David Yepsen Hates Those Crazy Christians

The new Des Moines Register web site sure sucks, doesn't it? Slow as hell. If you want to read all the comments on a heavily-trafficked article you have to keep clicking an additional number which will then take you back to the top of the page where the article starts rather than to the comments.

Today's Yepsen column, now that it's taken 5 minutes to bring the damn thing up, deals with the issue of a small group (isn't it always?) of moderate Republicans who are trying to bring back the good old days of Bob Michel and Nelson Rockefeller. Or Robert D. "Filthy" Ray.

The group includes former Congressman Jim Leach, former Lt Gov Joy Corning, and former NJ Governor Christine Todd Whitman.

Yepsen gets rather pointed here:

The moderates face several challenges.

First, they are moderates. They have lives outside politics. They are civil, well-balanced people who have other things to do with their time besides sit at long political conventions listening to the zealots. That's especially true when those zealots are intolerant or treat them shabbily.

Gee, Yepsen, tell us how you really feel about non-moderates.

And what does being a "moderate" mean?

We can look at Jim Leach as an example.

Leach was a career politician who didn't take PAC money or out of state donations, wore sweaters, moved when his district got reapportioned, was against tax cuts for working people, was an isolationist, was in favor of abortion - even partial-birth abortion (infanticide) except to save the mother's life, which is never an issue but is convenient cover for politicians to hide behind, and he loved the corrupt United Nations.

The most important part of a "moderate" Republican is that they're in favor of abortion. That's the litmus test. Any other Democrat-ish appeal is just icing on the cake.

You can be pro-war and pro-abortion, but still be a moderate in the media's eyes. You could be pro-tax cuts and pro-abortion and still be a moderate. But if you become anti-war and anti-abortion, you're no longer a moderate. You're, uh, something else. A pariah! An annoyance. A nutjob.

Nobody looks at Jim Leach the way I did: that he lost his Congressional seat to lefty PAC-whore and warmonger Dave Loebsack because Republicans and Independents in his district basically sat on their hands and couldn't vote for one of the worst lifer RINOs since Jumpin' Jim Jeffords or Lincoln Chaffed.

Then you've got to love this bit:

At the same time the Iowa GOP has moved to the right, Iowa Democrats took control of the center in Iowa. In Chet Culver, they nominated a candidate for governor who supports restoration of the death penalty.

Another litmus test.

You can be as far out left as Chet Culver, who thinks government can run a venture capital fund with state employee pension money and who thinks global warming is man-made, but if you're pro-death penalty then, by golly, you're a centrist!

By the way, Chester, where's that death penalty bill in the Iowa House now that Democrats control everything? You didn't hear a peep out of Culver after the Bentler murders. And you never will. Why? It was all for show. Culver was 100% disingenuous on the matter of the death penalty. Put up or shut up, Big Lug!

Then Yepsen gets delusional:

First, the conservatives must go down in a crashing defeat. Just as the anti-Barry Goldwater landslide of 1964 enabled moderate Republicans to rise for a time, a defeat of party social conservatives will have to happen before a new generation of GOP moderates can rise again.

That is, frankly, bonkers.

GOP moderates rising again? Never.

Then this:

Second, the moderates need a champion. Politics is about ideas, and it's also about individuals. After the '64 landslide, a 36-year-old Des Moines lawyer named Robert D. Ray was state party chair and began building the GOP - and a stellar political career.

For moderate Republicans in Iowa today, a fair question to ask is: Where is the next Bob Ray?

David Yepsen is the newspaper political opinion columnist version of Bob Ray.

Moderates are a dying breed. Newspaper political opinion columnists are a dying breed. Yepsen is in a dying industry. Nobody reads Yepsen and believes his bullshit anymore, except maybe all those clueless dildos from East Coast rags who are too busy to hoof it to Iowa every Caucus season. Instead, they rely on Yepsen for the regional skinny.

Moderates try to please everybody, but nobody respects them. Same thing with political opinion columnists from the monopoly corporate newspaper that Iowa is stuck with.

A moderate is different than a hybrid independent, which is what I think I'm sort of these days and which a lot of people have tendencies. Independents are growing, haven't you heard? We're dissatisfied with Republicrats and Demicons. We hate career politicians. We hate the money that influences scams like ethanol. We want sane fiscal management. We want the government to stop fucking up health care and bastardizing insurance. We hate the bad guys, but we all disagree on how to go about neutralizing them. We don't hate illegals, but they should come here legally and we don't want them to be a burden to taxpayers here or exploited by greedy companies and why can't Mexico get their shit together?

Stuff like that. I think the future is in hybrid independents, not moderates or centrists of yore.

I'll bet you anything that Yepsen has had some bad run-ins with those Crazy Christians in the Iowa Republican Party. You can tell by the surface anger in his pieces. When was the last time Yepsen ever talked with any of those Crazy Christians? And why would the Crazy Christians even bother trying to get their message out via Yepsen and the DMR? He's hostile territory to them.

I've got to say this: I've got respect for those Crazy Christian Republicans. I may disagree with many of their positions, but they don't take any shit from the media. They lay it out on the table to the voters. That's a lot more honesty than you get from any David Yepsen column. For sure.