Another Republican with a brain deserts

by David Safier

Kathleen Parker and Chris Buckley waved buh-bye to Republican orthodoxy during the presidential campaign. They're thoughtful, intelligent people who could no longer stomach the ideas and people (for Parker, it was Palin) they were told they had to take seriously.

(Since then, to my surprise, Parker has become one of my favorite columnists. It helps that she writes well. But I use her as a weather vane. She's still pretty conservative, but she's an independent thinker, so it gives me an idea of what rational conservative discourse sounds like. That teaches me more than reading people I already agree with.)

Today, it's Michael Smercomish, radio talk show host who is taking a walk. I've seen him, I think on MSNBC, I think talking to Ed Schultz, and I'm always pleasantly surprised when he actually thinks about the question and answers honestly rather than coming back with crazy-base talking points. Whether I agree or disagree, I can listen to him without wanting to bang my head against the wall to stop the pain.

Smercomish just wrote a column about registering Independent after 30 years as a Republican. Here are some highlights.

I'm not sure if I left the Republican Party or the party left me. All I know is that I no longer feel comfortable.

The national GOP is a party of exclusion and litmus tests, dominated on social issues by the religious right, with zero discernible outreach by the national party to anyone who doesn't fit neatly within its parameters.

[snip]

So vicious is the political climate that within two years, Sen. John McCain has gone from GOP standard-bearer to its endangered-species list. All of which leaves homeless those of us with views that don't stack up neatly in any ideological box the way we're told they should.

[snip]

I think President Obama is earnest, smart, and much more centrist than his tea party caricature suggests. He has never been given a fair chance to succeed by those who openly crow about their desire to see him fail (while somehow congratulating one another on their relative patriotism). I know he was born in America, isn't a socialist, and doesn't worship in a mosque. I get that he inherited a minefield. Still, the level of federal spending concerns me. And he never closed the deal with me that health insurance is a right, not a privilege. But I'm not folding the tent on him. Not now. Not with the nation fighting two wars while its economy still teeters on the brink of collapse.

I left out the parts where Smercomish goes into detail about not being a Democrat either. That's fine. We don't have to agree on all the issues. The important thing for me is, he seems to possess a mixture of intelligence, sanity and integrity. He came to the realization, that's a bad combination in today's Republican Party.