The moral authority to govern
If the current climate created by the Abramoff Affair(s) persists in Washington, it threatens to undermine the future of the Republican Party as the party of national governance and/or the party of Middle America.I have real issues with Newt Gingrich, largely because his personal morality is bankrupt, and he is an illustration of the very problem he is speaking out against. However, Gingrich is right when he says that the GOP is allowing itself to lose its mandate to govern the country because it has allowed the very same culture of corruption that infected the Democrats’ tenure in Congress, and took 50 years to cement itself, to eat away at the Republicans moral authority in only 12.
We live in times of tumult and uncertainty that require moral clarity, rather than moral cloudiness from our leaders. America does not need a leadership that comes into power on a platform of ending corruption, bribery, and obstruction and then practices the very same things that they (the leadership) preached against when not in a position of national leadership.
Moral clarity cuts both ways, also. Just a few short months ago, I completely dismissed the idea that the Wicked Witch of the East could ever be elected to the White House. Surely, I thought, no one with a sane mind will vote for the Wicked Witch. Indeed, I found myself hoping the Democrats would nominate the Witch, in order that we might all have great fun on election night watching the inevitable landslide that would occur. We would get a damn good belly laugh watching Brian Williams and Tim Russert (and his erase board) call the election within an hour of the broadcast beginning.
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I have to wonder, however, if that will be the case. If people en masse come to determine that the Republicans cannot be trusted to maintain moral clarity while in office, many might be inclined to give their vote to the Wicked Witch in 2008. If she represents anything, it is moral clarity…the wrong kind of morals, but moral clarity nonetheless.
I believe most decent people are fully aware that the Wicked Witch of the East is evil. They understand that she does the work of Lucifer. People who keep track, even minimally, of the political goings on in our country know that the Wicked Witch is an Ambassador of Hell. At least, however, we know where the Wicked Witch is coming from. The American people know that there will be no hypocrisy in the administration of the Wicked Witch of the East. She will promise to bring evil and sin upon the land, and evil and sin is what she will bring. Every act of the Old Deluder that comes out of her office will be fully expected and anticipated, for she promised to do the bidding of the Evil One. At least people know what they are getting with the Wicked Witch.
The problem is that the Republicans promised they would do the bidding of a just and all-powerful God. If the Abramoff scandal proves to implicate prominent Republicans in large numbers, they will have done the opposite of what they had promised in a heinous and grossly inappropriate way.
People may shrug their shoulders and say “well, if we are going to get evil either way, we might as well go for the Total Package.”
For the sake of our country, I pray it doesn’t turn out that way.
posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 1:23 PM
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