Gillibrand backs an ideological purge. Yawn.
It was the refusal of Iowa Democrats to nominate Atty. Gen. Tom Miller- the only Democrat with a realistic chance to defeat then-Iowa Gov. Terry Branstadt back in 1990- because he was pro-life that convinced me that there was no place for me or other pro-lifers in their party. Nothing, it seems, has changed. Sometimes they're willing to give lip service to our being "welcome" in their party, occasionally even inserting specific language to that effect in their platform. Sometimes not. In recent years, as both parties have moved to the extremes, the Democrats have become more and more radical on the subject of abortion. They've even gone from downplaying the dirty little secret of Roe v. Wade-
that it mandated legal abortion literally up to the moment of birth in cases where the mother's "health" was at stake (medical science tell us that this is literally never the case with viable infants, since Caesarian delivery is always safer even for the mother than abortion- but ideologically motivated doctors routinely lie)- to openly embracing what amounts to infanticide by explicitly declaring even full-term infants to be fair game, as in the new New York abortion law.
As much of a recruiting device for Democrats as the presidency of the pathologically unfit Donald Trump has been, reasonable people repulsed by the Republican embrace of the alt-right, the conspiracy theorists, and a psychologically immature president still have nowhere to go. The only alternative to the party of the crazy Right is the party of the crazy Left. While sporatic gestures have been made toward the possibility of a centrist insurgency in 2020, disturbing rumors continue that its most likely standard-bearer- former Ohio Gov. John Kasich- is focusing on a futile primary challenge to President Trump, which would lead to disaster and a disenfranchised American Center in November.
The Republican party's embrace of President Trump has discredited it as a vehicle for sanity and reform, and short of a purge of the element now firmly in control of it, it's hard to see how the GOP can ever be taken seriously again. And the Democrats appear to be determined to remain an ideologically narrow, purist cult on the far Left.
If the reasonable majority of Americans are going to take our country back, it's going to have to be through the emergence of a third party. The last one to succeed was the Republicans in the days of Fremont and Lincoln. The dynamics of American party politics are anything but encouraging for the prospect of a new party succeeding today. But with both established parties beyond the pale of rationality, that continues to seem to me the only chance sanity- and probably democracy itself- has to survive in a nation in which only the crazy people have a voice.
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