The Republican Response Should Be Illegal

The first inkling that, having literally destroyed America’s domestic and international well-being, the remaining GOP crowd were going to get even worse, came with the stimulus vote.  It seems to have started with Rush Limbaugh, an embarrassing dinosaur on AM radio who seems now to be running the party, in lieu of anyone else raising their hand.  “I hope he fails!” he shouted to his listeners the day of Obama’s inaguration.

Let’s look at that for a moment.  Since then, Rush, a convicted drug addict and no sane person’s idea of a role model, has tried to back off of his statement, whining away that it was a defensive comment after all those bad things other people said about his boy, George Bush.  Another lie, in a long series of lies.   Why does he even bother?  He said it, and he should be a man: stand by your word. 

Today’s headline in the WSJ:

GOP Attacks Climate Plan as Too Costly

Let me say this clearly: since Reagan, by uniting the  Christian Coalition with old-line Eisenhower Republicans in order to win the election, laid the seeds for the destruction of his own party, nothing really has changed.  Bush Jr. forced the Christians to shut up during his opening convention, in return for getting lots of power later, and they went along: the convention did not mention abortion, there was no rancor on the floor, and the nation was split along abortion lines from then on.

Thanks, George.

What do Republicans stand for today?  Well, in truth, they don’t have a clue.  But some evil mind in their ranks is telling them that, in the midst of the greatest crisis perhaps ever faced by the nation, they should simply oppose whatever Obama and his party suggests.

Really?

Is that all you’ve got?

If that is all you’ve got, then what you are doing should be deemed illegal.  You aren’t even trying to offer us a new path; you are just doing what you did for the last eight years: wrecking America. 

The Grand Old Party is not  a party of destruction.  Nor is it a demonstrably stupid party.  Historically, the Republicans have, yes, stood for money and preserving it, mostly, but also stood for the values and intelligence that created that wealth.  Today, all we get from the GOP is blocking, at a time when movement means survival.

If a fireman is trying to save a woman in a burning building, and someone blocks him: what is that?

If a policeman tries to stop a crime, and someone gets in the way, just to get in the way: what is that?

The party acronym today ought to stand for Goats On Parade.

There is nothing wrong with opposition; it has a time-honored tradition.  But intentionally going autistic, when the nation needs your good ideas, ought to be a crime.

Is the GOP now against ideas, against science, against Darwinian Theory, against stem cell medicine?

Really?  Is that really the new Republican Party?  If so, you are completely washed up.  Please, just quit now, resign, clean up your various Congressional offices, go home, and don’t write.  You proved to be the most dangerous, damaging people in U.S. government history, and, having been soundly rejected on intellectual grounds by the populace, your answer is: more of the same. 

Wow.  How did you come up with that one?

Is it a criminal act to do something in your own self interest which will obviously harm others?  Often, it is.  In this case, a whole country, a whole planet, is involved.

This week, we discovered, after several years of doubt, that Antarctica, too, is melting at a prodigious rate, so fast that it equals Greenland in the amount of floated ice it is casting into the sea.  The new projections for sea level rise is (an additional)  3-5 feeet in a century.

What do we not need right now?  A party that doesn’t care about science.  A party that would rather argue than go forward.  A party so intent on “winning” that, when the boat sinks, it will declare victory.  Let me say it as clearly as I can: you aren’t Republicans, not in any way that I, or history, will recognize.  Whatever you have become, it has nothing to do with the party of Eisenhower.

Rather, you are some kind of remnant corps of corrupt Limbaugh on radio, WMD-liar Murdoch on TV, and televangelists begging for hard-earned dollars over the airwaves.  You are the ultimate result of direct marketing – one reason Reagan turned to you then – but without a set of guiding principles.  All you can do now, is say, No.  No.  No.  No. 

And right now, the last thing we need is a media addict that can only say No.

Yes, it is illegal to watch a crime without helping.  Unfortunately, all too often it happens in U.S. streets today.  But to do it on a national, and international, scale: well, that is worse. If it is not illegal, it ought to be.

And the GOP should ignore all of its unethical, embarrassing parasites, from Limbaugh to Gingrich, and re-invent itself into something which can be of use to our country.

As has often been said, in wartime and peace: If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Maybe it is just time to flush the GOP forever, and start a new party.  If you do, please go back to Ike: start with the brain, and add a little heart. 

Many, if not most, of your current members are hoping for a serious rewind.