Failing the Purity Test

Repubs continue to eat their own. Newly elected Mass. Senator Scott Brown voted with the Dems on the jobs bill (along with Collins and Snowe from Maine and the guy from Ohio). Immediately Glenn Beck and the right-wing horde pounced on him for betraying their trust. Reportedly Brown's facebook page was inundatded with hate comments from Tea-baggers. I couldn't comment myself unless I became a fan. So I did, though I am not a fan in the strictest sense, I just wanted to tell him how I felt. So this is what I wrote:

"Scott, I became a fan just so I could say this: I am a NY Democrat and hated it like hell when you won against school librarian Cokley. But I'm glad you voted with the Dems on this and it shows you are not just a rubber stamp Republican. You want to get things done and don't want to just say "NO!" to everything Obama does in order to make him look bad--which is all Bohner, McConnell and their pals want to accomplish in this congress. Good for you. Like Republican governors Crist and Schwarzenegger, you realize that it's okay to support the prez when you think he's right and not just toe the party line and be Glenn Beck's lap dog."

The reference to Repub governors is about how Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlie Crist both came out and said it is a lie that the stimulus package did not create one job, because both of their states benefited from it and they aren't afraid to say so. The GOP is cracking with people like Michelle Bachmann wanting to get rid of Social Security and Medicare calling for the heads of reasonable people like Arnie and Charlie.

Beck's CPAC speech is a further example of extremism pushing and shoving its way to the center of the conservative movement. He says no more "big tent" in the Republican Party, America is not a circus or a clown show. Yeah, Glenn, just have everybody think exactly like you: no taxes, no government regulation, no laws, everybody owning their own home with all the money they save from all those taxes they save. But no trash collection, state parks, highways, public libraries you like so much (OK, I got that one from The Daily Show), no regulation on big business, etc.

Look, CPAC-ers, I am a chablis-drinking, brie-munching, NPR-listening, show tune-lovin' gay boy and I am just as much a part of America as you. We're equal. As Aunt Eller sang in Oklahoma: "I ain't sayin' I'm better than anybody else/But I'm be danged if I ain't just as good!"