Pubdate: Tue, 08 Aug 2000
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2000 The Denver Post
Contact:  1560 Broadway, Denver, CO 80202
Fax: (303) 820.1502
Website: http://www.denverpost.com/
Forum: http://www.denverpost.com/voice/voice.htm
Author: Ed Quillen

RATHER FIGHT THAN SWITCH? NO, THEY SWITCH TO FIGHT

August 8, 2000 - Like hundreds of other Chaffee County residents, I changed 
my voting registration so I could participate in the hot election this year 
- - not the national yawner between the son of a senator and the son of a 
president as to who will appoint prosecutors and judges with the shiniest 
jackboots, but the Republican primary today, where Joe De Luca is 
challenging incumbent county commissioner Frank McMurry.

So for the past month, I've been a duly registered Republican. As far as I 
know, this has not improved my wardrobe or credit rating, and my pleasure 
from recreating in those socialistic national forests that are burning 
because of eight years of Clinton-Gore-Babbitt mismanagement has not been 
replaced by an irresistible craving to play golf.

I was worried, because this sort of thing happened to Sen. Ben Nighthorse 
Campbell after he made the switch, and has of late been raving that 
environmentalists are a threat to national security.

Perhaps that's why my influence in party circles is minuscule, or else Bush 
the Younger would have picked New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson as his running 
mate (like Dick Cheney, he's a Western pol with some private-sector 
experience, and unlike Cheney, Johnson has a sensible attitude about the 
War on Drugs - just end it).

Then again, perhaps there's been a lot of this party switching, and that 
might explain the spectacles that were on television last week. For 
instance, there was an African-American speaker denouncing the "affirmative 
action" of tax breaks for big corporations. Another speaker was gay. No one 
called for a constitutional amendment to forbid the teaching of evolution 
in public schools, and there were no demands for the death penalty for 
history instructors who mention things like Sand Creek and Ludlow that 
might tend to cast doubt on the nobility of America.

At first I checked the television set and its connections. That used to be 
fairly simple, but we just got one of those little satellite dishes (mostly 
because the local cable monopoly believes that its Salida customers prefer 
down-home wholesome stuff like the Compulsive Shoppers Network and 
"Baywatch" to elitist fare like C-SPAN and A&E) and I haven't mastered its 
multitude of channels and options.

But as nearly as I could tell, I was watching the real Republican 
convention, not some fake event contrived by the Biased Liberal Media.

This got me to wondering. Perhaps the Chaffee County party-switching 
epidemic had gone national, and all manner of erstwhile Democrats were now 
Republicans, perhaps on the theory that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

That would explain what I saw on TV, a Republican convention that looked 
like a Democratic convention, as the result of a stealth takeover by 
Democrats. If this is indeed what is going on - and for all I know, the 
15,000 residents of Chaffee County represent the cultural and political 
vanguard of this great republic - then we should be able to look forward to 
a new Republican Party, sort of like the one we saw on TV. That Republican 
Party would do pretty well at election time, since it would manage to avoid 
gay-bashing and dollar-worshiping.

The problem, though, is what would happen to the offended Republicans who 
want the death penalty for any woman who miscarries after a horseback ride. 
Having lost control of the GOP, would they try to get it back? Or would 
they follow Pat Buchanan off a cliff?

Or would they infiltrate and take over the Democratic party, so that in a 
dozen years, the Republicans would be praising affirmative action (which 
was, after all, the product of a Republican president, Richard M. Nixon) 
and environmental conservation (Nixon, again, and Theodore Roosevelt before 
him), while Democrats would be demanding prayer in school (in response to 
public demand) and school vouchers (as a result of discovering that there 
are more parents than there are teachers).

The conservatives of the conservative party would actually be trying to 
conserve things like small towns, small business, open space, local 
control, personal responsibility - what a pleasant thought.

Never mind. This is starting to sound like I've been smoking some of that 
stuff that the Republican governor of our neighboring state of New Mexico 
says should be legal.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jo-D