If Mr. Danforth is so consummately disgusted with his own party, why does he not simply pull a Jeffords and surrender his Republican registration, rather than eviscerating it in the court of public opinion a la Lieberman? Surely precedent must play some role; after all, he served as a Republican senator for three terms and has roots in the Missouri Republican Party dating back to the 1960s upon his return from Yale Law School. However, the passive virtue of past allegiance surely could not compensate for such an apparently (I haven't read the book yet) acidic critique of the current administration. No, there would have to be an active, ideological component to such disdain. People don't write books on subjects they don't really have strong feelings about, after all. Thus, the question still remains as to why such a seemingly moderate man would retain his membership in a party so clearly incongruous with his own views.

Well, therein lies the fallacy: Mr. Danforth is no moderate. This is not only my own presumption, though; Mr. Danforth proudly labels himself a "conservative." However, in his mind, the term "conservative" does not stipulate accession to illegal wiretapping, gay bashing, and fighting wars so that private companies can profit. Rather, Mr. Danforth aligns his personal brand of conservatism more with that of one of his closest political allies, former President Ronald Reagan. So taken with President Reagan was Senator Danforth, and presumably vice versa, that Mr. Danforth even officiated President Reagan's funeral in 2004.

In terms of historical-political context, it was during Reagan's (and George H.W. Bush's) terms in the Oval Office that Mr. Danforth graced the floor of the north chamber. In the meantime, or so Mr. Danforth would have it, things have changed in the party he so faithfully served. That is, he still fancies himself a model of Reaganesque "compassionate" conservatism, and feels that he has been left behind by a Republican Party that has evolved (or, should I say, devolved) into the species that governs us today. Mr. Danforth, then, has decided to be proactive (writing books, going on media tours, and the like) and, along with jaded Republicans of the ilk of former New Jersey governor/fellow carping author Christine "It's My Party Too" Todd Whitman (another resigned Bush appointee) and Rhode Island Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee (who even publicly admitted to voting for John Kerry in 2004), lead a charge to "take back" the Republican Party and transform it back into a utopian fellowship of devout Goldwater conservatives, all bowing at the altar of points of light, trickle-down economics, and Ronald Reagan. In other words, he envisions himself as a guerilla warrior trying to stage a coup de regime from within.

That would be a perfectly rational and, as far as I am concerned, acceptably satisfactory (if quixotic, given the fervor of the supposedly neo-neoconservatives in power) reason to retain his membership to such an otherwise odious band of Darwinophobic hobgoblins, if it were not for one simple fact: Ronald Reagan was just as conservative as George W. Bush! There has not been such a tremendous shift in Republican Party ethos since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rather, it is the same band of merry quasi-fascists ruling over us today as fifteen years ago...and John Danforth, as well as every other Republican bemoaning the fading salience of Reagan in the Republican Party, is one of them. No matter what circumstantial rhetoric he may toss around about "Christian domination" or whatever other incidentals, a look at the facts will only drive this point home. Social structures are much like people and every other life form: they do not evolve in a decade. Rather, it takes a long and slow process of subtle change over time to produce a new species or party, or what have you. The Republicans are no different, and no amount of Intelligent Design could make them so.

Perhaps nothing else speaks to us from the Reganite past so clearly as the Supreme Court. Not only did Reagan succeed in appointing three justices to the High Court, but all but three of the current members (Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg) are directly or indirectly spawned from the political loins of President Reagan. First there was Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981. She started out pretty conservative, but mellowed out over the years and can probably be called the least detestable of the justices Reagan himself gave us. Next came our good friend Antonin Scalia in 1986...you all know about him. Also in 1986, President Reagan promoted then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist to the Chiefdom following the retirement of Warren Burger. Perhaps the most significant contribution Rehnquist ever made to the court was the snazzy Gilbert and Sullivan-inspired redesign of the Chief Justice's robe. A thoroughly unremarkable and prosaic jurist was Rehnquist, but at the same time a tried and true conservative...and that was enough for Reagan.

The following year, in 1987, President Reagan tried to Bork us, but thank heavens that didn't work out (remember the days when Arlen Specter was actually our friend sometimes?) Instead, we got another terminally bland space filler in Anthony Kennedy...better than Bork, to be sure, but oh so insipid. Despite his rulings in Lawrence v. Texas and more recently in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (though in typical Kennedy shifty fashion, his concurrence was only partial), Justice Kennedy is pretty much a clone of Rehnquist.

Reagan-wannabe George H.W. Bush, the previous president's favorite protégé, gave us David Souter in 1992 (happy for us, a disappointment for the conservatives that tarnished John H. Sununu's conservative credo at Federalist Society luncheons ever since) and, the year before in 1991, the out-and-out most conservative, most loathsome, and probably least open minded (and we thought Scalia held the record) of all of the justices currently serving on the court, Clarence Thomas. Thomas's very presence in the Supreme Court is a flagrant disgrace to the chair formerly held by the incomparable Thurgood Marshall. And, lest we forget, who was the key player in the Senate in gaining confirmation for Thomas, arguably George W. Bush's closest ally and enabler on the Court? Why, none other than one John C. Danforth.

And, before we move on from the Supreme Court, remember that George W. Bush's own two SCOTUS appointees, former Solicitor General John Roberts and Deputy Assistant Attorney General (quite a mouthful of inferior nomenclature!) Samuel Alito, served in their respective posts at the Department of Justice under none other than Ronald Wilson Reagan. Thus, the havoc wreaked on the High Court, and indeed on the entire country, possibly for decades now either directly or indirectly by Ronald Reagan, that patron saint of misbegotten Republicans and other wayward conservatives, is precisely the kind of governance that John Danforth and those like him wish to return us to...or, keep us in...or, wait...I'm just confused now.

And if John Danforth is so wary of Christian domination of politics (a brazen assertion whether genuine or not, I am willing to admit, for an ordained minister), then I should think he would try to distance himself from Ronald Reagan, whose faith so very publicly guided his every executive maneuver, rather than lionizing him. Indeed, let us also not forget the other compassionate theo-conservatives Reagan brought out from the woodwork to help save the country from our impending spiritual cataclysm. What about his beloved Attorney General Ed Meese, Samuel Alito's old boss and mentor? This was the man who with one hand (partnered with James Dobson) tried to rip Playboy and Penthouse off of store shelves, citing their harmful effects on society, and with the other constructed a massive cover-up of the Iran-Contra affair. However, such a seeming paradox is of no deterrence to morally superior individuals like Meese, George W. Bush, or John Danforth. Also, what of Reagan's Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, the originator of some of Margaret Spellings's and Gary Bauer's favorite causes: school vouchers, an end to multicultural classes, installing prayer in the classroom, and ending affirmative action? What about George Shultz? What about Alexander Haig? The list goes on an on.

These Reagan governmental appointees, who apparently painstakingly molded the quintessential Republican vision for the country for which John Danforth now so poignantly pines, essentially condoned, and even touted, the very same corruption, overbearing militarism, Christian proselytizing (circumventing ever so precariously the Establishment Clause), and general authoritarianism that Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, and Co. have foisted on us once again, fifteen years later. What on earth, then, may I ask is John Danforth complaining about? If Ed Meese and Bill Bennett and Clarence Thomas held the secret needed to put this country on the right path, then why does he take issue with Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove? Ay, there's the rub! Perhaps to sell books? I'm not really sure. It remains a great mystery for now how he has managed to convince himself of his contradictory principles, regardless of whether the rest of the country chooses to ensnare itself in the tangled web he has woven. As far as my personal rebuttal to Mr. Danforth's sentiments, I can say for certain that, in the end, the current state of the Republican Party boils down to one of my favorite censorable clichés: "same shit, different day," or should I say, "same shitheads, different day."

Maybe the years have been tough on ol' John Danforth and he's not thinking as clearly as he used to. No matter the case, the release of his new book and his highly postured crusade against Post-Gingrichian Republicanism just don't fit in with the very mindset he professes to possess. As Martin Balsam might have said, "If it isn't aspic then it doesn't gel, and this isn't gelling;" John Danforth has twisted himself into a philosophical pretzel. I just don't understand what he's getting at--he seems to be contradicting himself back and forth into insignificance. One could at best hope that he has hopped on the train of thought conducted by another former Reagan-era official, former Secretary of the Navy and current Democratic senate nominee in Virginia James Webb--a man who has legitimately refocused and, on issues not pertaining to the military, strongly diverges from Reagan and Bush (whichever one, or both). (Aside: frankly, no matter what anyone says, George Allen is far more like Reagan than Mr. Webb ever was or is.) At worst, and it is the worst that I suspect, Mr. Danforth is merely a proud torchbearer in the Republican tradition of hypocrisy. Mr. Danforth thinks that just by calling out Bill Frist in print for having the personality of a dead cat (which doesn't exactly take any measure of soul searching to ascertain--even Mitch McConnell would probably agree to that in confidence) that he somehow has fashioned himself into a "maverick." Unfortunately, just like another noted "maverick" (yes, of course, it is to the senior senator from Arizona, the man for whom "maverick" has practically become metonymic, that I refer), he does not translate his words into action. Just as Potter Stewart knew pornography when he saw it, I know a dyed-in-the-wool partisan Republican conservative when I see one...just log onto www.senate.gov and look through the vote history section. There, it becomes perfectly evident that John Danforth, John McCain, and every other John and non-John who publicly chastises but privately wholeheartedly embraces their party do not put their money where their mouths are. If votes are the "currency" of the Senate, then at least Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, and Jon Kyl are being forthright. Meanwhile, John McCain, Mike DeWine, and John Danforth (and others like them) just hope that we never actually do go and look up their sordid (or conservative, either way) pasts so they can continue to fleece us into thinking that they stand for some unspecified panacea for the anomie of postmodern America, instead of simply a tax break for every multimillionaire and a trash can for every unused fertility clinic embryo.

Or maybe I should just read the damn book, lest I judge Mr. Danforth too harshly.