{"id":11,"date":"2006-05-30T12:21:31","date_gmt":"2006-05-30T16:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/sethinca\/2006\/05\/30\/the-modern-gop-complex-and-nuanced\/"},"modified":"2006-05-30T20:33:48","modified_gmt":"2006-05-31T00:33:48","slug":"the-modern-gop-complex-and-nuanced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sethinca\/2006\/05\/30\/the-modern-gop-complex-and-nuanced\/","title":{"rendered":"The Modern GOP: Complex and Nuanced"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Politics sure is <a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/politics\/2003025484_hastert29.html\"><em>complicated:<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But some worried that the constitutional victory for Hastert would be a public-relations problem for the rest of them. They fear that the <strong>nuances <\/strong>of constitutional principle will mean little to voters who conclude that <strong>the GOP<\/strong>, which aims to be the &#8220;law-and-order&#8221; party, <strong>is now on the wrong side of the law<\/strong> by challenging law-enforcement officials pursuing a bribery investigation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;It&#8217;s a challenge&#8221;<\/strong> <span style=\"font-weight: bold\">to explain to constituents<\/span>, said Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif. <strong>&#8220;People are painting this as members of Congress being above the law.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>They&#8217;re right of course. The nuances of constitutional principle sure are hard to comprehend: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/news\/specials\/nsawiretap\/legality.html\">illegal surveillance of millions of Americans<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&amp;ct=res&amp;cd=1&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.boston.com%2Fnews%2Fnation%2Fwashington%2Farticles%2F2006%2F04%2F30%2Fbush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws%2F&amp;ei=wHB8RPGJJYzyoQLg5KzxBA&amp;sig2=A3RKIbJeV5mz75fI4P_gFw\">willful disregard for the law<\/a>? No problem. <span style=\"font-style: italic\">Everyone<\/span> understands that they&#8217;re just spying on terrorists. Millions of them. But raiding a crooked Congressman&#8217;s office? Why, that violates the most sacred principles of our founding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Politics sure is complicated: But some worried that the constitutional victory for Hastert would be a public-relations problem for the rest of them. They fear that the nuances of constitutional principle will mean little to voters who conclude that the GOP, which aims to be the &#8220;law-and-order&#8221; party, is now on the wrong side of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[398,379,399],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-david-dreier","category-national-security"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sethinca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sethinca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sethinca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sethinca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sethinca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sethinca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sethinca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sethinca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sethinca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}