It's My Party, Too Bad the Patient's Terminal

In the usual run-up to a book release, Christie Todd Whitman was everywhere last week. The former Republican Governor of New Jersey and former EPA chief, was pleading with us to believe that the majority of Republicans are actually "moderate," and that, any day now, these "moderate" Republicans will wrest control of the G.O.P. from the right-wing power mongers who are now bent upon transforming America from merely the most conservative and violent nation in the history of human kind into a true fascist theocracy ... and intent on getting it all done before the mid-term elections in 2006.

She's even got a web spiffy site, "It's My Party Too", which encourages "moderate" Republicans to contribute money and join forces to focus on the 2008 elections. Clearly a case of too little, too late, Whitman admits to delaying the release of her book to avoid any impact on the election, "If I had spoken up during the campaign, people would have viewed it in the context of the election." Exactly the point: too little, too late!

Meanwhile the right-wing bloggers (for example NewsMax (FL) - Boneheaded Advice: Christie Todd Whitman and the Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party just don't get it) are busy taking her apart and the White House has unleashed the usual attack dogs. Un-named "sources" have even compared her to (shudder) Michael Moore!

"I expected criticism," Mrs. Whitman, said last week, sitting in the living room of Pontefract*, her family's gracious farm in New Jersey's hunt country. "But I'm surprised at how personal the attacks are."

There's a chance it might work. Maybe. But picture this:

After four years of costly and increasingly frantic attempts at all manner of surgery, medication, and rehabilitation they finally have to admit that all along the patient's brain cancer has been too virulent, too extensive, and now it's clear that the G.O.P. is hopelessly and dangerously psychotic. And while they've been trying to save their terminally ill patient, hundreds of thousands more have been killed as a result of the invasion of Iran and Syria, thousands more Americans have been locked up indefinitely and held in secret, the U.S. debt has grown larger than the sum of all of the Third World's economies, their god is worshiped in public school classrooms (and several chapters have been ripped from the science text books), no woman any longer has the right to choose ...

Given the symptoms and the danger this patient presents to all of the rest of us, it's time to make the hard choice. Euthanasia is the only sensible treatment, and the sooner the better.

New York Times - Loyal to Her Party, but Not in Lock Step

* Pay attention! "Pontefract" is the Whitman family compound named after Pontefract Castle in England, built in 1080’s by Ilbert de Lacy, who was given the land (at the time owned and occupied by local farmers) by William the Conqueror as a reward for his faithful service. Keep that image in mind the next time you're thinking about voting Republican because of their stand on "moral values."