- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Good question, whatever happened to the Republicans I used to know. Decent folks like Gerald Ford, Bob Dole, even George Bush the first. The party has been hijacked by the likes of Tom Delay, Tom Coburn, Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy and other anti-intellectual ideologues who believe God speaks to them directly and who would mandate every aspect of our personal behavior.
Republicans used to be small government, fiscal conservatives, who eschewed foreign interventions and government intrusions into our lives. Today they have given us the largest deficits, a foreign war based on lies, and erosion of our constitutionally guaranteed liberties. These are not conservative values by any definition. John Dean, a Republican and Nixon appointee, said it best when he described the current leadership of the party as fascist thugs. They are not interested in facts, they spin every aspect of policy, and they relentless attack anyone who opposes their rigid ideological views. They are leading us down a most destructive path. Country first! If only that were true.
