RUTHFULLY YOURS

It shouldn’t surprise me that Joseph Stalin made the cover of Time as “Man of the Year” in 1939 and then again in 1942. Nor should it surprise anyone that Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC’s Hardball, likened the Republican’s current spring house cleaning to a “Stalin-like purge.”

Granted, the thoughts that swirl around in Matthews’ head often fall out of his mouth in form of words dripping with absurdity, and I know it’s hard to take him seriously most of the time. Nonetheless, if we look just a wee-bit closer to what he’s saying, he reveals the leftist mentality on the current GOP situation.

Matthew’s closing monologue on Hardball, in part:

“Let me finish tonight with this Stalin like purges now underway in the Republican Party. The first purge came in Pennsylvania where Senator Arlen Specter has been elected five times as a republican, was by his telling, driven from the Republican Party by the Club for Growth and its candidate Patrick Toomey. Specter said there’s no more room for him in the party anymore. Then came the assault on John McCain, a conservative republican, McCain is now facing a challenge on the Right from J.D. Hayworth in the Republican primary…Down in Florida today, Governor Charlie Crist is already faced with humiliation in the Republican primary for the Senate…he may have to run as an independent…the purge has reached absurd levels…”

Bizarre? Absurd levels?

Not so much really. What is bizarre is that anyone could call having to fight for your congressional seat in a hotly contested race a “Stalin-like” purge.

Could it be because of the Stalin like way the GOP has implied opponents to the Obama agenda, are “anti-government” and “terrorists”? No, wait— I believe that was the administration and their cohorts.

Could it be our purging of the evil capitalist bankers, CEOs and Wall Street “barons”? No, that would be the left again. Looks like any shoes with the Stalin brand fit better on the Left foot.

Let’s set the record straight. Specter wasn’t thrown out of the Republican Party in some sort of political purge. He came out on his own. He was just dressing in Republican clothes. (That’s probably why Time Magazine ranked him in the top ten Senators in 2006.) He simply stopped pretending he was something that he wasn’t.

There’s no point in putting on our surprised face that Matthews can’t tell a Stalin purge from an informed electorate wanting to put people in office that represent their views and values in Washington.

He is right though, moderates were once the face of the Republican Party, and Specter fit in all too well. But he can’t see that as a problem either–hopefully Conservatives can.