making a statement near the eve of the Supreme Court’s decision four years ago does not make a politician progressive on this issue. I see that it’s meant to be something of a joke, but it’s offensive nonetheless. Then persisting in this piece to pump a feeble, tired NAMBLA joke / punchline for the purported purpose of impugning never-Trumpers does little more than demonstrate a kind of internalized bigotry: using an anti-gay joke to make a point. I’ve known NAMBLA members and advocates and they’re not the villains that bigots seem so sure they are. Somehow, at some point, the North American Man Boy Love Association became a punching bag for the insidious belief that love and sex between older and younger men was nothing more than organized abuse. Sex between consenting adults at any age after sexual maturity is normal–and until fairly recently in human history was considered natural. Teenage boys especially, included. And NAMBLA was anything but trying to keep it a secret. That’s not what they were about–but gratuitous, unfounded slander against it sure helps throw the spotlight off of the kind of daily child sex abuse that takes place by heterosexual men against often very young girls, and most often within a marriage and family sanctified by Judeo-Christian religions. There’s a reason there isn’t an organization promoting the advancement of Father-Daughter “love.” It’s because every heterosexual learns to know that those crimes against god and man must be kept a secret. NAMBLA deserves way more credit for advancing gay rights than Joe Biden, however “funny” the joke is to homophobes.
It’s 2019–long past time to stop using hateful anti-gay jokes to make a point.
I think the main issue most people have with NAMBLA is that they are opposed to age of consent laws and openly defend sexual relationships between grown men and boys who are presumed to be too young to give an informed consent. There could certainly be an organization that took the exact same position about supposedly consensual relationships between men and girls, and they would possibly be even more reviled.
Yes, the homosexual nature of the relationships has a role to play in HOW members of NAMBLA are ridiculed, and I acknowledge that age of consent laws (regardless of the gender relationship) are defined in a cultural way and enforced through shame as much as by law. But that’s also how we convince people not to have sex with their children and close cousins.
I have an internalized prejudice against people who commit incest, against priests and counselors who make sexual advances on children, against men who don’t respect the norms of society and refrain from trying to enter into “consensual” relationships with people who are still too young and powerless to make informed decisions about sex and its consequences with adults.
Many of the people engaged in these relationships are in fact monsters who prey on children using coercion and deceit. One can argue about what the age of consent should be, and the consensus on that does change over time. Today, more than ever, it’s based on social science and observation about brain development rather than random taboos.
Naturally, we ought to consider a relationship both parties claim is consensual differently than how we treat relationships where one party accuses the other of abuse, but that’s for sentencing hearing, not for the trial itself.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t reply to something so utterly vile. But as someone who has friends who were raped by adult, I really don’t have any patience for this. The commentator is trying to derail the actual topic -the idiocy and bankruptcy of people like Bill Kristol- with a silly tangent that has nothing to do with the topic.
Nothing “vile” in what I said. And you derailed your point yourself by featuring and promoting a gratuitous and hardly relevant, not to mention tired, and old gay “joke.” NAMbLA’s purpose, like most of the gay rights movement itself, is to shed light on topics that have been deemed taboo for so long, even otherwise sane people have lost their minds about it. NAMbLA clearly states that their advocacy of man-boy relationships requires consent. The argument about what constitutes consent, and whether younger men are capable of it (by the time a boy is a teenager, he has for at least ten years known how to say no) is another discussion, surely. But what’s extremely unpleasant about your use of NAMbLA as an example here is that it purposes an organization that actually opposes what people object to about inappropriate sexual relationships. That you don’t get that is clear.
there’s nothing necessarily gay about statutory rape, obviously, but I am only aware of one organization that openly lobbies for statutory rape to be legalized. You don’t get around that by calling it “consent.” You certainly don’t tell 14 year old girls that they knew how to say no when they’re in a relationship with a grown man. You’re making something out of nothing.
Okay. I’ll drop it. But live a life of being reviled because you’re gay, and see how you feel. I was a boy once, without any support for development of my sexual identity. The toll it’s taken on all of us is enormous–and irrevocable. I’m beyond weary of our kind being the brunt of these jokes. It’s pride month–so, great timing on this post. It’s not nothing.
Ultimately the question for all these “never-Trumpers” or “Unhappy Repubs for X” boils down to: at what point does a modestly intelligent, (self-proclaimed) intellectually honest person have to abjure the monstrous Repub party and its spiffy National Trumpalist garb? Because the Repub party (and base) is now fully transformed into the National Trumpalists. Keeping your “Repub” armband and club pin in such circumstances just makes clear that your chief objection to the Dem party is the pluralist demographics which make it up.
And if a Repub lawyer (or public intellectual) approves of the democratically illegitimate 5 man “conservative” activist Court majority installed by Trumper and Gravedigger McConnell, then all the puffed up objections to a “failing Rule of Law!” are pretty much just grousing around the margin…
The GOP base is coming slowly around to the view that maybe the Nazis got a bad rap.