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  • Saturday, October 14, 2006

    To win a Republican primary, the candidate must move to the right.

    That's not me saying that; it's the The Johnson County (Kansas) Sun in their recent message from the chair.

    According to Chairman Steve Rose, "In the 56 years we have been publishing in Johnson County, this basically has been a Republican newspaper." But this year, they are endorsing more Democrats than ever before.

    Why, all the readers may ask...?

    Rose says, "The Republican Party has changed, and it has changed monumentally." And apparently he doesn't think those changes reflect the traditional Republican values of his home county.

    According to his column, "to win a Republican primary, the candidate must move to the right." Notice, it's not a shift to "more traditional family values"; it's a shift to the "right", more conservative and by definition, more exclusionary (okay, that's by my definition).

    But what does "to-the-right" mean according to Rose? Here I quote from the column...
    It means anti-public education, though claiming to support it.
    It means weak support of our universities, while praising them.
    It means anti-stem cell research.
    It means ridiculing global warming.
    It means gay bashing. Not so much gay marriage, but just bashing gays.
    It means immigrant bashing. I'm talking about the viciousness.
    It means putting religion in public schools. Not just prayer.
    It means mocking evolution and claiming it is not science.
    It means denigrating even abstinence-based sex education.
    Sounds like he wants to draw the clear distinction between the Republican right wing and Republican traditional values. So he and the paper are putting their money where their mouths are by endorsing centrist Dems. Because of their values.

    And I think that's a position of integrity and what elections are supposed to be all about -- supporting someone because of their views, not their labels.

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