Ari Fleischer's Post-Election Lament

Ari Fleischer's Post-Election Lament
Whatever you think of former President Bush's propaganda mouthpiece, Ari Fleischer, he knows his party's supporters. And he was surprisingly blunt about stating that Republicans will always be against LGBT rights and women's rights. Why? Because they are the party of people who will never accept that LGBT people are real human beings deserving of equal rights under the law. And they are also the party of Christian fundamentalists who want to tell women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies.

After a stinging election night defeat, President George W. Bush’s former White House secretary still says that the Republican Party will never support LGBT rights and reproductive rights for women. “The big issue that Republicans are going to have to wrestle with is the Hispanic issue,” Ari Fleischer explained after President Barack Obama’s defeat of GOP hopeful Mitt Romney made it clear that the country was more liberal than he had expected.
“It’s not the social issues,” he insisted. “You’re not going to make the party pro-choice and pro-gay rights and think you’ve made the Republican party the party that’s the popular party. We have a party like that. It’s the Democratic Party.”
“But the Republican Party used to be against abortion,” CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin noted. “In the past year, they have become identified with opposition to contraception. That is, you know, moving backwards at a pace that is astonishing and politically disastrous.”

Yes, being against contraception is incredibly stupid, and having the Pope of Conservative Talk Radio, Rush Limbaugh go off on an extended months long and extraordinarily nasty (even by his standards) rant against one women for daring to claim the pill should be covered by health insurance plans was a clear demonstration that the Republican party doesn't see women as fully human either. They are lesser beings in the eyes of Republicans whose fate is to bear and raise children and obey their husbands and fathers. How often were women demonized by Republican candidates this year? From Rick Santorum to Richard Mourdoch to everyone on the right you can possibly imagine women were blamed for rape, told that incest is "rare" so don't make such a big deal about it, blamed for being single parents and called "sluts" by a three times divorced fat man in a radio booth who took Viagra unlawfully on a vacation in the Dominican Republic, a known destination for sex tourists.
Now, Ari also said the Republican party needs to find a way to attract more Hispanic voters to their party? One question Ari? How are you planning to do that? Your party opposes the Dream Act. Its losing presidential candidate believes in self-deportation, even of children who have lived most of their lives in America, many of whom speak no Spanish, and that was the "moderate" position of your party. It re-elects time and time again, stated bigots and racists such as Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who believes that the only good Latino is one rotting away in his jail, and Steve King who called Latinos "dogs" and claimed that a compliment. No Ari, all the Rubios in the world aren't going to cover up the stink that reeks from your party's default position that Latinos are worthless, illegal scum, criminals and thugs, and carriers of disease who take jobs away from real Americans (i.e., white males). They hate Hispanics.
Yet, the most telling thing about Ari Fleischer's analysis of his party was what he didn't say. He said not one word about the need to attract more African Americans to the Republican party. I guess even he knows that Republicans = the party of bigots, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and "Confederate Heritage" lovers. He knows that Republicans abandoned African Americans shortly after the Civil War. He knows that the South is solidly Republican because they chose to pursue a "Southern Strategy" under Nixon that attracted bigoted Southern whites (and many Northern whites as well) to their party by opposing civil rights for African Americans. A strategy Ronald Reagan honed to perfection. He knows there is no room under the Big White Tent that is the Republican Party for anything more than a few token blacks. Why else would they go to such great lengths to disenfranchise and suppress the votes of that community?
Yes, Ari Fleischer knows his party well. There's a saying that a tiger doesn't change its stripes. Well, Ari, you and your fellow Republican operatives created this monster that feeds on fear, prejudice and hate. You had a major hand in developing the careers of powerful Republicans for which hate and fear is their middle name: Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Steve King, Ron and Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and even Mittens Romney, to name but a few. You can lament that fact all you want, but there is no silver bullet to slay the monstrous beast that is the present day Republican Party. It's grown too large, too fast, and too powerful to just slither away and die. It's not a phoenix that will erupt in flames and re-arise in a new more palatable form from the ashes. Its a Hydra-headed Gorgon covered with deadly poisonous snakes.