Hooligans in the House: Rednecks Above the Starched Collars

What is wrong with Republicans? I mean, besides their politics...

Last night's behavior of those on the right side of the Congressional aisle catapulted us right back to where we were during the electoral campaigns last fall: dumfounded by the rudeness of those who claim to have a firm grasp on the American ideal.

Something happened, it seemed, when Republicans realized that they could not sustain a working majority just representing the rich. The percentage of those identifying with the rich had grown so uncomfortably small, you see, like the collar of a fat man, stiff and white and oh so tightly buttoned up, it was making the blood vessels threaten to burst on those Daddy Warbucks jowls. The Republicans needed to beef up their ranks. In fact of matter, they plain old needed a rank, a rank and file of Republicans.

So. Time to rip off that stiff white collar. Pull off that tie too. Southern rednecks would fill up the empty seats in the townhall meetings...good old plain Americans with good old reverence for the American greenback and a healthy disdain for that pesky and growing population that was filling the Democratic ranks so fluently: the wetbacks. No way Republicans were ever going to succeed in winning over significant numbers of the nation's rapidly growing Hispanic population, not with their stance on immigration. And the overwhelming preponderance of white faces in their ranks was doing little to convince African Americans that Republicans really represented their best interest.

And so they turned to the south, to the rancor of rednecks, which had never really healed from the Civil War and who still had enough good old American intolerance around to fill a spitoon to overflowing so why not a dying political party full of cranky old white men and a few well-coifed white women. Bring on the rednecks. Their values, after all, weren't really so far from those pasty old white men's, certainly not from Limbaugh's or O'Reilly's or anyone who spoke for the right from televised pulpits. The right had nodded at the idea of an uneducated, vindictive, and overtly misinformed and malicious Presidential candidate in Sarah Palin already; it was clear that neither intelligence or civility were assets valued by the Republican leadership any more.

And now the Republicans stand for bad manners and boorishness and outright incivility. I find it frightening. The importance of behaving with good manners is not about how many weeks you have to write a thank you note; it's about allowing discourse despite differences. You speak, I speak. We take turns. We don't shout each other out; we listen and respond with as much civility as we listen. And the halls of Congress, where our most important differences are addressed in order to form policy that effects each and every one of us, no matter what our opinion, ought to be the place where civility is best demonstrated.

Representative Joe Wilson's outburst during President Obama's address to the joint members of Congress last night was more than lamentable, it was pathetic and outrageous and worthy of censure from not only his peers in Congress both Democrats and Republicans, but from his constituents. South Carolinans, having barely weathered the scandalous behavior of a governor who can't keep his pants zipped, now stand represented by someone no more mature than a 9 year old heckler. He is unworthy of a seat in our Congress. A five year old interrupting a teacher with such an outburst would suffer consequences. There should be some firm consequences for Joe Wilson.

What have the Republicans proposed be done? Rush Limbaugh doesn't even think the rude man should have offered a token apology. Republicans are snickering in their antechambers, aiming at that old spitoon. They should be wondering just what kind of people they've invited to the party and what has become of their values. The politics of fear is now the politics of crude, rude belch-in-your-face-and- damned- if-I'll-apologize-for-anything. I'm starting to yearn for the days when Republicans just seemed snobby and rich and full of disdain for the rest of us.