RIP Gerald Ford And Moderate Republicanism

Why do I say that? As many of you know who pay any attention to what comes out of my big mouth, I am not given to false sentiments. So if it were, say, Rush Limbaugh, I would most likely yawn.

No, I offer this small tribute because while I disagreed with Ford on many issues (Nixon, for example), when he led the GOP was a time when sane people were in charge of that party. People you could do business with on issues like civil rights and clean water.

It was also a time of Republican foreign policy internationalism with an emphasis on diplomacy, in the wake of the dreadful mistake of Vietnam. Most importantly, a willingness to meet in the actual political middle, not some false center that Joe Lieberman invented in his patently dishonest noggin.

I can't remember where I saw this, so I am unable to link, but there was an analysis done that showed that Ford's judicial picks were actually to the left of Clinton's, (unlike current Republican judges, like THIS IDIOT). Ford supported the ERA, the right to choose in most instances and affirmative action. You get the point.

I didn't love the man, but I did respect him and do mourn his passing. For it is a perfect metaphor for the death of moderate Republicanism, which just as surely met its Maker on November 7th, 2006, at the hands of a band of corrupt and right-wing neoconservative pseudo-thinkers, retrograde fundamentalist science-haters and venal corporate-humpers.