Colin Powell, All-Inclusive Republican

posted at 1:52 pm on May 24, 2009 by CK MacLeod
[ Politicians ]    printer-friendly

Across the United States this morning, life came to a standstill, and all the hungry sheeple looked up, waiting to be fed.

Finally, time zone by time zone, the virtual red smoke belched forth from the Face the Nation chimney, and the cry rose up: Habemus Republicanum! We have a Republican!  Gen Colin Powell has not left the party!  Strong men fainted and brave women wept at the news, but, as the smelling salts took effect and eyes cleared, no one could figure out what it meant.

Not that Powell was completely at a loss for words when it came to explaining why, for him, whatever Dick Cheney says, it’s Republicanism yesterday, Republicanism now, Republicanism forever:

Our vision, first and foremost, rests on values. Values because values are the conscience of a society. Values which must be lived, not just preached. Children learn values by watching their parents in their homes. Values which are then reinforced in their churches and in their places of worship, in the schools and in the communities in which they live.

And values, values fuel families. Families that are bound together by love and commitment. Families that then have the strength to withstand the assaults of contemporary life — to resist the images of violence and vulgarity that flood into our lives every day. Families that come together as communities to defeat the scourge of drugs and crime and incivility that threatens us.

* * *

We are the party committed to lessening the burden of taxes, cutting government regulations and reducing government spending, all for the purpose of generating the higher economic growth that will bring better jobs, wages and living standards to all our people.

[...]All of us must be willing to do with less from government if we are to avoid condemning our children and grandchildren with a crushing burden of debt that will deny them the American dream.

Of course, that was at the 1996 Republican Convention, as many of you will recall. Here’s what he had to say today, nearly 13 years later, explaining why he now believes in larger government and higher taxes and in suppressing all that immoderate values stuff, as he asserted his right to fight for what he believed in as an Obama-endorsing Republican:

…

Armed with such courageous non-beliefs and stirred by such gallant non-words – and distaste for Rush Limbaugh – Powell and the Powellites can now fan out across the Northeast in particular, testing the power of completely apolitical politics.

Part of the problem is that FTN host Bob Schieffer, the nicest guy in the world, doesn’t seem to care about what the Republican Party, Colin Powell, or for that matter the much-discussed Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, and Barack Obama actually stand for. Powell did refer to the “base,” whom apparently he doesn’t expect to leave the party (phew!).  He doesn’t think we should just “sit on the base and watch the world go by.”  He seems to expect the base to just sit on itself, until required to show up to support whatever it is he and the other moderates come up with.  What else the base should do or expect, and why it shouldn’t instead just spit moderates like him right out of its base-y mouth – that remains unaddressed for now.

Elsewhere in the interview, touching on issues in the news, Powell managed both to agree and to disagree with the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, viewing them both as torture and not as torture, just as he was both informed and not informed about them. He managed to criticize Obama’s handling of the Guantanamo detention facility as a matter of political tactics, while both agreeing and disagreeing with the notion that Guantanamo should be closed: For six years he’s believed that it should be closed, but he acknowledges that no one’s figured out how to do it yet. With this positioning, Powell manages both to agree with President Bush and to agree with the man who vilifies Bush.

Now that’s inclusiveness!  You name the alternative, and he’s both for and against it.

Powell recently informed a group of business leaders that he was a member of a “version of the Republican Party waiting to emerge once again.”  I think we can make out the platform for the New Republican Party:  It would be the traditional Republican Party platform… plus the Democratic Party platform.

I’ll grant Powell this: A party that comes down on both sides of every issue, strongly and forthrightly, does indeed have many potential members.  Everyone could join!  Unfortunately, no one would have any reason to do so – which is why we may have to wait for a very long time for the grand emergence, or why no one will even notice when it has finally taken place.

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