November 28, 2007

Again with GOP loyalty oaths?

I can appreciate the fact that Virginia Republicans are nervous right now. They’ve lost the last two gubernatorial elections, they lost last year’s U.S. Senate race, they’re about to lose next year’s U.S. Senate race, they lost their majority in the State Senate, and there’s some evidence that the national Dems consider the state in play at the presidential level. It’s enough to make any state GOP committee a little panicky.

But loyalty oaths? Seriously? (thanks to L.M. for the tip)

If you’re planning to vote in Virginia’s February Republican presidential primary, be prepared to sign an oath swearing your Republican loyalty.

The State Board of Elections on Monday approved a state Republican Party request to require all who apply for a GOP primary ballot first vow in writing that they’ll vote for the party’s presidential nominee next fall.

There’s no practical way to enforce the oath. Virginia doesn’t require voters to register by party, and for years the state’s Republicans have fretted that Democrats might meddle in their open primaries.

Virginia Democrats aren’t seeking such an oath for their presidential primary, which is held the same day — February 12th.

As the Roanoke Times editorialized today, “The Republican Party of Virginia has no interest in thoughtful voters. It only wants mindless party loyalists who will vote Republican no matter what. That’s the sad message of a new GOP policy for next year’s presidential primary approved by the State Board of Elections this week.”

If this were limited to Virginia, it would merely be disappointing. Alas, these Republican loyalty oaths seem to be catching on elsewhere.

The GOP is taking a similar approach, for example, in Kansas.

The state Republican Party is forming a loyalty committee so that it can punish officers who endorse or contribute to Democrats. […]

The state committee’s actions struck a sour note for some Republicans, particularly moderates on issues such as abortion. Bob Beatty, a Washburn University political scientist, suggested the loyalty committee could prove a “public relations disaster.”

“Ironically, it smacks most of the Communist Party,” Beatty said Monday. “That’s the kind of public irony that most parties try to avoid — the party of freedom telling people they have no freedom.”

Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh added, “It gives me pause for thought anytime someone requires a loyalty oath of anyone from any organization.” Andy Wollen, president of the Kansas Traditional Republican Majority, added, “When you hear the term loyalty committee, what runs through your mind? Joseph McCarthy. George Orwell.”

Or how about this gem from 2004?

The [Bush-Cheney] campaign goes to great lengths to ensure events are open only to the most loyal fans.

On Vice President Cheney’s recent trip to New Mexico, residents were allowed in to hear his Albuquerque speech only if they signed a loyalty oath swearing they “endorse George W. Bush for reelection of the United States [sic].”

Or, how about this one, a few months later?

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — “I want you to stand, raise your right hands,” and recite “the Bush Pledge,” said Florida state Sen. Ken Pruitt. The assembled mass of about 2,000 in this Treasure Coast town about an hour north of West Palm Beach dutifully rose, arms aloft, and repeated after Pruitt: “I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States.”

I know the Bush-Cheney campaign occasionally requires the people who attend its events to sign loyalty oaths, but this was the first time I have ever seen an audience actually stand and utter one. Maybe they’ve replaced the written oath with a verbal one.

“Party of freedom”? Please.

 
Discussion

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37 Comments
1.
On November 28th, 2007 at 1:32 pm, 2Manchu said:

Suprised? Of course not.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/BushBillboard.jpg

“I swear to thee, George W. Bush….”

2.
On November 28th, 2007 at 1:33 pm, OkieFromMuskogee said:

“Alas, these Republican loyalty oaths seem to be catching on elsewhere.”

I disagree – this is good news. People don’t like being ordered around or being told who to vote for. The Republicans are going down a road to ruin here, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.

3.
On November 28th, 2007 at 1:35 pm, bubba said:

And let’s not forget this past party and its loyalty oaths: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=1913

4.
On November 28th, 2007 at 1:44 pm, Cmac said:

Oh, yeah, Bubba, and in that vein, I’ve always found the practice of starting the school day by making children recite the Pledge of Allegiance with their hands over their hearts just a tad Hitler-youth-esque for my taste.

5.
On November 28th, 2007 at 1:44 pm, Grumpy said:

It’s one thing to swear an oath pledging fealty to the party’s ideals and platform, but swearing to automatically vote for a particular candidate is nonsense.

I know Kansas Republicans are having a lot of problems with party-switchers these days. I wonder if blue-trending Virginia is experiencing the same phenomenon, and if that explains the impulse for enforced loyalty.

6.
On November 28th, 2007 at 1:53 pm, toowearyforoutrage said:

This is not nearly good enough.
I insist all CURRENT Republicans be required to sign the oath too.

No oath, no ballot.

If you live in VA, please purchase a welder’s mask, so you won’t be blinded by your purple state turning bright, screaming, angry blue.

7.
On November 28th, 2007 at 1:57 pm, bubba said:

“I’ve always found the practice of starting the school day by making children recite the Pledge of Allegiance with their hands over their hearts just a tad Hitler-youth-esque for my taste.”

I hear ya.

8.
On November 28th, 2007 at 2:01 pm, Misplaced Patriot said:

Wow, the pro-lifers and culture warriors should love this. This means if they go and vote for Mike Huckabee, they are bound (by honor, if not by law) to vote for Giuliani in the general election, even if there is a pro-life third party candidate?

9.
On November 28th, 2007 at 2:03 pm, Misplaced Patriot said:

Yes, regarding the “Pledge of Allegiance,” what’s disturbing is that they are being led to swear and oath *before they even understand the words.*

My other question about it is, what kind of oath do you need to renew every day?

10.
On November 28th, 2007 at 2:03 pm, Cheryl said:

2. On November 28th, 2007 at 1:33 pm, OkieFromMuskogee said:
People don’t like being ordered around or being told who to vote for.

No kidding…

In Arizona after the infamous Evan Mecham became governor he repealed the prior gov’s executive order establishing the MLK holiday in the state. The subsequent outroar included a public initiative on the ballot to institute the holiday. Less than a week before the election the NFL said if the state failed to pass the initiative, the Super Bowl would not be held in Phoenix, home of the Cardinals, the latest expansion team in the NFL.

As a result, voters rejected the measure out of hand.

A couple years later, it was back on the ballot. There were no strongarm tactics from out-of-state interests. It passed. Arizona is the only state where the people have actually voted in the holiday.

Voters don’t like being blackmailed.

11.
On November 28th, 2007 at 2:04 pm, MLE said:

How can this possibly be legal? IIRC, it is illegal (and rightly so) in elections for federal offices to compensate anyone for a vote for a particular candidate (allowing one to vote in a primary sounds like compensation to me), or force someone to disclose who they voted for. Its one thing when these are oaths for essentially private organizations like state parties, but state run/endorsed elections are somewhat different. Any election lawyers out there?

12.
On November 28th, 2007 at 2:05 pm, AG said:

Loyalty oaths aren’t anything new. The South Carolina democratic party required them throughout the 90s, when I lived there. As far as I know, they still require it.

They haven’t been legally enforcible since the 50s, when the courts ruled enforcement unconstitutional, but they’ve been used by both parties in assorted states over the years.

13.
On November 28th, 2007 at 2:05 pm, NonyNony said:

Republican Projection suggests that if the GOPers in Virginia are worried about Dems doing this (e.g. crossing party lines to vote for non-viable GOP candidates), it’s something that they’ve already been doing or are considering doing themselves to the Dems. Watch out for shenanigans coming out of Virginia this election cycle.

14.
On November 28th, 2007 at 2:23 pm, N.Wells said:

I too think that this is great news. It seems rather like standing on the edge of a pier, declaiming that the anchor that you are holding will in fact float, and insisting that the anchor chain be firmly welded around your ankle prior to your throwing it into the sea.

Perhaps they could amend the oath to explicitly insist on supporting everything that Bush has ever favored, including Iraq; promising never to have a divorce, an abortion, or sex outside marriage; and swearing allegiance to a fundamentalist theocracy of a flavor to be determined later.

15.
On November 28th, 2007 at 2:39 pm, PaulW said:

If this comes to Florida, I’m challenging it.

I have only one oath, “I pledge alliegence to the United States…” Not to party, not to person, but to my nation, God Bless.

16.
On November 28th, 2007 at 2:59 pm, Racerx said:

What Nonynony said.

This looks like a classic case of projection.

17.
On November 28th, 2007 at 3:04 pm, bjobotts said:

Too bad banks can’t get those kinds of oaths. Promise to support this bank and take all loans out here no matter what the interest rate may change to…etc.
A promise to vote for a candidate before even hearing what the candidate is saying. The republicans have become robotic and obviously have ceased believing in a democracy. They truly are becoming more like the Nazi party and truly cannot see it. Demanding loyalty certainly rules out being able to change one’s mind as events take place. It also presupposes an insecurity that one might want to change one’s mind. The crowd of republicans you mention in Florida who stood up and raised their hands were put in a position of being embarrassed if they did not stand…and also they had no idea what the speaker was going to say but stood there with hands in the air willing to swear to anything that might come out of the speakers mouth. Laughable but demonstrates the necessity of ridding the government of such closed minded morons. What insanity has taken over the republican party?

18.
On November 28th, 2007 at 3:12 pm, bjobotts said:

Really…How CAN this be legal? Can’t vote unless you swear an oath to vote for the candidate who wins the primary? What if you only will vote for one republican candidate and so vote for him in the primary and he doesn’t win the nomination. Now you are supposed to vote for a candidate you never would have voted for to begin with? Sounds like blackmail.

19.
On November 28th, 2007 at 3:39 pm, Focality said:

I live in VA. This has been laughed about most of the day around the office, by both acknowledged Repubs as well as those who don’t care for the GOP.

It certainly is a PR disaster, especially in a state with a large military population (current and former). We took an oath to the Constitution. To hell with a party!

I expect the VA GOP will announce something tomorrow, to “tone it down a bit.” Dumbasses.

20.
On November 28th, 2007 at 3:41 pm, mellowjohn said:

actually, bubba and cmac, the pledge used be said by school children with their right arms outstretched at about 100-to-110 degrees (try it). for some reason, this was replaced with the familiar hand over the heart right sometime in the late 1930s or early 1940s.

everytime i hear about loyalty oaths, i smile and think of “catch-22.”

21.
On November 28th, 2007 at 3:43 pm, Cmac said:

About the only oath I can imagine swearing would be to the Constitution.

And bjobotts, I think the only reason it’s legal is because it’s unenforceable. So who cares what they pledge?

Of course, being Republicans, they’re not likely to switch to the Dem candidate under any circumstances. You can be assured of this because the only people still calling themselves ‘Republicans’ are the dead-enders. The rest have already switched their affiliation to Independent.

22.
On November 28th, 2007 at 3:45 pm, Cmac said:

Are you serious, mellowjohn? Like the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute? You’re kidding, right?

23.
On November 28th, 2007 at 3:51 pm, spork_incident said:

Cmac –

He’s not kidding.

Google “pledge of allegiance salute” and look at the images.

.

24.
On November 28th, 2007 at 4:16 pm, Cmac said:

Found it. Heh. Those late-nineteenth-century Americans were such jokers, weren’t they?

25.
On November 28th, 2007 at 7:06 pm, libra said:

Virginia doesn’t require voters to register by party, and for years the state’s Republicans have fretted that Democrats might meddle in their open primaries.

Well… we have, sometimes 🙂 And not, necessarily, to push for a non-viable candidate, as NonyNony suggests @13.

Virginia is “off-cycle”, so we had state elections earlier this month. My district is, overwhelmingly, dyed-in-the-wool red, and it will take years to change that (if it’s even possible). Dems had one — unopposed — candidate for Senate and nobody at all for the House, so there was no Dem primary. But Repubs had one — the incumbent was being attacked from the right. So all of us Dem “officers of elections” and many Dem townspeople as well *did* vote in the in the Repub primaries… For the incumbent.

The calculation which went into this vote was this: 1) Our own candidate doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in general elections. 2) Repubs will vote for whomever their party puts out, be he a loon of first water. 3) Of the two Repubs vying for the nomination, the incumbent is marginally saner, so, let’s make sure he gets the nomination.

Come general, we voted for our guy, of course — there’s always some hope for a miracle. But, when he lost as expected, we got the marginally saner one representing us, not the total loon.

As for the oath of loyalty as such… The Repubs have moved so far to the right by now, they have emerged to the left of Mao 🙂

26.
On November 28th, 2007 at 8:29 pm, 1BQ said:

Anyone remember the Presidential oath? From the Library of Congress Web site (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/pioaths.html):

Each president recites the following oath, in accordance with Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The implication being that the Constitution supercedes even the office of the Presidency. What a quaint notion!

27.
On November 28th, 2007 at 11:15 pm, petorado said:

Can brown shirts and armbands be far behind? Party uber alles must be the new republican motto.

28.
On November 29th, 2007 at 2:56 am, President Lindsay said:

“I’ve always found the practice of starting the school day by making children recite the Pledge of Allegiance with their hands over their hearts just a tad Hitler-youth-esque for my taste.”

I took my totally home-schooled (atheist) daughter to a career fair of sorts at an IBM research center in California one time, organized by the boy scouts. It was great, lots of scientists and engineers there explaining their latest research and such. Towards the end of it there was a presentation for everybody in the auditorium, and before it began everybody stood up and started saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Hands on hearts, the whole schtick. It had been so many years since I’d been through that routine that it took me by surprise, but my 15-year-old daughter was totally blindsided. She didn’t know what to make of it at all, she just stood there dumbfounded. When I explained to her later what it was all about she thought it was really creepy. Sometimes kids make you feel so proud!

And yes, Tom Cleaver, once in a while people who aren’t nuts homeschool their kids, and it can be a great experience. She’s a grad student in physics now at Cornell, which sort of puts the lie to the idea that homeschoolers necessarily end up educationally retarded. On the other hand, that sort of assumption about homeschoolers is so pervasive (and, alas, too often true) that my kids generally don’t tell people they were homeschooled, and if anything they harbor more misgivings about homeschoolers than does the general public. But sometimes it can work out great, and when it does it’s very rewarding.

29.
On November 29th, 2007 at 9:16 am, ET said:

This loyalty oath sounds like my college’s campus politics. Which isn’t a surprise considering many GOP party types cut their teeth on College Republicans.

I went to college at the University of Alabama in the late 1980’s early 1990s. When I was there student government was run by something referred to as The Machine. This was basically most fraternities and sororities. It got nastly, real nast. They would pressure members of the fraternities and sororities to vote for their candidates as if somehow they would know when a member didn’t vote for The Machine candidate – and members, especially the young and sheep-like – would likely believe it.

30.
On November 29th, 2007 at 2:07 pm, Ted said:

Kind of reminds you the loyalty oath to Hitler in 1930’s Germany.

http://www.pafundi.com
=================================================
Number of Operations Iraq Freedom and Enduring Freedom casualties
as confirmed by U.S. Central Command: 4326

31.
On November 29th, 2007 at 2:09 pm, goatchowder said:

That pledge of allegiance gives me the creeps every time I see it or hear it.

I won’t run for office because every public board of trustees and councils I’ve seen, requires that pledge before every meeting.

The only thing I’d swear an oath to– and mean it– is to defend the Constitution. Other than that, no, sorry.

32.
On November 29th, 2007 at 2:40 pm, Isaac said:

“I _________ do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will not think or question the divine right of George W. Bush. I will continue to believe that Jesus rode a dinosaur. I will continue to shop for useless plastic goods and squander natural resources. I will continue to live in fear that is stoked by the great Bush and company. I will do my best to point out Democrats hate America and they are all to blame for our ills and terror. I will continue to brush the dust off of past Democratic Presidents who have not been in office since the 90’s or 70’s in order to point out our national security woes of today.

Lastly, I acknowledge that Jesus is on the side of George Bush and his side alone. I affirm that Jesus and Bush together have the God given right to bomb who they please, spy on whomever they want and if you don’t love Bush and Jesus you hate America.”

Bushesus bless you..

Signed _______________

33.
On November 29th, 2007 at 2:53 pm, Gerbilbazooka said:

This comes as little or no surprise coming from the “Us versus them party” They have managed to alienate the world and 70% of the country, when you are down to a party of old rich(daddy’s money) white chicken hawks there is not much left to do but sign pledges and pass marshmallows around with your buttcheeks.

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