http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0524/050615_news_republicans.php

There is something significant missing from this piece -- an analysis of why Republicans have largely gone extinct within the city limits.

When I was a kid growing up in Seattle there were Republicans everywhere in the community. Even my dear old dad was a Republican, not breaking ranks until 1980.

Many moderate, well-respected Republicans held elective office back then. Governor Dan Evans and Congressman Joel Pritchard exemplified the type.

What has happened however, is that politics have drifted increasingly towards the right since the mid-seventies and moderates no longer feel at home in the party.

It is not just that the domestic policies of Bill Clinton were to the right of Richard Nixon -- it is the fact that the Republican Party has been hijacked by "faith-based" extremists who equate the scientific method with Atheism and seem eager to return to a pre-Enlightenment world of ignorance and fear.

Rosenberg -- best known for his outrage at the appearance of Lenin's statue in Fremont and his shock that the Bellevue Art Museum was showing contemporary art -- seems to neglect these facts entirely.

What is worse, he seems obsessed with his own status as a social outcast and uses this collective sense of alienation as the connective thread that unites the Seattle's Republicans -- a groups he holds up as the city's most persecuted minority. It is almost as if Rosenberg believes that Seattlites have never considered becoming Republicans because of a ruling Democratic party orthodoxy that kept them from even knowing such a thing was possible.

What about the fact that we have a Republican President, Senate, House of Representaives, and an increasing conservative judiciary? Or Fox News?

Rosenberg would have been better off focusing on the local and national forces that have shaped the political sensibilities of the region, rather than whining and feeling sorry for himself through these Republican proxies in the piece.

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Jim Demetre

These people need to get real. It's not like they're exposed to pogroms or cross-burnings. They just live in a majority liberal community, one that encourages cultural activities, entrepeneurship and diversity. Just because they do not like that aspect of the environment doesn't mean they are being chased by villagers with torches.

I am trying to imagine an alternate universe situation in my hometown of Yakima, a very conservative town. What if, for some reason, a local paper there wrote about how hard it was to be a Democrat there? The 'reporter' and the people featured in the article would be laughed at. Of course, this would never happen. It is precisely the liberal atmosphere of Seattle that allowed this article to go out into the ether.

My favorite characters in the article are the Texan and the former welfare mother. The first one seems sad that things are not like they are in Texas where the death penalty for innocent people and demonizing poor people are reg'lar activities. So sad. I find it hard to believe that she was broken into b/c of her pro-Bush literature. I am sure that is just her paranoia.

Now, the bootstrap lady is down-right nutty. She took advantage of a program initiated by Dems and then she brought herself into the middle class. She would not have had that opportunity if she hadn't secured the benefit. I also like how her sexual harassment was a mark of liberal values. It's more like her settlement was. Oh well, I think that is thinking too deeply for most in the GOP so I won't try to hurt their brains.

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These people need to get real. It's not like they're exposed to pogroms or cross-burnings. They just live in a majority liberal community, one that encourages cultural activities, entrepeneurship and diversity.

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True, I doubt many in Seattle have been exposed to cross-burnings; a little bit sensationally over the top, isn't it? Though, one item that stuck out for me (in your post) was that historically majority liberal communities have not been known for encouraging entrepreneurship.

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I am trying to imagine an alternate universe situation in my hometown of Yakima, a very conservative town. What if, for some reason, a local paper there wrote about how hard it was to be a Democrat there? The 'reporter' and the people featured in the article would be laughed at.

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Re: liberal communities encouraging entrepeneurship. Currently, I would point to our own which has fostered business start-ups like Microsoft and Amazon.com. The founder of the latter specifically came here to find a creative, educated workforce. The type of people (both liberal and conservative) who are attracted to a diverse community with lots of cultural opportunities that can be enjoyed here or in other places with lots of economic opportunity like New York or San Francisco Contrasted with a Yakima, a conservative Kansas or Alabama, which are not hotbeds of economic activity, I would say, yes, a more open, tolerant, liberal environment does encourage entrepeneurship. No one ever sings about Witchita or Mobile, 'if I can make it there, I can make it anywhere'.

Historically, I would point to the early Ottoman Empire and the colony of New York under the Dutch. When the Jews were expelled from conservative Spain, they were welcomed by the more cosmopolitan Ottomans who were nominally tolerant of other cultures. Under this regime at that time, economic activity was infinitely more vibrant than in doctrinaire Western Europe. These two sentences are too much of a gloss to discuss the subtleties of Ottoman religious tolerance (and as a descendant of Christians under the Turks I can tell you it wasn't great by today's standards), but for the time, they were liberal and they made bank. Likewise the Dutch, their main focus was mercantilism or entrepeneurship so they did not see it as necessary to interfere in the private lives and beliefs of their trading partners in order to generate income, unlike the conservatives of today.

Re: laughing at the people in the article. Quite correct. They are largely laughable, whining with no real problems to point to so why are they complaining? My point is that in a place like Yakima, the article would never be published. It is Seattle's liberal culture that allowed such goofiness to be put in print.

Truly, a more interesting article would discuss what was the philosophy of those featured in the article. Does it have to do with skepticism about government power and defense of privacy and individual liberty? Because if that's the case, we ain't gettin' that now under the Bush administration...

All I got from the article was some woman who thought that sexual harassment was the arena of liberals only (hello? Bob Packwood) while failing to recognize that it was liberal feminists who tried to make the issue of harassment relevant. It wasn't Phyllis Schlafly who paved the way for that woman to get a settlement. Try the other side of the political spectrum.

I went to Rosenburg's blog to get what he stands for (instead of against) and his view of liberals is skewed to the point of the bizarre. A lot of space was dedicated to the discussion of extreme body piercers who tried to get into the Fremont parade. I guess, in his mind, they were representative of the Democratic majority here in Seattle. How strange, I don't even have pierced ears.

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