Citizen Journalist
The following appeared at Daily Kos today (www.dailykos.com). It is a reprint of a blog entry that ran in Daily Kos four years ago today in the run up to the 2006 midterm election. The writer was a conservative Republican named John Cole. Mr. Cole's observations, while true then, are oh-so-much truer today - and very sobering.
I still think of myself as a Republican- but I think the whole party has been hijacked by frauds and religionists and crooks and liars and corporate shills, and it frustrates me to no end to see my former friends enabling them, and I wonder 'Why can't they see what I see?" I don't think I am crazy, I don't think my beliefs have changed radically, and I don't think I have been (as suggested by others) brainwashed by my commentariat.
I hate getting up in the morning, surfing the news, and finding more and more evidence that my party is nothing but a bunch of frauds. I feel like I am betraying my friends in the party and the blogosphere when I attack them, even though I believe it is they who have betrayed what 'we' allegedly believe in. Bush has been a terrible President. The past Congresses have been horrible- spending excessively, engaging in widespread corruption, butting in to things they should have no say in (like end of life decisions), refusing to hold this administration accountable for ANYTHING, and using wedge issues to keep themselves in power at the expense of gays, etc. And I don't know why my friends on the right still keep fighting for these guys to stay in power. Why do they keep attacking decent people like Jim Webb- to keep this corrupt lot of fools in office? Why can't they just admit they were sold a bill of goods and start over? Why do they want to remain in power, but without any principles? Are tax cuts that important? What is gained by keeping troops in harms way with no clear plan for victory? With no desire to change course? With our guys dying every day in what looks to be for no real good reason? Why?Frauds and religionists and crooks and liars and corporate shills! Sound familiar? The Republican Party has been hijacked by whack-jobs and psychos with a litany of screwball agendas including the complete denial of abortion rights for any reason, total repeal of federal gun laws, elimination of the 14th and 17th Amendments, defunding government, ending student loans, privatizing (or outright eliminating) Social Security and Medicare, repeal of our very limited national health insurance plan, lowering taxes for millionaires and corporations, shipping American jobs overseas, dumping the Civil Rights Act, ending government support of public education, using tax funds to promote religion and religious education, criminalizing gay sex, making masturbation illegal, and encouraging Second Amendment "remedies" when things don't go their way.
The barbarians are at the gates and smelling blood! Get your sane friends to the polls on Tuesday!
1 comment:
Prior to the election of '08 I told my Nebraska friend Julie that I missed the Republicans.
She shot back with stunned amazement saying that she thought I was a Democrat, like her.
My reply was less artful than the writer reported by the Daily Kos.
I miss the fairness of the game. I miss the good times with my college Republican friends. I miss living in a time where each second is not accentuated by a snide or hateful comment. I miss knowing that I stand for the little people and they stand for big corporate interests.
In the post Watergate era there was a void in the substance of the Republican Party. Just as nature abhors a void, so political nature abhors a void in a party. Radical elements filled that void. The writer of that Daily Kos piece better describes those elements than could I.
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