Reason to go on, if last night’s GOP debate seemed to suck away your very soul: Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland and Before the Storm, will be writing a weekly online column for Rolling Stone. And his inaugural work discusses some of the ugly political history we’ve forgotten since the days of George Romney:
… His calling card was his shocking authenticity; his courage in sticking to his positions without fear or favor was extraordinary. In January of 1964, for example, the second-year governor received a letter (downloadable here) from a member of the top Mormon governing body reminding him of the “teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith” that “the Lord had placed the curse upon the Negro.” Drop your support for the 1964 civil rights bill, the elder warned, arguing that God might literally strike Romney dead for his apostasy: “I just don’t think we can get around the Lord’s position in relation to the Negro without punishment for our acts,” the letter said. Romney only redoubled his commitment – leading a march the next year down the center of Detroit in solidarity with Martin Luther King’s martyrs for voting rights’ in Selma, Alabama. In 1966, the Republican Party staked its electoral fortunes on opposing open housing for blacks. Romney begged them, unsuccessfully, not to. “This fellow really means it,” an amazed Southern Republican said when Romney toured Dixie pushing civil rights in his presidential campaign; after America’s worst riot broke out in Detroit under his watch, the governor said that America could respond with a crackdown on law and order – “but our system would become little better than a police state.”
__
Then, most famously, there was the Vietnam War. He supported it after returning from a trip there in 1965. Then, courageously, after a second trip in 1967, he began to criticize it. On September 4, 1967, a TV interviewer asked, “Isn’t your position a bit inconsistent with what it was, and what do you propose we do now?”
__
The line everyone remembers from his response: “When I came back from Vietnam in 1965, I just had the greatest brainwashing anybody can get when you go over to Vietnam.” But he continued with a devastating, prophetic, and one-thousand-percent-correct assessment: that staying in Vietnam would be a disaster. The public, and certainly the pundits, weren’t ready to hear it. All they heard was the word “brainwashing” – not in the colloquial sense in which Romney obviously intended it, but as something literal… Romney nose-dived sixteen points in the next Harris poll. As I wrote in my book Nixonland, on Vietnam a national brainwashing continued apace.
__
The Mormon bishop, however, did not quit. Instead he leapfrogged across New Hampshire telling unseasonable truths – that LBJ was “spinning a web of delusion,” and that “when you want to win the hearts and minds of people, you don’t kill them and destroy their property. You don’t use bombers and tanks and napalm to save them.”…
Check out the whole column, and decide for yourself whether the proper answer to the title should be “Not enough” or “All the wrong lessons”.
Villago Delenda Est
Romney’s vile spawn learned the lesson. He can’t flip because he’s too busy flopping.
rea
What he learned was, “if you’re an honest, decent man like your dad, you’ll never be president.”
Schlemizel
I mentioned the brainwashing episode in a thread last night because I am surprised so few remember it & nobody has brought it up during Willard’s 7 year run for the nomination.
It was the first time I ever saw the morans in action. What Daddy said made sense but what people heard killed him. But Willards life is full of unlearned lessons from pops. George also refuse a bonus while heading American Motors because he felt no executive should make that much money. Today he would not even be permitted in the GOP because he is obviously a so shall ist and peacenick hippy.
@rea:
You may be right!
Cacti
@rea:
FTW
japa21
In some cases, the apple does fall far from the tree.
Violet
Romney’s dad sounds like he had a bit of an ethical and moral core. What in the world happened to Mitt?
Legalize
Willard learned that you can’t cover the spread by being a decent human being.
Cacti
@Schlemizel:
Unlike his sprog Willard, George Romney actually did have humble beginnings and knew what it was like to go without.
Mitty on the other hand was a millionaire by the time the doctor slapped his butt, and he drew his first breath.
Violet
@rea:
Ah! I think you’ve answered my question. Absolutely.
WTF is it with Republicans and daddy issues? W invaded Iraq because of his daddy issues. Romney’s perpetually running for President because of his. I hesitate to think what the others’ issues are.
Skepticat
@japa21: Where it rots.
Kane
The above quote is from Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President 1968, describing Gov. George Romney, Mitt’s father. Sound familiar?
aimai
I think of Romney Senior as the first victim of the “Dean Scream” style of coverage.
aimai
Special Patrol Group
This typically awesome piece from Perlstein is essentially the antithesis of today’s dogshit from Elitist Fuckhead David “Appear to fit in at the Applebee’s Salad Bar” Brooks.
Cacti
@Violet:
Sounds like the classic “successful parent” mistake…
Give your kid every advantage you wish you had along the way, whether they’ve earned it or not. And you end up with an adult who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing, because they never had to work for it.
bemused
Joe Scarborough talked quite a bit about conservative resentment this morning . Corey Robin is definitely on to something.
Conservatives have serious low self esteem issues. Gigantic whiney babies, also, too.
The Moar You Know
Awesome dad has shitty, fucked up kid. I grew up with rich kids. This is the rule rather than the exception. Well, expect for the “awesome dad” part. Most of the rich kid assholes had dads who were just as bad if not worse. But about 5% of them were decent, hardworking people who had kids who were…well, little Mitts.
One of the rich kids I knew growing up was Tucker Carlson. He ended up a little Mitt; emblematic of those kids that didn’t have the courage to muster the kind of amorality that Newt, for example, wears so proudly on his sleeve.
Steve
From 1963 to 1983, Michigan was run by two moderate Republican governors, both of whom are respected virtually universally to this day.
I am surely not the only Michigander who wishes the day might come again when I could vote for that sort of Republican, but I think those days are gone for good.
Schlemizel
@Violet:
Like way too many rich kids he had everything handed to him so he has no idea how the real world works. To him $375k is not a lot of money.
Both the Rockefeller and Kennedy Families deserve a lot of credit for what they have been able to convince their heirs to do. John D’s kids particularly (although his great grand kids sued the trust fund because returns were so bad they were only getting $17million each back in the late 70’s). That fact that so many of them, particularly the Kennedys, have worked for the public good and in areas that are typically under served is a real tribute to parents overcoming the pitfalls of great wealth.
kindness
You don’t campaign for President with the Romney you wish you had, you campaign for President with the
grifter sociopath vultureRomney you’ve got.Cacti
@Schlemizel:
And this can be seen by how easily ruffled he gets any time someone disagrees with him. Like that anonymous 99-percenter he told to move to Russia. Or his comment that income inequality should be discussed “in quiet rooms” but not on the campaign trail.
Litlebritdifrnt
What is the deal with the “I didn’t inherit my parents’ money” quote from last night? I find that hard to believe.
Cacti
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Even if he didn’t (which I also find hard to believe), he inherited all of the personal, political, and business connections available to the son of a Governor and CEO of a major corporation. Yet he sees fit to prattle on about “merit”.
WereBear (itouch)
it is possible to go too far in the other direction, too; Bing Crosby beat and humiliated his children, and shuttled them between a military academy and manual labor. At least one drank himself to death.
aimai
@Litlebritdifrnt:
If you ever read Kitty Kelly’s book on the Bushes you will find out that (some) rich families keep their kids on a really tight leash, at least for a while, which seems onlyto increase the greed factor. Its pretty clear to the meanest intellect–ie both Bush Senior and Junior–that “hard work” doesn’t get you the kind of wealth you grew up enjoying. Maybe they are “forced out” and “on their own” for a few formative years but they don’t end up working their way up from the bottom of a leaf raking service to the halls of power. They end up paying their dues in some backwater before connections and strings bring them directly into the world of unearned benefits.
Also: Mitt’s Wife is famously on record sympathizing with the plight of the poor because she and Mitt had to “sell some stock” while he was in graduate school and lived in a basement apartment. The horror!
aimai
Mr Stagger Lee
George Romney a profile in courage, especially telling the LDS hierarchy to go jump in the lake. I wonder what was the dinner table was like when Papa came home the 2nd time from Vietnam and young Mittrens was cheering the war?
WereBear (itouch)
@aimai: I did read that book and what struck me was that no matter how it might look like actual “tough going” it was an illusion. For instance, if one of the kids got really sick or needed tuition to the right school; the dough would turn up.
Linda Featheringill
@Violet:
#9
Maybe Republicans are more likely to have a father who made his mark in the world and therefore has enough money to raise a Republican brat. Yes, there are exceptions: The Kennedys on the D side and Nixon on the R side.
Just an idea.
Mark S.
Of course, Mitt was in favor of Vietnam, though he got deferments and never bothered to enlist. I can’t find it now, but I read an article a couple months ago where the interviewer asks Mitt about his mission and Mitt says he would have rather been in Vietnam. His mission ended in late 1968, so I’m surprised he didn’t go enlist.
SenyorDave
@Mark S.: Mitt actually meant to say he would rather be in Vietnam NOW. In a five star suite at the Ritz Carlton, sipping champagne and nibbling on grilled tiger prawns.
He does know how to rough it, serving his mission in France. Must have been tough having to brave the jungles of the Provence vineyards in the blistering French climate, having only a bottle of merlot, a baguette and a chunk of brie for sustenance.
rlrr
I reporter needs to ask Mitt Romney: “Do agree with your father’s position on Vietnam?”
rlrr
@aimai:
Also: Mitt’s Wife is famously on record sympathizing with the plight of the poor because she and Mitt had to “sell some stock” while he was in graduate school and lived in a basement apartment. The horror!
Sell some stock while in graduate school? Boo-fucking-hoo!
rlrr
@Mark S.:
“I’m surprised he didn’t go enlist.”
I’m not.
Violet
@Cacti:
This is very true. He’s used to getting his way and it’s been a long time since someone has asked him uncomfortable questions or questioned his authoritah.
In one of the threads last night, someone made the good point that Romney is skilled at bullshitting, but in a business sense, not in a political sense. And that a politician has to have empathy, something Romney does not have. Mitt knows how to communicate with other business guys of his own level (CEO types), say all the right things and make a deal. He’s got the BSing skills for that. He doesn’t begin to have the BS skills to communicate with average folks about their problems. He just ends up saying something like, “Why don’t you hire a gardener/maid/accountant/whoever to take care of that issue?” and truly doesn’t understand that most people can’t hire others to do their dirty work.
aimai
@Violet:
A lot of that business interaction is trying to maneuver to be top dog and show you can piss on everyone else lower in the hierarchy than you–and then you think that the deference people show you because they fear and hate you is because you have demonstrated some kind of merit. Mitt’s never had to kiss a voter’s ass or even listen sympathetically to the problems of the little people and it shows.
aimai
EconWatcher
This daddy stuff can probably be used to rattle the Mittster even more in future debates. I’m sure Obama is taking note.
I’ll never forget one of the debates between Bush I and Clinton, in which Bush made some insinuations about Clinton’s visit to Moscow when he was a student at Oxford, suggesting that Clinton owed the country more of an explanation (because, of course, a visit to Moscow was prima facie proof of KGB recruitment).
Clinton was obviously well prepared (as usual), and came back with a story about how Bush’s father, Prescott Bush, had stood up to McCarthyites in the Senate who smeared people’s reputations with insinuations. The look on Bush’s face was unforgettable. Poppy Bush does have some moral sensibility (enough that he prefers having others do the dirty work, anyway), and he looked unmistakably ashamed.
Similarly, the reference to his dad threw Romeny off, and explains why he did so poorly in response to the question about tax returns. Deep down, he knows his dad was a better man. Because his dad was knwon for standing up to the right wing on a number of issues, I’ll bet there’s a lot mroe material like this to be used.
someofparts
Is anyone at this site old enough to have been working age when Reagan was elected the first time? It was a vicious nightmare. The internet as we know it didn’t exist yet. One day we went to sleep liberals with good schools, thriving companies and a growing middle class. We woke up and, in what felt like the blink of an eye, there were shock jocks, red power ties, mass layoffs, homelessness and quadrupled costs for rent and transportation. But everyone everywhere screamed that it was morning in america and anyone not getting rich and snorting truckloads of coke was a lazy bum.
Romney is still a snake and a pig for going over to the dark side, but anyone who facilely slams someone for throwing in the towel during those nightmarish times doesn’t know of what they speak if they weren’t one of the targets of the Regan reign of meanness.
My dad spent his work life in the shadow of Jim Crow. I grew up being warned about the likes of Joe McCarthy. I saw what it did to a good man like my father to have to watch what he said, did, taught his kids, under that regime. If I had been a kid watching someone do to my dad what they did to George Romney, well … guess he showed us, eh? Like I said, still a pig, but guess I’m in a position to do a sympathy for the devil perspective on this one.
Violet
@aimai: Good point. I have interacted in that world, and you’re right that they’re all trying to be top dog and it can get ugly if you’re in the way.
Calouste
@Violet:
McCain has serious daddy issues as well. Couldn’t make admiral, so he had to do something else.
Violet
Saw over at TPM that the latest Gallup poll shows Romney “faltering” nationally. And John Sununu (Romney surrogate) says it’s going to be a long campaign to get to the convention and could be like Reagan/Ford in 1976. (Edit: Probably part of Sununu saying that was a warning to Republicans. “We don’t want to have a big primary battle that causes us to lose the election like in 1976.”)
Popcorn!
Mark S.
@Violet:
That’s the key. It’s not the money. Hell, almost everyone who runs for President is in the top 1%, or damn close to it.
feebog
@ Someofparts:
Hell, I’m old enouugh to remember when Reagan was Governer of California. He closed almost all the Mental Health Hospitals in the state, driving those people out into the streets, and literally made college unaffordable for many kids with massive tuition hikes.
I’ve said this before, if it were not for the Iranian hostage crisis, Jimmy Carter would have won a second term, and Ronald Reagan would be remembered as a second rate actor who was a dismal failure as Governer.
Judas Escargot
@someofparts:
Reagan was elected a couple of weeks before my 13th birthday, so no… but I do remember what you describe, though. In my memory, it’s as if American mainstream society abruptly turned into One Big No in 1980.
And hasn’t recovered since.
kindness
I’ll give Colbert props though. I think he’s running the most honest campaign out there.
The Moar You Know
@someofparts: Great post. I had just started high school. What happened to my school was unreal; one year we had money and the next year, there was no money for anything. Except for football, somehow the motherfuckers always manage to get money for football.
But yeah, the nation changed overnight and it was scary as hell. Everyone let their inner asshole out of the closet. I’d never been scared of my fellow Americans, but I’ve been scared of them ever since.
We lost our way. We’re not going to find our way back to it, either.
eric
@rea: as a republican. say what you want about Barack’s progressive bona fides, but i get the sense he is as honest and decent a person the White House may ever see.
geg6
Jeebus. Mittens is in trouble.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/updates/4378?ref=fpa
pseudonymous in nc
@Mark S.:
He got student deferments in grad school, then pulled a high draft number.
@SenyorDave:
Not the merlot, remember. I can’t think of many countries less likely to be swayed by the charms of a denomination that forswears alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and extra-marital sex. Perhaps we’d need to cross-check with the Mormon missionaries in Italy at the same time, puttering around two-to-a-Vespa.
Brachiator
@Violet: WTF is it with Republicans and daddy issues? W invaded Iraq because of his daddy issues. Romney’s perpetually running for President because of his. I hesitate to think what the others’ issues are. It’s a human thing, not a GOP thing. Al Gore often seemed to be in politics because it was the family business, and didn’t really seem to have that “fire in the belly” to want to be president.
In 1980, Ted Kennedy, with the long shadows of his fathers and brothers to contend with, initially struggled to come up with a coherent message as to why he was running for the presidency.
And as another poster noted, the Rockefellers and the Kennedys impressed upon their children some notion of public duty. Romney is an odd duck, seeming to be more about cold calculation than anything else.
Brachiator
ETA . Weird. In my previous post, editing tools were not available.
pseudonymous in nc
@The Moar You Know:
How many people who voted for Reagan in the prime of their working years are now part of the “get government out of our Medicare” brigade? And although it would be harsh on Michael J. Fox, I think it would be interesting to imagine Alex P. Keaton in his late 40s…
@EconWatcher:
Has to be handled delicately, but I think it’s there in the back pocket. I imagine that Team Obama probably has a nice selection of George Romney quotes on things like executive pay, where the distinction couldn’t be more obvious.
Jay C
Mormons, remember?
And speaking of Mormons: David Brooks reminds us of some interesting facts about the Romney family’s history in an otherwise cliche-laden thumbsucker of a column in today’s NYT.
It’s a typical Bobo encomium to the Mittster’s “focus”, “persistence” and “drive” – RTWT if you dare risk nausea – Brooks actually states: “It is a story of relentless effort, of recovery and of being despised (in their eyes) because of their own success“.
For Bobo, it’s all about the “exodus”: never mind that the past generations of Romneys only had to move around because: A) their Church commanded it, B) folks hated their polygamy. But maybe, as Mitt sez, it would have been better in Russia, or China, or North Korea….
The Ancient Randonneur
You know it’s hard out here for a one percenter! I just hope he’s keeping his game tight like Kobe on game night. But after last night …
mdblanche
@pseudonymous in nc:
And that prevented him from enlisting how?
@geg6:
You know, I never quite believed the idea that Mitt’s been the inevitable nominee for the past week and a half(!). If Willard were to collapse could you honestly say that it was the biggest surprise of this race? Could you honestly say the pundits calling Rmoney inevitable have gotten anything else right lately? Can you honestly say the Republicans are not so far gone that using facts and logic to try to predict their actions is an exercise in futility?
Amir Khalid
@mdblanche:
But if not Mitt, then who? One of the other three left in the Klown Kar, none of whom can put together a sustained challenge to Romney? One of the “A team” players who stayed out because they didn’t fancy their chances against Obama? I truly have no idea whom the Republicans might consider a willing and viable nominee should Romney crash.
gaz
@WereBear (itouch): Also too, ate a bullet.
Mike G
@rea:
Alternately, “You can be an honest, decent man like your dad, or you can try to be a Repuke president.”
The vulture capitalist made his choice.
Betsy
So, how could George Romney run for President if he was born in Mexico?
dmsilev
On the subject of decent people running for President, it seems that someone has been sending out emails purporting to be from CNN stating that Gingrich pressured his ex-wife into getting an abortion.
Karl Rove or one of his disciples, I imagine, Nice people that Willard has supporting him.
satby
@someofparts: I was. And I guess it seemed like the country changed overnight, but it was the outcome of years of culture-fighting back and forth, and Reagan was a worthy follow-up to the Nixon years.
mdblanche
@Amir Khalid:
There you go again with your facts and your logic. I agree they make a convincing case that Willard will be the nominee. I’m just not convinced you can use them for that purpose. It’s not like they’ve come in handy for predicting what will happen in this pie-eating contest so far.
wrb
@SenyorDave:
That’s part of his appeal. The republican base knows it must have taken heroism to survive that sosylist nightmare.
They might have forced him to eat snails.
Jay C
@Betsy:
Despite their residence in Mexico, both of George Romney’s parents were American citizens, so he inherited that citizenship from them: even in 1912 (when the family had to flee back to the US) the definition of “natural-born citizen” was not geographically limited.
Tony J
@geg6:
Jeebus. If Mittens is losing national support – that – quickly it’s got to be worse in South Carolina, especially after that debate performance.
So, say that Newt pulls off a real win in the Inmate State, with Mittens barely outpolling the guy with the Internet problem, what then? The ‘inevitability’ aura goes away, suddenly it becomes conventional wisdom that Santorum’s victory in Iowa “means something”, and Mittens starts getting battered from all sides to release his tax returns so the next tranche of GOP Primary voters can decide for themselves if he’s trying to put off a campaign-cratering revelation until after he’s securred the nomination.
The Romney Campaign staffers must be pulling their hair out right now. Aaawwwww.
Schlemizel
@Jay C:
Yes, remember that Grandpa Walnuts was born in Panama not the USofA and it wasn’t even mentioned by the wingnuts.
@feebog:
Hell Truman was Prez when I was born, I have hazy memories of my older sibs chanting “We Like Ike” for some stupid reason (I bet my folks didn’t vote for him).
I remember the Kennedy/Nixon elections quite clearly, and of course, the assassination. But everything was still possible in the US and the government was still ‘Of the people, by the people and FOR the people’ up until St. Ronnie. Viet Nam, the oil embargo and the Iranian hostage crisis put a dent in the country but it was “the government is evil” meme that took away our sense that we had room to grow & place to be.
Carol from CO
I may be the only person in the world, or at least the only person outside the Romney family, who has voted for the elder George Romney in a presidential general election. We were agnostics/atheists living temporarily in Salt Lake City in 1964. Goldwater was way to conservative for me and I didn’t like Johnson so I wrote in George Romney. My then husband was a poll watcher and when he came home he said to me, “Some stupid son of a bitch voted for Romney”. We laughed about it for years.
I must say, your blog today makes me feel not quite so foolish for having written in his name.
xian
@aimai: somewhat ironic how Mitt now defends deceptively out-of-context quotations in his ads.
Julie
@The Moar You Know:
I know this is mostly just snark, but in my experience it’s because the parents (and students themselves) often pay for it out of pocket — no matter how poor they are. Sports are a lifeline to college for a lot of those kids. Hell, I spent a whole lot of waitressing tips to pay my ‘athletics and activities’ fees and manned endless candy bar and bake sales to make sure that everyone else could, too. (I went to most of high school in a poor district with lots of low-income families.) Granted this was 15+ years after the time period you’re talking about, but I doubt it was much different then.
Now, is the focus on sports overblown and out-of-perspective? Totally, but it should still get paid for by the schools — along with textbooks, and better teachers’ salaries, and music and the arts, and basic freaking school supplies, and a whole host of things that aren’t funded anymore.
PanurgeATL
@satby:
I never thought of it as something that happened overnight; the counterattack started as early as ’75. And don’t forget Proposition 13 in ’78. Still, it looked good long term until the Carter cabinet shske-up and the interest-rate and Iran-hostage crises. The way it struck me is that liberals (culturally speaking) were shocked that Reagan got elected and just stopped really fighting and settled for “postmodern”, “ironic” bitching and whining. Now even cultural liberals occupy themselves with ensuring everyone’s right to be square; remember Barney Frank’s characterization of gays as the last subgroup in America who aspire to get married and join the Army. I remember reading somewhere (TNR, maybe??) that a decision had been made somewhere that this was a cultural matter on which conservatives had “won” and liberals should give up on culture and concentrate on purely political change. BAD CALL. Culture puts people in a certain mindspace, and in the right mindspace, political change is more likely to occur.
The “inner asshole” didn’t really seem to get let out until Daddy Reagan wasn’t POTUS anymore. I remember that’s when I first heard of Rush Limbaugh; right-wing shock-jockery had been around since the ’70s AIUI, but that’s when it was designated a Media Phenomenon.
PanurgeATL
@The Moar You Know:
I think we can find our way back, but it’s going to take a coherent, long-term liberal movement that
(1) doesn’t apologize for anything,
(2) can explain in simple, memorable terms why liberal policies are better for America,
(3) is willing to persist, and
(4) stops bashing hippies in the most literal sense (see #1–and that goes for both traditional JFK liberals and GenX liberals who wish they knew JFK). Because, after all, what other future have we got? Everything else is spruced-up 1962 (but with computers!!).
Part of #2 is explaining what “our way” was before we lost it. Conservatives have an idea of what “our way” was (Things were so wonderful until Those People ruined everything in those awful ’60s! Then Our Hero Ronald Reagan made everything OK again!); we have to have s similar “story of America” that has a happy ending, brought about through liberalism. Liberals and “hippies” have not helped their own cause, partly because they haven’t found a way to “grow up” and still be liberals and hippies, and partly because they gave up too soon on the ’60s dream when they realized it would need revising. (Those who tried to take a few steps forward were accused of “co-optation”, and that led to the punk rebellion. Punk isn’t a viable social model, so the only one left by 1980 was Reaganism.) In my own life, I’ve tried to find answers to these questions; I’m not sure anyone will listen, but what else am I gonna do?
PanurgeATL
@someofparts:
Like Rick Perlstein, I remember lots of doomsaying in the late ’70s, and it really built up toward the end there. No one seemed to know what to do about the various problems besetting us, and a vague sense of panic seemed to grow (though I wonder how much of it was stoked by the media). Into all this strides Ronald Reagan, saying, essentially:
“Don’t panic! I have a plan!”
And just enough people decided to give him a chance to make the difference. I can’t overestimate the importance of a familiar figure at just that time saying just that thing, especially when no one else seemed to be. And after a few years, things seemed to get better for a majority of people, and Reagan was re-elected in a landslide.
We need to come to the American people and say the same thing. We need a coherent plan to present, based on precepts anyone can understand.
“We don’t need the Empire.”
“We need an environmentally sustainable economic system, and here it is.”
“Workers deserve to be done right by; if the price for that is that a few other people get help, that’s a price worth paying.”
“Weirdos are basically OK.”
(BTW, the two simple truths the GOP hammers on are “Work must be done.” and “Bad people want to kill us.”)
Tehanu
@Julie:
I can’t tell you how disgusted I was back in the 90’s when I found out that my niece — one of the most popular girls in school — couldn’t be a cheerleader: because the cheerleaders had to pay $1,000 up front for their uniforms, bus tickets, etc., and my sister, a single mom with a blue-collar job, couldn’t pay. (And we didn’t have a thousand bucks lying around either). My niece asked if she could pay $100 a month but the people in charge said that wasn’t fair to the girls who could pony up.