Unified Republicans and divided Catholics (Asheville Citizen-Times)

[struggle4progress]

Donald Kaul • June 8, 2009 12:15 AM

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The Republican Party is so much better off now than in those bad old days when George Bush was president. For example:

* It is purer. No more will Republicans have to consider the feelings of weak-kneed moderates in their midst. There are none left (unless you count the ladies from Maine and no one does). Just getting rid of Arlen Specter, who was lured to the Democratic Party by Obama’s siren song, was worth a bunch. (Can you imagine sitting through one of Specter’s long, Talmudic lectures at a party caucus? Now the Democrats have that to look forward to. The beauty of Specter’s defection is that he’ll keep voting Republican at about the same frequency he always did. His first act as a Democratic Senator was to vote against the president’s budget. His second was to announce that justice required that the courts hand the Minnesota Senate election to Republican Norm Coleman, rather than Democrat Al Franken, who got the most votes.) With friends like Specter, you don’t need enemies.

* It is more fiscally responsible than it’s been at any time since the heyday of Sen. Robert Taft. When Republicans took full control of the government in 2000, the federal budget was in surplus for the first time in decades. Within months, they had reversed that, cutting taxes and increasing spending. By the time President Obama took office, he had a trillion-dollar annual deficit to deal with, along with a plunging economy. Republicans took the earmarks program, a quiet pork barrel scam run by Congress that amounted to a few hundred favored pork projects, and exploded it into thousands of unreviewed projects costing taxpayers billions of dollars. No more. All you hear from Republicans these days is balance the budget and cut spending. As for earmarks, to hear Republicans tell it, that is something Democrats do. Somewhere, Robert Taft is smiling ...

While Obama was giving his speech at Notre Dame, here is what Patricia McGuire, president of the prestigious Catholic school, Trinity College, was saying to her graduating seniors in Washington:
After making references to “religious vigilantism” at Notre Dame and “ostensibly Catholic mobs,” she said: “They have established themselves as uber-guardians of a belief system we can hardly recognize. Theirs is a narrow faith devoted almost exclusively to one issue. They defend the rights of the unborn but have no charity toward the living. They mock social justice as a liberal mythology” ...

http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090608/OPINION06/90528104/1006

[goddess40]

1. Makes me feel hopeful for the Catholics. nt