Republican Tries to Block Muslim From Office. Mike Morris & Rebecca Elliott, HoustonChronicle.com($$$)
Fair warning, I'm going to selectively quote a little more than usual from this story. Please go read the whole thing if you have access behind the Chron's firewall.
1. PostGOP & BadPolitics:
"If you believe that a person can practice Islam and agree to the foundational principles of the Republican Party, it's not right, it's not true, it can't happen," Gordon said.Yes, Mr. Gordon, it CAN happen. As it can with Hindus, Atheists, Agnostics, Mormons, 7th Day Adventists.....
But attitudes such as this are one of the reasons why I've abandoned the GOP to itself (again). The first time I left them was in response to family Bush, of whom I'm not a fan, and what I felt was the abandonment of conservatism by the party proper. I returned because the Democrats are SO bad that I was frequently voting fairly close to straight-ticket anyway. Then Trump happened, and all of the bad stuff that makes up the GOP bubbled to the surface. There are many who feel this way and don't want to be part of a party that is biased, bigoted, anti-Semitic and exclusionary.
What should have followed is a stripping of Mr. Gordon's position of Chaplain, and a motion to censure. But, it didn't so that's that.
2. More BadPolitics:
Mustafaa Carroll, of the Council on American–Islamic Relations' Houston branch, was less sanguine.
The problem with this logic? Syed Ali was not running to become a 'public official' he was running to become a 'party official' and there's a huge difference between the two. In fact, if Mr. Carroll knew "about the document the Founding Fathers wrote" then he would know that the Constitution is mute on the subject of political parties."There is no religious test necessary to be a public official in the United States of America," Carroll said. "This country is founded on religious pluralism and if he (Gordon) knew about the document the Founding Fathers wrote, then he would know that."
Certainly, they still cannot discriminate based on a protected class, and one could make a reasonable, and accurate, argument that religion is a protected class, but this is not a Constitutional matter as much as it is one of internal party politics. Which leads me to....
3. BadMedia:
Councilwoman Ellen Cohen, who last year rallied votes for Houston's since-repealed nondiscrimination ordinance, said she found Gordon's comments "abhorrent.""That attitude is so disruptive and doesn't speak for the kind of country we are and should be," she said.
It's amazing to me that the Chronicle, in an article that is obviously and frankly about party politics, chooses to 1. Quote Ellen Cohen (who has no dog in this fight) in the first place and 2. NOT identify her as a partisan Democrat.
But the Chron, under their new, flown-in-from-Boston leadership, is not about reporting the news these days. They're more about pursuing page hits with slide-show pictorials and allowing cub reporters to opine, seemingly unedited, on hot-button issues. What they cannot shoe-horn into their hard-news coverage, they force into Gray Matters.
Of course, the Democrats, famously, booed God at their 2012 convention and the Chron was mum while one idiot at a County party meeting does something stupid and it's front page news. If you're running under the assumption that having morons as members is a monopoly held by the Republicans then you're not paying attention. Both parties have idiots on their voter rolls, far more than each would like to admit.
4. GoodPolitics: (and good people)
The one good person in all of this? Syed Ali...
I like this guy. And I like Felicia Winfree Cravens as well, but I do think she's putting her head in the sand a little bit regarding the exclusionary proclivities of many within the GOP. For all of the talk of "big tent Republicans" the truth is there are many who would rather see the party reduced to a single person shanty whose only residents meet some extremely strict purity tests.Ali, who works in the insurance business, said Gordon's comments did not offend him."I don't have anything against him. That's his point of view," Ali said. "Freedom of speech, Constitution of the United States, his belief, his thought, his experience, his individual mind – that was his mind, and that was his speech. That's fine with me."
I can tell you that I will fail them. And, eventually, you will as well.
