{"id":4265,"date":"2018-07-24T17:25:53","date_gmt":"2018-07-24T21:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/?p=4265"},"modified":"2021-06-08T21:43:42","modified_gmt":"2021-06-08T21:43:42","slug":"once-a-republican","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/2018\/07\/24\/once-a-republican\/","title":{"rendered":"Once A Republican, Always A&#8230;?  Apparently Not!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">About ten years ago I wrote:<\/p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>I find that I am bracing for a very ugly debate which will only serve to associate all of my Hispanic friends with the evils of drug trade from the south of our federal border. I can just imagine how racism will attempt to cloak itself in the \u201cstars and stripes\u201d, as it seeks some sort of national justification.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<p>I have used this blog to chronicle my shift away from what the Republican Party was becoming.\u00a0 For me this journey began about ten years ago with what I then called the &#8220;new racism&#8221;.\u00a0 It was clear to me, but others just didn&#8217;t see it &#8212; clear enough for me to dissociate myself from the party.<\/p>\r\n<p>It is not a coincidence that I had just started teaching <em>English as Second Language<\/em> (ESL) classes and was personally interacting with our growing Hispanic community.\u00a0 In addition, I also volunteered at a local Latino Resource Center.<\/p>\r\n<p>\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I became very aware of the growing negative energy that was expressing itself in racial terms.\u00a0 I clearly recognized the references to &#8220;those people&#8221; as worth less than good white folk.\u00a0 I heard the same &#8220;they should go back where they came from&#8221; sentiments that were a normal part of my southern segregation experience when I was young.<\/p>\r\n<p>\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I heard white supremacist arguments that I had not heard in years.\u00a0 So as the George W. Bush presidency came to an end, I removed my name from Republican roles.\u00a0 All this I have referenced for years in the posts in this blog.<\/p>\r\n<p>\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It appears that I am in some pretty good company.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n<p>\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n<ul style=\"list-style-type: circle;\">\r\n<li>\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>George Will,\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>well-known conservative columnist commentator, left the Republican party and was registered as an unaffiliated voter\u00a0In June 2016.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<li>\r\n<p><em><strong>Gordon Humphrey<\/strong><\/em>,\u00a0 former Republican Senator from New Hampshire and a leading conservative lawmaker from 1978-90, revealed in July, 2016 that he would change his party registration to independent.<\/p>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<li>\r\n<p><strong><em>Joe Scarborough<\/em>,<\/strong> former\u00a0four term Republican U.S. Representative\u00a0announced on July 11, 2017,\u00a0on\u00a0<i>T<\/i><em>he Late Show with Stephen Colbert\u00a0that he was leaving the Republican party to become an\u00a0Independent.<\/em><\/p>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<li>\r\n<p><em><strong>Nicole Wallace<\/strong><\/em>,\u00a0a former senior communications staffer for the George W. Bush White House and senior advisor in the John McCain campaign, described herself as a &#8220;non-practicing Republican&#8221; in April, 2018.<\/p>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<li>\r\n<p><strong style=\"font-size: 1em; color: inherit;\"><em>Steve Schmidt,\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><span style=\"font-size: 1em; color: inherit;\"> John McCain&#8217;s presidential campaign director\u00a0 and Republican for 30 years, publicly renounced the Republican Party in June, 2018\u00a0.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There have been other Republican politicians, strategists, and columnists who have renounced the party.\u00a0 Of particular interest was <em><strong>Max Boot<\/strong>,<\/em> prolific Republican\u00a0author, consultant, editorialist, lecturer, and\u00a0military historian, who recently wrote:<\/p>\r\n<blockquote>After a lifetime as a Republican, I re-registered as an independent on the day after Donald Trump\u2019s election. &#8230; I am more convinced than ever that I made the right decision.<\/blockquote>\r\n<blockquote>The transformation I feared has taken place.Just look at the reaction to President Trump\u2019s barbarous policy of taking children away from their parents as punishment for the misdemeanor offense of illegally entering the country.<\/blockquote>\r\n<blockquote>While two-thirds of Americans disapproved of this state-sanctioned child abuse, forcing the president to back down, a majority of Republicans\u00a0approved. If Trump announced he were going to spit-roast immigrant kids and eat them on national TV (apologies\u00a0to Jonathan Swift), most Republicans probably would approve of that, too.\u00a0<\/blockquote>\r\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n<p>About ten years ago I wrote:<\/p>\n<p>I find that I am bracing for a very ugly debate which will only serve to associate all of my Hispanic friends with the evils of drug trade from the south of our federal border.<\/p>\n<p>I can just imagine how racism will attempt to cloak itself in the \u201cstars and stripes\u201d, as it seeks some sort of national justification.<\/p>\n <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/2018\/07\/24\/once-a-republican\/\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-frontpage","category-immigration","category-race-relations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4368,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4265\/revisions\/4368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/youdidntask.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}