A Moderate Republican

The GOP has swung so far to the extreme rabid right, that there is no longer room in their tent for true moderates.  They used to have one in the Senate, but they drove Arlen Specter out of the party, and he became a Democrat.  If the trend continues, when we say moderate Republican, we will mean this:

They’re crawling out from under the rocks everywhere. In Missouri, white supremacist Glenn Miller has declared his candidacy for the United States Senate, vowing to "reach every nook and cranny in the state" in his quest for votes and launching a new campaign web site at the URL whty.org. His opponents include Roy Blunt and Robin Carnahan, and his last try got him around 40 votes or so, but hey, any excuse to spread a little hate among friends, right?

Miller isn’t your ordinary run-of-the-mill Klansman either. From Southern Poverty Law Center, 2004:

One of the first white supremacists to use paramilitary tactics with his North Carolina-based hate group — the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which later morphed into the White Patriot Party — Glenn Miller went on the lam in 1986 after mailing a letter to 5,000 people calling for "total war" against the feds, blacks and Jews.

Miller had also violated a court order, stemming from a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, prohibiting him from continuing to operate a paramilitary organization. After a nationwide manhunt, authorities tear-gassed him out of a mobile home in Ozark, Mo.

But Miller served only three years in prison, largely because he testified against 14 leading white supremacists in a 1988 Arkansas sedition trial. Among other things, Miller told the court that the late Order founder Robert Mathews had given him $200,000 in stolen money to finance the White Patriot Party.

To kick off his campaign, he’s running a series of vile anti-Semitic ads hosted on the white supremacist site Vanguard News Network… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Crooks and Liars>

As much as I despise Miller and everything he represents, I do have to reluctantly give him credit for one the one thing that differentiates him from his GOP colleagues.  He is honest about his racism.  He’ll be competing with Roy Blount for Kit Bond’s Senate seat.  If he were to beat Blount, which I’m certain he will not, and if he were to actually win the seat, his victory would have little effect if any on GOP policy.  That’s sad.