What is Mr. Gheen's beef with Senator Graham? Well it is probably a pre-emptive strike to prevent Sen. Graham from working to pass comprehensive immigration reform. This is Gheen's standard operating procedure, to try to preempt any kind of reasonable immigration reform. He likes to appear on CNN or Fox and make inflammatory statements like :
"Call me old fashioned, but people should be able to shop at Wal-Mart without worrying about catching [t]uberculosis."
No matter how heinous his point of view is, it is worth looking at where the Right is as far as their tactics today. Sen. Graham is not what any of us would call even a moderate. He has shown some reasonableness in being willing to at least talk about important national issues like immigration or climate change with Democratic lawmakers. This did not prevent him for voting against the stimulus bill, or the HCR bill or staying with his caucus on a host of other issues.
Still, because he is willing to try to find some common ground, even if he never votes for it, he is not considered conservative enough. I could not possibly care less if he is or is not gay. If he is all I would hope is that he can have a happy love life, just like I hope that for every human on the planet. But in the Republican side of things, the rhetoric of exclusion has been cranked up to 11 and the gay citizens of this nation are very much considered other and untrustworthy.
The odious Mr. Gheen does not really care either. By trotting out this idea that Sen. Graham is being blackmailed by Democrats (insane on the surface since it would have meant Graham would have voted for HCR) he gets a twofer. One he damages Sen. Graham by bringing up the dreaded "gay" and second he forces the Senator to defend both his sexuality and his position.
This is the level of cesspit that Conservative politics has fallen to; the outing (real or otherwise) of their own Senators to try to enforce discipline. While we on the Left might despair at the lack of discipline our caucus has, can you ever imagine a time when we would consider outing someone because of their talking but not voting with the Republicans?
There is something very sick inside the conservative movement. It is the meme that conservatism never fails, only people fail conservatism. This allows the continued purging and eating of their own. It used to be that the Democrats had the lock on the circular firing squad, but we were piker's compared to the Republicans, and their ability to constantly define anyone, even a long time Republican Senator as not conservative enough. It seems they will not be happy until they have kicked everyone who is not completely bat-shit insane out of their party.
Bill Maher had it right, in the last thirty years Democrats have moved to the right and Republicans have moved into the insane asylum.
The floor is yours.
Via Washington Monthly |
