Dana Milbank’s column regarding GOP loonies (“In GOP, inmates run the asylum,” Aug. 22) was spot-on. In some perverted way, though, Democrats deserve backhanded credit for the situation. In the early 1960s as the liberal wing of the Democratic Party began to champion the civil rights movement, conservative southern Democrats, known as Dixiecrats, started trickling away. The racists were soon joined by religious conservatives who never believed in separation of church and state, all manner of no-sex, no-drugs, no rock-n-roll social conservatives, and not a small number of out-and-out aluminum hat nut cases. Who was there to welcome them? Republicans! The Big Tent Party!
Woven into the fabric of the Republican tent is the following: “Give us your disaffected, your unenlightened, your white-hooded masses yearning for fire, the wretched refuse bearing ancient hatreds. Give us your loonies, give us your theocrats yearning to rule us all, give us those who’ve forgotten the message of America or never knew it. Send these, the newly homeless, the discarded, we’ll take them all. We’ll leave a lamp on for you!”
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is breathing a sigh of relief. After all, what are a few harmless socialists compared to all those racists and loonies? And the old-line Republicans are finally realizing they’ve been bitten in their collective you know what.
