Time-travel blogging from 1992: rightwing Republicanism

"The time machine convention? That was yesterday."

Back before blogs had been invented, before I even had a personal e-mail, I used to write stuff out occasionally in a notebook. Yes, I'm old enough to remember when we wrote stuff by hand. It was okay, actually. I still do it now and then to keep in practice.

So, blogging directly from the past, here is an entry from 09/09/1992, while Old Man Bush was still President:

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One of the more dramatic examples of religious bigotry in America lately came from Pat Robertson. I call it religious bigotry, though its specifically antifeminist, because he claims religious inspiration for his outlook. Robertson this summer wrote a letter supporting the opposition to a state ballot Equal Rights Amendment in Iowa. He wrote:

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is a about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. (Quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle 07/07/1992)

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And here's one from 10/11/1992 reminding us that sleaze-slinging in national politics hardly started with George W. Bush and the Scalia Five.


I have to explain, though, that American English has changed since then, in that the color red now stands for the Republican Party; in those long-ago times, "red" stood for Communist. The KGB was the spy service for a since-disappeared country called the Soviet Union. Also, back then Maria Shriver was a reporter, not the First Lady of Cal-i-for-ni-a. Straight from the time machine:

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The Republican redbaiting this past week, with Bush himself picking up McCarthyist assertions that [Bill] Clinton worked for the KGB in 1969, has been truly appalling. To make up something totally fake like this and repeat it at the highest level is really unethical.

It reminded me of a quote from Republican Party chairman Rich Bond, from August or early September, to Maria Shriver:

We [Republicans] are America. Those other people [Democrats] are not America. (Quoted Mark Shields column Liberal Opinion 09/07/1992)

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I'm kind of embarrassed by that last one, though. But in those simple days, I was actually surprised by the fact that Old Man Bush was using something like that himself.

Now our current Bush and everyone else in his Party that still supports the war routinely accuses war critics of treason and aiding the enemy.

Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?

Tags: authoritarianism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, george h. w. bush, pat robertson, republican party

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