Truman's Conscience

The GOP Hates Civil Liberties

I keep wondering how long it is going to take the general population to wake up to the fact that the GOP hates civil liberties. Just yesterday former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gave us an excellent demonstration in Denison Iowa:

"I support tough interrogation techniques,
enhanced interrogation techniques, in circumstances where there is a ticking
time bomb, a ticking bomb," Romney said. "I do not support torture, but I do
support enhanced interrogation techniques to learn from terrorists what we need
to learn to keep the bombs from going off."

I'm not sure how the GOP came around to the conclusion that Al Qaeda is more dangerous than Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan but that kind of a comparative is just mind bogglingly nuts. Somehow we managed to fight a two ocean war without torturing people for intelligence. Yes, we herded up and put Asian descendant American citizens in detention camps, but they were not physically tortured and some semblance of trying to meet Geneva convention standards was attempted.

There is nothing like trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator of your base. And the lowest you can get is to use fear as a rallying point for support. In FDR's lowest moment he never even thought of using fear. This administration and the GOP '08 candidates use it like a blunt instrument. In Denison Iowa yesterday Mitt Romney pulled out his club and started beating it over the heads of his listeners. I'm not sure what's more disturbing: the ease Romney succumbed to the temptation and taking the fear route or his listeners buying into that crap. Either way, it's a road the GOP is willing to lead us down.