This promises to be a bizarre political year, with GOP candidates not only running to the far right, but veering way off track. Earlier this week, Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden of Nevada grabbed the crazy baton from Rep. Michele Bachman when she suggested that people should barter and haggle with their doctors for health care, rather than rely on insurance. But what she said is nothing compared to what the newly minted challenger to Congressman John Hall said in her candidacy's opening days.
What's below the fold will shock you.
Kristia Cavere is the Tea Party and a Republican candidate for New York's 19th Congressional District seat held by Hall. Cavere thinks that the Democrats have co-opted Republican values and claims, among other things, that:
"The Republicans are the ones who liberated Europe in World War II."
She continued by saying that the Republicans have always initiated "every" advancement of freedom in our history.
"Unfortunately, today there are many Republicans in office who are cowards and who are bad communicators," she said. "We have the right ideas, the right principles, the right philosophy and history on our side."
Her comments appeared in the April 23 edition of the Record-Review, a newspaper that serves Pound Ridge and Bedford, NY. The newspaper has not printed an online version of the article.
Ms. Cavere is only 30, but that does not excuse her for having poor grasp of American history. The last thing I would ever want to do is to politicize something as significant as our victory in World War, or at least the European end of it, as she sees it.
Yes, this is the last argument I would ever want to have with anyone, but this is what it's starting to boil down to: defending our values against lies by the far rightwing when they attempt to discredit and demonize the Democratic Party. There is no honor or logic to making such a partisan claim, no matter what party you're affiliated with. I would be just as ashamed if someone said the Democrats won World War II because FDR and Truman were the presidents during the war-that's just wrong!
Thousands of Democrats died in the Battle of the Bulge right next to the thousands of Republicans who also gave their young lives. This is true for all the battles. It was true in World War II, it was true in Vietnam, and it's true today.
George McGovern was a World War II hero, having won the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal and three oak leaf clusters during the war. I guess George McGovern's heroism doesn't count in Ms. Cavere's world, as he's one of the iconic faces of American liberalism today. To be fair, let me honor a great Republican who fought in World War II. John Paul Hammerscmidt also won the Distinguished Flying Cross and became a Republican Congressman from Arkansas.
No party holds claim to the heroism that Americans showed in that war. In fact, Ms. Cavere dishonors the memory of all those who lost their lives in World War II by cheapening the war as some sort of partisan victory rather than the desperate but noble cause that this country was united under.
After trying to discredit those on the left but going way off target, Ms. Cavere then had the audacity to speak of American unity:
"We have to unify and become Americans together and not just identify with a political party," she said. "America and principles must come before our party. There is common ground that can be found."
Ms. Cavere, you have no right to talk about unity until you apologize to the families of all those who wore the uniform during WWII. Your comments were an attempt to cheapen the honorable military service hundreds of thousands of men and women who served who did not, or currently do not, share your political values.
Shame on you, Ms. Cavere.
http://thealbanyproject.com/diary/8229/ny19-candidate-says-gop-liberate-europe-in-wwii
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