John Danforth was a Republican senator from Missouri from 1977 through 1994. He later was UN Ambassador for brief time for George W. Bush. He rightly sees the current crop of bozos running for President in the Republican primaries as "embarassing." In an interview on St. Louis radio station KTRS, he minced no words:
I’ve been watching some of these Republican debates and they’re just terrible. Terrible. ... it’s embarrassing for me as a Republican to watch this stuff.
snip
What have been the big applause lines in these debates? Well, a statement that the governor of Texas is responsible for killing 234 people on death row. Or that we favor torture. Or that we’re creating a fence on the Mexican border that electrocutes people when they try to cross it. Or when people show up at the emergency room at hospitals and they’re not insured don’t treat them. And that, I mean these are the big applause lines, people just hoop and holler when they hear all that. [...]
It doesn’t have anything to do with the republican party that I was a part of. This is just totally different. And all of these people who are saying this, y’know, and claiming that, y’know, they’re for all this stuff, they also sort of ostentatiously say, “Oh, we’re very religious people. We really, we’re just very pious, Christian people.” They were for torture, and electrocution of the people on along the border and all of that. That doesn’t have anything to do with, is contrary to the Christianity that I understand.
Think Progress
Danforth is an attorney and an ordained Episcopal priest.
He is partly responsible for Clarence Thomas on the supreme court. He is a conservative and I voted against him many times, but he does have some decency.
As he says, the Republican Party of today is so extreme as to leave him (and I bet many others) behind.
They lack basic human decency. Gingrich talking trash about poor children and wanted to put them to work. It is disgusting to all decent people. They are the party of Rush Limbaugh.
Republican extremism is making them un-electable in many places. And it will help re-elect the President.