PrintFebruary 19, 2010
Republican Revivification
A Colombian woman declared dead moved one of her arms just as an undertaker was about to introduce formaldehyde into the femoral artery of her leg.
After suffering a heart attack, Noelia Serna was rushed to Cali University Hospital in Bogotá, Colombia. Surviving on life support, Serna suffered what some thought was a fatal second attack and was then declared officially dead. Transported to a local funeral home, Noelia was just about to be embalmed when a funeral home employee noticed the woman moving her right arm. Mortuary technician Jaime Aullon put the embalming fluid down and stopped the procedure.
A hospital official said, "On rare occasions, a person's heart rate and breathing can drop to undetectable levels, leading doctors to erroneously declare a patient dead." Juan Mendoza Vega, a member of the Colombian National Medical Ethics Board said, "It can happen. But it's not a matter of coming back to life because the person was never dead."
As it is in life, so it is in politics. Just one year ago, the Republican Party was one step from being lowered in to a six-foot grave and having dirt shoveled onto its face. For the greater part of a year, a distressed political party barely survived on life support. In an article entitled "Republicans in Distress: Is the Party Over?" Time magazine, hyperventilating with anticipatory excitement, asked the morbid question, "So are the Republicans going extinct? And can the death march be stopped?"
Republicans suffered damage from George W. Bush's war effort, a lagging economy, a collapsing housing bubble, and an unrelenting media's diligent campaign to remove food and hydration prematurely and disconnect the ventilator from a patient struggling to stay alive. The initial blow was followed up by the historic election of Barack Obama, which equaled a massive myocardial infarction that destroyed all the remaining heart muscle necessary to pump the party's lifeblood.
Losing the White House, Congress, and Senate to Democrat control meant, for all intents and purposes, that Republican vital signs were no longer conducive to sustain life. While a weak pulse could still be detected, fifty-eight percent of those polled in an online survey agreed that it was time to plan the funeral.
So as Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in with his hand on Lincoln's tattered Bible, a snide group of political nurse's aids wrapped conservatism in a white sheet and lifted the corpse into a body bag for a trip to the mortuary.
For twelve long months, Barack Obama swaggered around Washington, D.C., destroying the economy, raising the national debt, and jeopardizing national security, while a prone conservatism occupied the back of a political hearse. Barry apologized for America on the world stage, made nice with dictators, and ate Wagyu beef after asking Americans to sacrifice for the common good -- and did so while the Republican Party was being prepped for embalming on a cold, stainless steel table by political ghouls anxious to lay to rest the party of Reagan.
Conservative radio host and one-time Republican John Batchelor declared the Republican Party a corpse. "The GOP is a mummy-wrapped skeleton sitting in its own chilly mausoleum of bilious resentments and creepy sentimentality."
But a flicker of life remained.
Cal Thomas said in USA Today, "I guess if you were a funeral director ... you'd be sizing up the coffin for the demise and ultimate burial of the GOP ... like the reported death of Mark Twain, stories of the Republican Party's expiration and extinction are premature and exaggerated."
Like Ms. Serna, right before being injected with chemical fluid, something stirred in a party about to have the lid closed on its decomposing ideology. Instead, much to the shock and dismay of liberal funeral directors, the "right arm" of the party moved, indicating vivacity in what was thought to be beyond revival.
What was dismissed as a post-mortem reflex now appears to have the makings of full-blown Republican resurgence. Inexplicably, "when the body was buried and molding, along came the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections, followed by the Massachusetts Senate miracle. It's a Republican resurrection, some would say." New Jersey, Virginia, and then Massachusetts were one breath after another, one heartbeat after another. A political patient destined for a cold crypt slowly gained strength and vigor.
What happened? Who used the defibrillator on a waning party quarantined to the confines of political hospice? In an op-ed column entitled "Why the GOP Should Give Obama a Prize," conservative columnist Rich Lowry said, "In nine months, [Barack Obama] has breathed life into the Republican Party, boosted pro-lifers, tarnished the reputation of regulation, bolstered traditional values, increased the public's desire for immigration restriction and shifted independent voters rightward."
A snickering left got comfortable anticipating the reading of the will, ready to greedily collect all the proceeds of the political estate, but Republicans resuscitated by Obama's left-wing, liberal policies spoiled the wake. Not the god Barack Obama devotees fancy him to be, "[n]o, Obama hasn't turned back the oceans. But revivifying conservatism almost before books announcing its death could be published qualifies as a feat almost as miraculous," and on par with rolling away the stone and raising Lazarus from the dead.
Author's content: jeannie-ology.com.
