California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ®, New York Gov. George E. Pataki ®, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ®, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani ®, Senator John McCain of Arizona ®, Secretary of Education Rod Paige ®, and Senator Zell Miller of Georgia (D). Four pro-choice moderates, a fiscal conservative beloved by Democrats, a nobody, and an actual Democrat. These are the people whom Karl Rove has selected as prime-time speakers for the Republican National Convention — a waste-of-time pep rally that Congress has designated as “educational” so that we have to pay $13 million to subsidize it. If it were possible to put a pretty face on the Grand Oppression Party, this would be the sort of mascara you would need.
But it is so obviously fake and contrived that honest-to-goodness Republicans are raising hell. According to the Times, a majority of Republicans in the House have dispatched a scathing letter demanding that at least one of the speakers be an unambiguously nosy nanny who wants to scold us for our Godless morality. The man (naturally, it’s a man) they want to hear from is famed moralist Henry “I fucked Cherie Snodgrass for five years” Hyde, who with the boldness of OJ Simpson leading a panty raid on a battered women’s shelter, had berated President Clinton for his affair with Monica, stating that “lies must have consequences”.
Poor choice, I say, and just as weasely as the list given above. I say show us your true face. Make John Asshole your keynote speaker. Put him up there to boast about the new powers you have given him — to hold us in custody indefinitely, to sneak into our homes while we’re away, to inspect our activities in our churches, to read our e-mail, to find out what books we checked out from the library, to listen to our phone calls, to peer into our medical, mental health, financial, educational, and bank records, and to listen in on conversations between attorneys and clients in federal custody — all without probable cause and all without notifying us about what the hell they’re up to. Put the man behind the podium who will tell us that the Statue of David is obscene. Give us the face of your party that opposes gay marriage and other basic human rights. Let the world know exactly what we’ve gotten from you for the past four years — reckless spending, growth in government, new bureaucracies, new deficits, new wars, loss of freedom, increased corporate welfare, new trade restrictions, new capitalism-choking regulations, and loss of all international credibility — and how we can expect more of the same for the next four years if we elect you. Put someone up there to show us why opposition to the United States in some countries is now approaching 100%.
Grow some fucking balls. Show us who you really are.
It isn’t just the GOP. The Democrats and Republicans both get the money. Always have. “Educational” is the justification for spending the taxpayer money. Just like they can give taxpayer money to PBS, schools, or the arts. They ostensibly need a reason, and educational was the chosen one.