Letters to the Editor

• THE GOP IS FINALLY EXACTLY WHERE IT NEEDS TO BE.

  [Read the article: Dead party walking]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Was the GOP really ever a political party? Or just a place for angry white guys to go when they couldn't be politically viable any other way?

  I don't think perpetual tax cuts is an ideology to which the next generation will aspire. I wouldn't die for a tax cut, would you? But some GOP nut out there is convinced that the Revolutionary War, freedom and democracy, was about a tax cut.

  Remember when the GOP governors went nuts in the 90's cutting taxes, refunding their states' rainy day funds, and walking around with buttons that said, "The party's here?" Then the bad times came again, and the programs the people needed had to be cut. Seems that "heckuva job, Brownie" kinds of stuff was going on in the GOP even before Katrina.

  No, let the GOP die a much-deserved death. It's just a local bar where those narrow, single-issue lunatic fringe types, the assorted variety of war-mongers mostly from the South who feed at the trough of military contracts, and the big oil suck-ups (again, mostly from the South) gather to drink, grin, and wink about how much longer it will be before they have finally destroy public education across America.

  And don't go getting all misty-eyed on me pining for the good old days of Ronald Reagan: That middle class jobs-busting, voodoo economics, trickle down, Howdy Doody mouth piece of the Rumsfield, Wolfowitz, and Cheney neo-cons?

  The economic engine that drove the 80's right into a Recession wasn't real job creation and growth. It was access to credit cards, cannabalizing companies througg mergers and acquisitions, and a flood of cheap Japanese imports that helped to triple the U.S. trade deficit in 3 years.GOP smoke and mirrors. One of my 80's favorites: the huge tax-payer bailout of the savings and loan industry. Did we ever send anyone to jail over that scandal?

  The GOP became a disease disguised as a political party when it started toying around with communism and red-baiting as an issue with which to terrorize the American people. Think of Richard Nixon and his power-hungry sense of self-entitlement. Bush Junior, Cheney, Rumsfield, et al,all learned one lesson from Watergate: Destroy the evidence and don't admit to anything - ever. We can pardon you later.

  Between Ohio and Michigan alone, we lost about 500,000 jobs in the last 8 years. I don't recall anyone from the Southern GOP-controlled states taking up a collection, sending in voluneers to help, or any federal disaster money flowing in to help rebuild those states. I mention this against the backrop of Katrina, when so many fellow Northern Americans did take up collections, did go and help their fellow Americans, did express outrage over the government's failure to be there for fellow Americans, and many remain helping to rebuild to this day. Guess a half a million American jobs disappearing - Northern, skilled laborers with their mostly Democratic union leadership kind of jobs - don't qualify for "compassionate conservatism." "Serves 'em right," comes to my mind.

  Got to hand it to the GOP though. They certainly know how to press peoples'buttons. Just demonize someone, anyone, and get us a boogie man, and we have a winner! We can't rebuild THOSE states. Oh, hell no. We have to save those billions of federal funds to build developers' condos, bridges, storefronts, roads, and houses in GOP hurricane country - over and over and over and over ad nauseum.

  Ever notice how GOPers are always wanting to limit the size of government and openly express disdain for so many government programs? Well, everyone knows they don't have an abundance of skilled, educated labor in the South. So GOP elected hypocrites brag about getting federal grants to train people to fill jobs in the newly planned Japanese auto assembly plants while Ohio and Michigan skilled workers settle into their next career positions: "Want fried with that?" Are some Americans more worthy than others? Looks that way through GOP eyes.

  Did anyone else have a hard time finding sympathy for those Carolina Americans who lost jobs recently when the mill jobs went overseas? After all, they made out for awhile at the expense of other Americans when the mill jobs in the North went South for the cheap, non-union labor in the 80's. Guess they know now what some of us already knew:that they were just being used until something better came along like workers in China who will do it for a buck-a-day? And didn't I just hear someone on TV from Carolina complaining how all the jobs are disappearing? REALLY? Where you been, Honey? Didn't recall you and the rest of those fine, Bible-belt Americans didn't stand up for what was right. They stood in line for an employment application.

  The GOP is finally where it should be - nowhere. It despises the very government that it so badly wants us to elect them to govern and it wants everyone else to despise it too so that maybe people will stop expecting anything from their government, develop enough cynicism about their futures, and just give up and go away, leaving them with what they long for: government without the messy interference, oversight, or questioning of the people, for the people, and by the people.

  The GOP with its cozy corporate side-kicks have exploited the American people long enough with the home-grown, balkanizing, brand of facism. It has worked hard for 40 years to break this country into little separate regions of worthy and unworthy, separate and not even close to equal, and haves and have nots. The GOP sees no benefit to having a united United States of America. The party works better when we all are divided, hating each other, especially in the name of God...always in the name of God.

  Permalink Tuesday, January 22, 2008 02:59 PM