No Phrase makes me less sympathetic to the person uttering it than "I used to be a Republican". i know, i know, we need to allow new voices into the party etc. and i'm all for that. but let's look at a list of what a
Republican has been for over the past 30 years.
1. Nixon was a Republican. if you were politically active then, you were for corruption, anti-semitism and race baiting, the "southern strategy", a war of choice with no end and so on.
2. Ford was a Republican. he pardoned the guy above when Nixon decided the Constitution should be used the same way one uses toilet paper.
3. Ronald Reagan was a Republican. he still holds the record for the most appointees indicted on crimes, he ran massive deficits, again used the constitution as toilet paper, allowed crazed and rabid partisans into positions where they could do real and lasting damage to our country, and believed that he was in a movie called "i'm the president".
4. George senior was a republican. he was at the center of a constitutional crisis but managed to lie his way out of it (that would be iran-contra for the kids). he was involved in shady deals both in and out of office, and accepted millions from rev. sun myung moon. and he's the best of this lot.
now i could go on and on. here's the point, and it's germane because both kos and glenn greenwald have been in "i'm not a partisan so you should listen to me even more" mode.
see, when all that stuff above was going on, Democrats were doing the following: fighting to end the vietnam war. trying to stop illegal incursions into third world countries. trying to end apartheid. using keynesian economic theory to help our country rather than friedman. we were against putting the people who work for special interests in charge of regulating those interests. we were for enfrachising more people, rather than closing the doors.
so i don't feel any special positive buzz from this whole "i used to be a republican" meme. if you really want to argue that it took George jr. to make you realize what a-holes the republicans have been, you must have kept your eyes and ears shut the past 30 years. and that's not a plus for me. it makes me think i should be listening to people who were on the right side of most of the major issues over the past 30 years, not giving special awards to those who weren't.
that's not to say, pace David Brock or Kevin Phillips, that ex-Republicanism can't be achieved with grace or humility. in Phillips' case it lends authenticity to his writing, in Brock's it shows real growth from the shit that he was before. but i'm not hearing mea culpae from most who use this phrase lately--i'm hearing that slight air of superiority that just rubs me the wrong way.