A Question of Loyalty

By Zamboni

More than a year after their historic 2008 election defeat, the state of the Republican Party is still pretty sorry-ass. We cats are ruminating on that today. (But we will, for the moment, decline to comment on Bud Day's recent, awful remarks in support of Charlie Crist — except to wonder why in world Republicans always seem to speak and think in racial and ethnic terms. It is, to say the least, really unattractive.)

Speaking of Mr. Crist, however, we cats are fascinated by the fact that the right-wingers and teabaggers — who overwhelmingly identify with the GOP — refuse to see him as a "real" Republican.

You see, Charlie has been a loyal party soldier throughout his electoral career — in the Florida legislature, the cabinet, and now, as Governor. In 1998, a year in which the Bob Graham machine steamrolled across the Sunshine State, Crist ran for Senate so that his party would at least have some semblance of a credible candidate on the ballot. Ten years later, he was being seriously considered for Vice President. When Republican Senator Mel Martinez decided to throw in the towel, Charlie jumped right in to save the seat. So — other than embracing a hugely popular Democratic President on a stimulus package that his state badly needed — Crist's GOP credentials are, we cats daresay, impeccable.

Yet, the right-wing nutcases who make up the party's base despise him.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is about as disloyal a Republican as she can be. Her husband joined an Alaskan independent/secessionist party that to this day encroaches on Republicans' absolute dominance of state politics. In 2006, she humiliated GOP legend Frank Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary (and there's been little love lost between her and Mr. Murkowski's daughter Lisa ever since). Her rocky tenure as Governor was marked by feuds with her GOP-dominated state legislature, from Troopergate to ethics investigations. And she's taken her doomed 2008 Vice Presidential nomination and turned it into a celebrity-fueled money-making machine — not for the good of her party, but for herself.

Yet it's Palin who is the Republican star. If that doesn't demonstrate the precarious state of the Grand Old Party, we cats don't know what does.