A Shift To The Right

The GOP has both the House and Senate again for the first time since 2006. A lot has changed for me since then. I used to be a very loyal Republican and I was very much a fan of Fox News, talk radio, and Glenn Beck. Once a man who thought he was going places and doing things, I am now permanently unemployed and permanently single. As the man I was before, I felt quite confident in my ability to make wise and accurate assessments of the political zeitgeist, especially since I'd been seriously following it since I was 11. Now having little to do but smoke cigars at the shop I frequent and write in my blog, what do I know from politics, especially when an election results in such massive change, especially considering that I'm not even comfortable enough to vote anymore? If you have the answer, let me know, because I sure don't. All that said, I do still yet have opinions. Just take what I have to say here with a grain of salt as represented by the preceding sentences.

I await a generational shift in the GOP that will entail gradual abandonment of social conservatism. Social conservatism is simply a bad idea and no bad idea lasts forever. Hints of progress emerged in this election that at least give me ground on which to stand as an optimist on this count. Rand Paul, with his focus on a libertarian view, has been encouraging for a while, but there's new signs of progress. Blue states, including Illinois and Maine, have Republican governors now. These are not states where one can win by beating a Bible, screaming about gays, freaking out about contraception, or suggesting intelligent design be taught in biology class. Instead, you must run on other aspects of conservatism, such as fiscal responsibility or being tough on crime. Progress was also made on the diversity front, with Mia Love being the first black Republican elected to Congress and Tim Scott being the first black person elected to statewide office in South Carolina since reconstruction.

What this new Congress will do and whether or not I will agree with it, I cannot say. All I can say is that I do think both the country and the GOP is on the right track. Eventually, everyone who thinks that video games cause violence, that gays shouldn't be allowed to get married, that rape victims may have been asking for it based upon what they were wearing, that contraception is evil, that sex education makes kids want to have sex, that marijuana should stay illegal, and so on will all be dead. What I feared for the GOP was that they had been successfully branded as evil for a generation and I think this election shows that's not true. There's time for the old folks with the intractably socially conservative views to die and the party to evolve without diminishing in power to such a degree that it wouldn't matter what they did. All of this is the opinion of a nonvoter and could definitely be wrong. I hope I'm right.

-Frank