Via that Rubber Hose guy (Cliff Schecter (Blue Tide Rising))), this would be laughable if it weren't... well, so extremely laughable:
I, _______________, promise never to abandon my present Republican Party affiliation for the purpose of political gain. ...
So, it would be OK to leave the Republican Partei to marry your gay lover? Just asking ...
I solemnly pledge to always be a Republican, no matter what promises are made by external forces seeking only to undermine the Republican values I stand for. I can have reasonable disagreement with members of the Republican Party; however, at no point will ‘Party switching’ or quitting of the Party be tolerable.
Signed,
X __________________________________ [in blood?]
So why would the Kansas Republicans feel they needed to force the Kool-Aid down their own member's throats, I wonder?
Of course, the oath reads better in the original German....
Now, to be fair--and here at The Mighty Corrente Building we're always fair, especially when Dick Cheney has the nuclear football--the Kansas Republicans aren't swearing personal fealty to the person of George Bush.
But then again, they don't need to. That's part of the package. Just like the US Attorneys who haven't left, all Republican Party members are "emanations of the President'sThe Leader's will", along with everyone and everything else in the authoritarian movement that seized power in 2000 with the selection of George Bush.
NOTE The "X" on the form is a fine touch, I think. So helpful for the Republicans whose Christianist education has left them unable to sign their names.
UPDATE Contrast Orcinus's seminal post of 2003, "The Political and the Personal":
I remember rather vividly, like the day JFK was shot, where I was and what I was doing, the evening [Bush v. Gore] came down. I was in a small harbor town in western Washington, staying with the parents of some close friends (who are themselves good friends) while I covered a manslaughter trial in a nearby town. He is an accountant, she a homemaker, good moderate churchgoing Democrats. We all sat together and watched the bulletins come over the newscasts (I think we were tuned to MSNBC).
And I remember she turned to me and said: "I feel sad. Because I can't vote a mixed ticket anymore." He nodded.
So did I. I knew exactly what she meant.
Sad. And when Fred Hiatt sheds crocodile tears over the "polarization" of politics, ask yourself which party is demanding that its members sign loyalty oaths.
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it's called "desperation"
and you can see it all over the place, if you're mixing with partei officials these days. they are pressuring the ones willing to stay, even in these times, with the only thing left to in their arsenal- authoritarianism. i believe the nazis had similar sorts of things when their leadership realized, if left unspoken, that the End was Near.
i don't mean to say i expect the dissolution of the republican party any time soon, but this current crop of leaders and slavers aren't going to last much longer. i have no pity or compassion for them- many will 'get out' with plenty of money and every assurance of lifelong comfort. but the easy gravy train is over, for the lower echelons at least. i can't wait for them to start requiring this sort of thing from their young. heh.
"Sworn word may strengthen quaking heart," said Gimli
"Or break it," said Elrond. "Look not too far ahead!"
Back in the Civil War days there used to be a soldier, usually a particularly stolid or nasty sergeant, who was posted at the rear of a regiment about to go into battle. His job was to hearten everybody's determination to fight bravely, by shooting anybody trying to run away or shirk in a sheltered spot. Sounds like that will be the next stage of the collapse of the Republicans in those parts.
We had a guy here, incumbent State Senator in his first term. He was the speaker, in fact, at one of the earlier general Dem. Party meetings I went to. He gave a rather rambling talk but made quite a point of a book he'd been given recently by somebody he didn't quite identify. He was very impressed by it and gave it a ringing endorsement.
"The World is Flat" it was called, by some Very Wise Man named Friedman. I actually tried to elbow up to him afterwards to point out the many shortcomings of this work, but he shook hands with the dignitaries present, let the reporter shoot a couple of pictures of same, and begged off staying longer on some excuse.
Two weeks later he announced that, disgusted with the way his fellow Democrats were standing behind a colleague who was accused of various ethical and monetary lapses, he was switching parties and would henceforth caucus (and vote) with the Republicans. And that he would run for reelection with an R after his name. He repeated over and over that he was the same guy and still held the same beliefs that he had before but...
He lost the next election by a very substantial margin to a complete newcomer, who is now representing our little corner of west Tennessee in Nashville with considerable quality and competence. Heh.
I am assuming the oath above is really only going to be required of anybody who is running, or wishes to run, for office as an R. The Little People will probably not be bothered with it too much, although no doubt there will be many of the Purple-Heart-Bandaid-Wearing Brigade who will sign theirs proudly and frame it and hang it on their walls, or perhaps have it tattooed on a conspicuous bodily part.
I's love to be on the scene when somebody first derides it as a "Dark Mark".... :)
"Not a step back"
Was Stalin's order of the day in World War II. The commissars had machine guns.
It's actually sensible, though, insofar as war is sensible.
Most routs don't start at the front; they start at the rear.
I like the Scarlet Letter concept, scan. "The Scarlet R." Excellent!
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi