Posted on 04/16/2007 12:31:17 PM PDT by calcowgirl
Lifelong Republican, Marine veteran and former congressman Pete McCloskey has left the GOP and registered with the Democratic Party.
McCloskey says he is disgusted with the "succession of ethical scandals, congressmen taking bribes and abuse of power by both the Republican House leadership and the highest appointees of the White House."
"A pox on (Republicans) and their values," he wrote.
As a Republican, McCloskey served in the House of Representatives from a San Mateo County congressional district from 1967- to 1983. He was a brief presidential hopeful when he ran on an anti-war platform against Richard Nixon in 1972.
But McCloskey again found himself in the media spotlight last year when he left his rural Northern California farm in Rumsey, rented a house in Lodi and ran in the primary against Richard Pombo, a conservative, seven-term Republican incumbent who later lost the general election to the novice Pleasanton Democrat Jerry McNerney.
McCloskey may lost the primary but observers say he provided a pivotal voice in the growing, anti-Pombo chorus that eventually led to the incumbent's defeat.
His party shift will be no surprise to the Republicans who backed Pombo. They called McCloskey a shill for the Democratic Party before he even filed for the office.
Months before McCloskey entered, he helped formed a group called the "Revolt of the Elders," which made no secret of its search for viable Republicans willing to run against Pombo. When they couldn't find someone, McCloskey filed himself.
Here's what McCloskey wrote in an e-mail announcement about his decision.
McCloskeys have been Republicans in California since 1859, the year before Lincoln's election. My great grandfather, John Henry McCloskey, orphaned in the great Irish potato famine of 1843, came to California in 1853 as a boy of 16, and joined the party just before the Civil War.
By 1890 he and my grandfather, both farmers, made up two of the twelve members of the Republican Central Committee of Merced County. My father's most memorable expletive came when I was a boy of 10 or 11: "That damn Roosevelt is trying to pack the Supreme Court!"
I registered Republican in 1948 after reaching the age of 21. We were the party of civil rights, of free choice for women and fiscal responsibility. Since Teddy Roosevelt, we had favored environmental protection, and most of all we stood for fiscal responsibility, honesty, ethics and limited government intrusion into our personal lives and choices. We accepted that one the duties of wealth was to pay a higher rate of income tax, and that the estates of the wealthy should contribute to the national treasury in reasonable measure.
I was proud to serve with Republicans like Gerry Ford, the first George Bush and Bob Dole.
In 1994, however, Newt Gingrich brought a new kind of Republicanism to power, and the election of George W. Bush in 2000 has led to wholly new concept of governance. The bureaucracy has mushroomed in size and power. The budget deficits have become astronomical. Our historical separation of church and state has been blurred. We have seen a succession of ethical scandals, congressmen taking bribes, and abuse of power by both the Republican House leadership and the highest appointees of the White House.
The single cardinal principle of political science, that power corrupts, has come to apply not only to Republican leaders like Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney and John Doolittle, but to a succession of White House officials and appointees. The stench of Jack Abramoff has permeated much of the Washington Republican establishment.
The Justice Department, guardian of of our rule of law, has been compromised. It's third ranking official, a graduate of Pat Robertson's dubious law school, has taken the 5th Amendment.
Men who have never felt the fear of combat, and who largely dodged military service in their youth, have led us into grievous wars in far off places with no thought of the diplomacy, grace and respect for other peoples and their cultures which has been an American trademark for at least the last two thirds of a century. We have lost the respect and affection of most of the world outside our borders. My son, Peter, one of the U.S. prosecutors at The Hague of the war crimes in Serbia and elsewhere, tells me that people of other countries no longer look at the country which countenances torture as a beacon for the world and the rule of law.
Earth Day, that bi-partisan concept of Gaylord Nelson in 1970, has become the focus of almost hatred by today's Republican leadership. Many still argue that global warming is a hoax, and that Bush has been right to demean and suppress the arguments of scientists at the E.P.A., Fish & Wildlife and U.S.Geological Survey.
I say a pox on them and their values.
Until the past few weeks, I had hoped that the party could right itself, returning to the values of the Eisenhowers, Fords and George H. W. Bush.
What finally turned me to despair, however, was listening to the reports, or watching on C-Span, a whole series of congressional oversight hearings on C-Span, held by old friends and colleagues like Pat Leahy, Henry Waxman, Norm Dicks, Nick Rahall, Danny Akaka and others, trying to learn the truth on the misdeeds and incompetence of the Bush Administration. Time after time I saw Republican Members of the House and Senate. speak out in scorn or derision about these exercises of Congress oversight responsibility being "witch-hunts" or partisan attempts to distort the actions of people like the head of the General Service Administration and the top political appointees in the Justice and Interior Departments. Disagreement turned into disgust.
I finally concluded that it was a fraud for me to remain a member of this modern Republican Party, that there were only a few like Chuck Hegel, Jack Warner, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins I could respect.
Two of the best, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, and Jim Leach of Iowa, after years of battling for balance and sanity, were defeated last November, and it seems that every Republican presidential candidate is now vying for the support of the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells rather than talking about a return to the values of the party I joined nearly 59 years ago. My favorite spokesmen have beome Senators Jim Webb and Barack Obama.
And so it was, that while at the Woodland courthouse the other day, passing by the registrar's office, I filled out the form to re-register as a Democrat.
The issues Helen (McCloskey) and I care about most, public financing of elections, a reliable paper ballot trail, independent re-districting to replace gerrymandering, the right of a woman to choose not to bring a child into the world, a reversal of the old Proposition 13 and term limits which have so hurt California's once superb education system and the competence of our Legislature, are now almost universally opposed by California's elected Republicans, and the occasional attempts at reform by our Governor are looked on with grim disdain by most of them.
From Helen's and my standpoint, being farmers in Yolo County gives us the opportunity to work for purposes which were once Republican, but can no longer be found at Republican conventions and discussions.
I hope this answers your questions about the party and a government I have served in either civil or military service under ten presidents, five Republican and five Democrat ... I doubt it will be of much interest other than to our friends, but it has been a decision not easily taken.
Respectfully, Pete McCloskey,
One RINO down.....how many to go?????
Is this a report that was placed in a time capsule? McCloskey left the Republican Party during the Nixon administration. Must be a slow news day to recycle this old stuff.
McCloskey destroyed millions of jobs and ruined the tranquility of countless families with his Marxist Endangered Species Act. But I would expect no less from this filthy fascist scum.
San Mateo county... too close to San Fran to have any good Republicans.
He’s right about the GOP. They are a bunch of hacks and fundamentalist know-nothings who have done little to promote actual conservatism.
Good riddance, punk.
Every county in the U.S. has “good Republicans.” Be fair about this. McCloskey stinks, but there are good Republicans everywhere even if they’re a small minority. Even small minorities deserve to be recognized. It’s often not easy to be one.
Lying sack of sh*t. The only thing this pansy ever farmed was his mailbox the first of every month, when the Ag subsidy check arrived.
I’m glad you are there!!
Thanks. A few of us do what we can in this state. Many others, of course, are wimps.
Good for Republicans. Another RINO gone. How many are left?
1948? Where are you getting this? Abortion had been common practice in Moscow until Stalin found that they weren't producing enough good little communists. In California, abortion had been illegal since the 1860s and the law had not changed since 1872, allowing abortion only to save the life of the mother. In 1967, a democrat state lawmaker (Beilenson) pushed to liberalize the laws for just three reasons: to allow abortion in the case of rape, incest, or where the baby might be deformed. (His proposal was backed by the AMA, so I think your 1948 estimate is probably a couple decades off).
Governor Ronald Reagan's first response as "Here's an emotional problem that has so many facets of consideration. It is not only spiritual, but also legal... when does life begin? What right does the unborn life have? What legal right? I'm not prepared to answer now."
In subsequent statements, Reagan took great exception to the portion of the law addressing the possibilty of deformity. "I am satisfied in my own mind we can morally and logically justify liberalized abortions to protect the health of a mother. I cannot justify the taking of an unborn life simply on the supposition that the baby may be born less than a perfect human being... [this kind of thing] wouldn't be much different from what Hitler tried to do."
The deformity provision was dropped shortly thereafter. The final statute permitted abortions in the case of forcible rape, incest, statutory rape if the victim was under 15 years old or if there was a "substantial risk" that continued pregnancy would "gravely impair" the "physical or mental health" of the mother.
The issue then had little to do with "limited government," nor does it now (imo).
Not interested in HASBEENS
the driveby media finds an over the hill rino and thinks it's news
Why didn’t he just re-register as “Decline to State”?
you bad, yez siree you is bad. :-)
McCloskey says he is disgusted with the “succession of ethical scandals, congressmen taking bribes and abuse of power by both the Republican House leadership and the highest appointees of the White House.”
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I guess we may assume from this statement that the Scandals and bribes, and crooked deals taken by democrats dont bother him in the least.
He disgusts me.
Who?
.
Anti-Freedom Rep. McCLOSKEY’s personal manipulating his Congressional “Fact-finding’ mission to a then Free Vietnam ...into recommending no resumption of U.S. Funding for the Free there to fight for their own Freedom with =
Pictures of a vietnamese Re-Education (SLAVE LABOR) Camp
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308949/posts
..”JOURNEY from the FALL”.. Movie Premieres = Fall of Saigon CLARITY..
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1806248/posts
NEVER FORGET
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