An Interesting Take on the RNC

via Boing Boing

Douglas Rushkoff has written an interesting piece on his reaction to the Republican National Convention. While I did not watch all of it myself (I can only stand so much banner waving - rah rah rah go team go!) some of what I saw did mirror Rushkoff's sentiments. I couldn't believe that they were making fun of community organizing. Isn't that what the Republicans are supposed to want? Don't they want less big government and more small local communities taking care of each other. Or was that just the Regan and prior eras of the Republicans? Despite their evangelizing about Regan (some compared Palin to Regan which is ludicrous) I actually doubt that they would have Regan as their nominee if he came on the scene today. 

One of the biggest problems the Republicans have as a coherent philosophy is the clash between social conservatism (read religious), economic conservatism (read invisible hand), social libertarianism (read mind your own business), and corporate conservatism (read corporate welfare). When your party is composed of some clearly contradictory foundations it's no wonder they can perform the verbal acrobats they do to convince voters to look their way. I'm no fortune teller, but if the individual voting Republicans start to realize that half of the party fundamentally does not agree with them we could finally see the multi-party system we so desperately need. 

The Rational Moderate