Dixiecrats

When I was a child, my grandmother, who raised me, along with my mother, were staunch Republicans. They expressed their Illinois heritage “The land of Lincoln” as one reason for their loyalty. My mother actually voted for Truman for her first Presidential vote in 1945. They laughed about that and how my Grandfather Henry “Heine” Schafer threatened her with expulsion from their house for her mortal sin. Henry was the sole reason for their loyalty to the Republican Party. He was born and raised in Chicago. The Schafer side of the family, came from Germany in the 1840’s. His loyalty to the Republican Party stems from his grandfather and other male relatives who fought for the Union in the Civil War. They were fierce Abolitionist, Lutherans, and Lincolnites. That trinity of loyalty, based on the philosophy that slavery was morally wrong, was passed down to my Grandfather and everyone in the family. That is why they were Republicans. My Grandfather moved the family to New York City in 1936 and became a loyal New York Republican. The move reunited my Grandmother Regina Guilfoyle, to her birthplace and her Irish heritage. The dirty little secret was that the Guilfoyle side of the family was Irish Catholic Democrats. My family voted for people like Nelson Rockefeller, Dwight Eisenhower and Barry Goldwater. I have no idea how many times they voted for William Buckley or Vito Batista against the Democratic political machine of New York City. They lived in the melting pot of melting pots, Brooklyn, New York. They were Brooklyn Dodger fans. They loved Jackie Robinson. My Grandfather was a tough German, lifelong ironworker, shipbuilder, steel worker, boilermaker. He drank hard, and played hard. He was a lot of things, but he was not was a bigot. The Republican Party stood for the defenders of the Union, child work laws, environmental issues, women’s suffrage, civil rights, and yes, Big Business. As conservative as Barry Goldwater was, he was not a bigot, nor was William Buckley. Being a Republican meant you cared about social issues. Senator Jacob Javits would have supported a public option in any Health Care Bill presently coming out of the Senate. The look of the Republican Party today is not my Grandfather’s Republican Party. This once coast to coast Political Party now resembles the Dixiecrats of the post reconstruction South. The voice of Republicanism is obstructionist, racist, anti gay, anti worker, anti woman, anti environment, war mongering capitalist. I once saw a bumper sticker while driving through Ohio in the summer of 2005, someplace between a GM plant and a Chrysler plant in mid America. Family farms dotted the highway. The sticker read “Voting for a Republican is like the Hens voting for the Fox to be Mayor of the Hen House.” Well America, what you see is what you get. Every Republican senator, except one brave woman, Olympia Snow of Maine, voted NO on five Senate Sub Committees potential health care bills. That’s 39-1 if you are keeping track. One Republican Senator had the guts to stand up to the health insurance industry. A NO vote was a vote for the Health Insurance Industry and a vote against the American people. A NO vote was a vote for the status quo. A NO vote was a vote for 455% profit for the Health Insurance industry over the last decade. Health Care should not be an industry. There should be NO profit in either Heath Care or Heath Insurance. The Republican’s of today are retrenched in stagnation. Not one Republican Sub Committee Member has produced a response to any of the Democratic Party Bills. The Republican version of Health Care Legislation is NOTHING. Did you know Health Care cost 1/6 of our GNP? One frigging sixth of our GNP and the Republicans have no ideas of their own. The Republican strategy is to oppose whatever Barack Obama is for. The New Dixiecrats want nothing to do with Black Presidents, Immigrants, or anyone else that’s not white and does not practice their form of Christianity. In a recent town hall meeting, in South Carolina, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was screamed at by a rabid Republican, because Graham is working with John Kerry on Air Pollution legislation. This outburst is very representative of how the Republican Party has been hijacked by the breeders of hate and divisiveness. The Tea Party members, who have marched on Washington and other cities, are so hypocritical. It was OK for George Bush to run up the deficit to $2 trillion dollars, but now they are outraged over spending any Federal money on a Public Option or health Care reform.