Republican Swine and Obama

Frank Schaeffer’s Open Letter to Obama:

“As someone who appeared numerous times on the 700 Club with Pat Robertson, as someone for whom Jerry Falwell used to send his private jet to bring me to speak at his college, as an author who had James Dobson giveaway 150,000 copies of my one of my fundamentalist "books" allow me to explain something: the Republican Party is controlled by two ideological groups. First, is the Religious Right. Second, are the neoconservatives. Both groups share one thing in common: they are driven by fear and paranoia. Between them there is no Republican "center" for you to appeal to, just two versions of hate-filled extremes.

…There's only one thing that makes sense for you now. Mr. President, you need to forget a bipartisan approach and get on with the business of governing by winning each battle. You will never be able to work with the Republicans because they hate you. Believe me, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are the norm not the exception. James Dobson and the rest are praying for you to fail. The neoconservatives are gnashing their teeth and waiting for you to "sell out Israel" or "show weakness" in Afghanistan, whatever, so they can declare you a traitor.

...Your Republican opponents are not decent people but ideologues bent on destroying you. To quote the biblical adage sir, don't cast your pearls before swine."



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A grain of truth to what Schaeffer is saying. But reading this makes me so glad that Mr. Schaeffer isn't president, and Barack Obama is. The reason is that Schaeffer (a former leader of the religious right, "converted" to the Democratic party) still seems like a fundamentalist to me -- a fundamentalist needs a definitive cause, and also needs a gospel to preach that excludes some people and not others, a gospel where some people have the light, and others are in darkness. To me, it seems like Schaeffer has simply switched sides, but hung onto this vision of the world.

He doesn't seem to believe in people--sure the people that sent him letters calling for God to kill him after he advocated Obama, are never going to embrace Obama or reason (which is not quite to imply that they're the same thing, though some hero-worshipping folk of late seem to confuse them :) --but they are the exception and not the rule when it comes to America. And I think that, contra Schaeffler's polemic, to get people to change, you need to first believe in them. The thing about Obama, is even though he is pragmatic and realistic in his policies and approaches, deep down, you suspect that he actually does believe that America doesn't have to always be a bunch of flaming ideologues, bent on irrationalist venting, forever split into factions that talk past each other without ever hearing. Now, I'm no fideist (and the initial cold, mostly partisan response to the stimulus bill isn't helping anyone's optimism for change in Washington) but believing that things are possible is part of actually making them happen. We still have the systemic difficulties that come from a nation being run democratically (which means the voters are getting their info from 30 second media spots or colorful talking heads) that reinforce the acrid partisanship common to our recent history and I don't see that part changing, but at least for now I think we've got the right guy in there looking for something beyond venting his own opinion of the "Truth," someone who is willing to listen to people--though it sounds like advice you hear in kindergarten, people in Washington have forgotten that to get people to listen to you, you must also listen to them. Obama's statement that he would meet with leaders of countries like Iran "without preconditions" is not naive, but a persuasive strategy. And this strategy of listening before expecting to be heard is one that he's good at, and one that he needs, whatever Schaeffer says, to continue to employ, not only abroad, but here at home.