Be forewarned that in this post I am attempting in some meager way to come to the defense of the Republican party that I seem to rail against so frequently.
It is a mistake to link the current right-wing ideologues to the conservative movement or even the Republican party in general. They are not the same. The core of the Tea Party is libertarian in nature and focused on shutting down all forms of government and to destroy the American safety net that has been in place for the last century or so. The conservative movement, of which in some respects I am a member, is about waste and fraud and doing things economically without growing the debt.
Ideologues scream we are destroying their freedoms but never defined just what they mean by freedom. It seems they mean whatever takes money out of their pockets is taking away their freedom. As shown in the picture just to the right of this post they don’t believe they have any obligation to the society that sustains them. They think that somehow all the services they take for granted such as police/fire protection, good roads, infrastructure, safe food and work environments and a myriad of other things should not cost them any of their time or money. That is not at the core of the past Republican party that I once voted with.
The next couple of years are very important to the GOP. Will they continue to implode into a very narrow philosophy of “us vs. them” or will they start broadening their base and jettisoning the right wing-nuts currently dominating attention.
- Will they go the way of the Whig party?
- Will they finally ease up on their obsession with “below the belt” issues?
- Will they jettison those in their party who see government as an evil instead of the people’s representatives doing the people business?
- Will they jettison those who espouse white supremacy who joined them when they abandoned the Democrats in the 1950s and 60s due to the Civil Rights movement?
- Will they quit their eternal obsession of fear and anger and instead move on to compassion and love?
- Will they finally quit being “anti-women”, “anti-immigration”, anti-this and anti-that and instead start proposing solutions to current problems
- Will they finally come to celebrate the diversity of our population instead of scorning it?
- Will they finally stifle those like Ted Cruze who have become their face and get back to being about focusing on fraud/abuse and fiscal responsibility?
A two party system such as our own depends on two healthy party to counter each other. In order to balance out the ever abundant spending of the Democratic party we need a countering party to emphasize sound fiscal policy. The current Republican party is a far cry from what it has been in the past and I hope the current trends are an anomaly instead of a shift in party direction. If it is not then maybe the GOP should go the way of the Whigs before them…
RJ's Corner - Old Version 