- Sexual
misgivings, financial scandals, waning morale, and other disturbing
behavior could spell doom for that Grand Old Party in '04.
By: Chris Stevenson
Chris Stevenson is a columnist for the Buffalo
Criterion, pointblank appears in Black newspapers across the country
and www.voiceoffreedom.com
The democrats biggest event of the year ended on a low note, but they
aren't really complaining, the republicans are. That's because it all
took place during and immediately after the Republican National
Convention in New York. First you had the opening ceremonies, a parade
given by the GOP to honor people you thought they actually scorned,
like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Michael Moore. At least it seemed
like a parade, with hundreds of followers around them. What a class act
I thought, we certainly didn't give the republicans any parade in
Boston 2 months ago.
Republicans have been blowing their own horn for decades about their
alleged values; pro-American, pro-traditional family, and pro-personal
responsibility. Mock outrage over democrats' adulterous or womanizing
behavior only allowed republican adulterers, alcoholics, gamblers, and
gays, to skip major investigations and scrutinization. The
conservative's biggest mouthpiece, talk-radio's Rush Limbaugh was not
the first widely known republican to take a hard fall, his scandal was
just the first to be given democrat-like exposure. But even then the
major media attempted to cover for him, claiming he was hooked on
painkiller, when the real drug of his choice was a synthetic man-made
narcotic that has a grip on the user that is reportedly comparable to
heroin. Comments regarding Limbaugh hosting his own show while high,
seem even more credible given the statements he's made over the years.
This year, considering the number of republicans that have fallen off
the Clintonian wayside, perhaps "Senator Ditka" wasn't such a bad idea
after all, except I'm having too much fun watching that nutty
professor, Alan Keyes guarantee Barack Obama an easy victory in
November, to speculate on the very brief candidacy of the former
Chicago Bears coach.
How much worse could Ditka be to that of former GOP nominee Jack Ryan,
who allegedly tried to coerce his wife, actress Jeri Ryan to join
international sex clubs, and have sex with him in front of strangers?
That's just the tip of the iceberg of years and years of hidden
republican moral indiscretions. There was the 7/99 death of Kenneth R
Cains, a Black man who was described as "near indigent" was savagely
run over by a jeep 4 by 4 driven by republican representative Thomas W.
Druce. It wasn't that Cains was permanently disabled by Druce. After he
was hit, Druce just kept going, in the dead of night, all the way to
the State Capitol Building where he only stopped to see if there was
any damage to his jeep. After discovering a smashed headlight and a
loose bumper, he simply taped the damage, and refused to report, or
come forward when news about the fatal hit-and-run was broke. Instead
Druce made a false insurance claim and exchanged the jeep for a new
model, at taxpayers expense of course.
The question is, what would motivate Druce to not even report the
accident other than his own callous nature? Druce-who is married-was
reported to have left a bar with an unidentified woman just moments
before hitting Cains. There are suspicions that this "other woman" was
the one who wrote the details of the tragic incident and cover-up to
Harrisburg PA Crimestoppers. Though initially questioned and cleared by
a corrupt DA (Dauphin County is hard-core conservative), he was later
arrested, tried and sentenced. Not to one of those infamous PA maximum
security or super-max prisons where most of PA's poor would have liked
to see him go, not this guy, he got locked down to nothing more than
home confinement.
The fact that George W. Bush changed his license number a few years
before his election suggests a possible Druce-like incident, especially
given his own history of partying, but the jury is still out. Not that
it matters to republican die-hards, if W was caught in a three-way with
Lewinsky and bin Laden they would still put blinders on, just as they
have with the war on Iraq and W's military history. Author Joe
Conason's book "Big Lies" tracks the hypocritical behavior of the
right, the Penthouse'03 anniversary issue printed some excerpts: "That
so many right wingers can still preach about 'family values,' and
'declining American morality without dissolving into laughter is a
testament to their mental discipline... the conservatives mesmerized by
this ideological construct don't seem to notice that, year after year
liberal democrats grow up in traditional families, get married and
raise children."
This research was done before the news of Limbaugh, and disclosed the
immoral habits of standout hard line republican stone-throwers such as
Ann Coulter, Helen Chenowith-Hage, Robert Livingston, Steve Symms, Dan
Burton, Beverly Russell and Newt Gingrich among others. Actually such
misgivings are not exclusive to a political party as much as they are
connected to the human party, but what has been long known or suspected
by many democrats and Blacks is the very reason many Whites have left
the GOP over the past couple years. Any effort by republicans to appeal
to Black voters seems comparable to Hitler and the Nazis pitching their
game to us as far as many of us are concerned.
Perhaps partying should have been the message of this convention; at
least it would have been more in touch with modern republicans than
some of the statements made by the speakers. The president complained
about the liberal-media-elite. If Jennifer Lopez only chose to marry
powerful liberal media journalists, she'd be climbing the walls. This
is one accusation that has me baffled, for the past couple years I have
searched for this elusive liberal media bias within the major press and
electronic media, it stands to reason no such animal exists. It was
columnists from the Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post who almost
brought down Clinton. Yes there are some liberal columnists at major
papers (often hired to give an air of balance and fairness), but a few
liberal columnists does not a powerful liberal media make. Yet there
Bush was, wasting valuable air-time, bashing another benign enemy, just
as he's done the past three years. Dick Cheney added vague promises and
classic republican detachment from reality to the mix. The New York
Times' Maureen Dowd drew a sharp contrast to Cheney's words and the
reality at hand: "Mr. Cheney... bragged about a 'Taliban driven from
power,' even though just as the convention got underway, at least seven
people, including two Americans, were killed by Taliban fighters in
Kabul."
This was supposed to be the high point of their campaign, their event
of the year, and it opened with the liberals' anti-Bush protest I
alluded to earlier, and closed just before news of former-President
Clinton being rushed to a hospital. Bush's words that "government
should help people improve their lives, and not try to run their
lives," runs in stark contrast to his laws that restrict affirmative
action and grant tax cuts to those already wealthy. Indeed Bush's
government leaves very little room for improvement for the common
American. But that isn't the reason Bush/Halliburton probably
won't get re-elected, his obsession with Iraq, against the will of the
international community and the sea of departing members of his own
administration are the factors that could dictate that a
kindler-gentler Skull & Bones member be the next
commander-in-chief, John Kerry. It won't be the swift boats, or the
polls that chart that direction.
Stevenson is a columnist for the Buffalo Criterion. Pointblank can be
read at www.voiceoffreedom.com and Black and alternative papers across
the country, email comments to Stevenson at pointblankdta@yahoo.com