Maureen Dowd comes from an Irish Catholic family, with a policeman as a father and a homemaker as a mother. The Dowds were law abiding folks, and deeply religious and law abiding. Dowd's family are cultural conservatives, Catholic warriors defending Christmas with O'Reilly and attacking Democrats with Buchanan (who attended Catholic schools with the Dowd brothers). They support immigration (only legal immigration of course!) because Dowd's father immigrated from Ireland. They had a soft spot for the Kennedys, but embraced Reagan and Bush as Buchanan Republicans. And don't even mention Bill Clinton and his womanizing ways. Dowd tells stories of her family in her columns as an insight into this Republican mind set- a barometer for the other side.
Today's New York Times column entitled, "Oh No! Kevin's Back!" gives us more insight into her family story. Maureen Dowd's column is written by he conservative brother Kevin Dowd. Over the years, Dowd has allowed Kevin's e-mails and comments to be included in her columns and this recent one provides us insight into how white, successful middle-class Republicans are reacting to Barack Obama's first year and how these opinions have been shaped over the years.
In Kevin's mind, Obama has been:
forcing through a government takeover of health care, the auto industry and the banks, the president and his Congressional henchmen have brought us in a time machine to Russia 1917. These massive changes have been done in secret and along bullying, straight party-line votes.
It is stunning to watch rich lawmakers driving their own expensive cars off the cliff and signing on to such a socialist agenda. In dismissing the tea parties and pushing through plans the American people obviously don’t want, they have made the fatal disconnect between the representatives and the represented.
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This is the same Kevin who, Dowd reports, "praises W. on the economy but not on immigration, noting that our father, who came from Ireland in steerage at 19, had to fight in World War I to win citizenship." link Kevin Dowd is a salesman who was undoubtedly prospering in 2007. Now that he is growing close to retirement age, I wonder how much Kevin still thinks Bush was an expert on the economy? In addition, it is evidence that the anti-tax socialism meme is working for Republicans like Kevin Dowd, even when no taxes have been raised. Reality means nothing to Republicans like Kevin Dowd. They still think Bush did well on the economy and will blame Fannie and Freddie for the housing meltdown.
In 2007, Dowd wrote
He (Kevin)supports W. on Iraq but agrees that "one of the president’s greatest assets, loyalty, has turned into his Achilles’ heel. When I started my sales career, an older rep advised me: ‘Stay away from the mean drinkers in the bar. They start the fight but someone else always gets hit.’ George Bush is getting hit because he won’t move away from ‘the mean drinkers.’ "
"The word neocon bothered me because I have an aversion to zealotry," he continues. "An uncomfortable visual of Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld manning the Situation Room in a scene reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove and Gen. Buck Turgidson — ‘No more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops, uh, depending on the breaks’ — began to haunt me. How could we have underestimated the postwar situation in Iraq so badly? Is our intelligence that poor, or did the people making the decisions even care?
"The Republicans got exactly what they deserved in the last election. They fell on the same sword they had brilliantly wielded to gain power. Tom DeLay was as corrupt as Jim Wright, Dennis Hastert as inept as Tom Foley."
In 2009, Kevin Dowd's introspection regarding Cheney is gone. His message in Maureen's column:
To Dick Cheney: You, sir, are a patriot. Thanks for firing back.
To President Bush: Thank you for your dignity. Did you really start the plague in the 14th century? Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
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Cheney is now no longer a neocon who poorly advised the likeable Bush, but a courageous speaker of truth, warning Obama that he will destroy the safety of our country. And all is forgiven appparently for the long years of war in Ieaq and Afghanistan, just as somehow the Dowds have flipped on their opinion of Hillary Clinton (somehow now a good leader, not the female version of the anti-Christ).
Kevin Dowd seems to have a particular obsession with "political correctness."
My dad was a D.C. policeman, and I would like to apologize (not "recalibrate") to the Cambridge police for the president’s assumption that they "acted stupidly." You would think that Mr. Obama would have afforded the police the same consideration he gave to the mass-murdering Muslim Army major when he said: "I would caution against jumping to conclusions."
The Fort Hood massacre was a direct result of Army policy too concerned with political correctness and "celebrating diversity." It was a terrorist attack by any definition and the government still cannot say it.
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It takes a twisted person to link those two events- a successful black man being arrested for backtalking a police officer in his own home and the religious fanatic Army missing a criminal psychiatrist in their own ranks who brings a gun to execute people heading to a war he opposes on religious grounds.
Dowd is very pro-religion, and wants the government to recognize the rights of people to practice their religion in public life. He sees government mistaking Freedom of Religion as Freedom from Religion.
Kevin states in 2004:
Go back two generations and you will find the real diversity that made our country the greatest in the world. Immigrants brought their customs with them and were accepted. We were taught by our parents to respect the customs and religious beliefs of other people. Let's reach around and give P.C. a swat, like an annoying child in the back seat of a long trip, before Santa and St. Patrick are casualties of war.
My mother hated political correctness. "In my day," she'd say, "people respected each other and minded their own business." Still good advice.
In 2004 Kevin state, "We do not live in a secular country. There are all sorts of people of faith that place moral values over personal freedoms. They are not all 'wacky evangelicals.'" link
Wake up Kevin- the "murdering Army major" was the religious son of immigrants too. People in the Army failed by minding their own business and respecting the religious customs of others- and you are now angry and call it PC. What exactly should Obama have done to make this less PC, Kevin? Rounded up and removed all religious Moslems from the military? How is that anything but freedom from Religion? The only PC for people like Kevin Dowd is RC.
I guess the biggest insight for me in reading Kevin's thoughts over the Bush years is the enormous loyalty of Republicans to Bush because of his cultural conservatism and opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and general smuttiness. This allows him to transfer his loyalty unquestioningly to Sarah Palin, who clearly takes a stand against these issues. Competence isn't critical to Kevin. He thinks Glenn Beck is a journalist and mocks his sister. And hilariously, he claims he has an aversion to zealotry.
Thanks for the insight, Maureen.