Who Would Still Want to Be Known as a Republican?

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For the sake of full disclosure, I should preface this by saying I live in Texas, so I’m required by state law to have at least two Republican friends.

I’ve learned a lot about Republicans thanks to them. One thing I’ve learned is that they are all “provocateurs”… people that enjoy stirring up trouble for fun. They’ll defend positions they themselves really don’t believe in just because they know it ticks the other guy off. They’ll ridicule positions they know are true simply to score cheap political points. They’ve got this “macho” thing going on, and take great joy in characterizing Democrats and/or Liberals as “elitist girlie-men that want to allow terrorists to perform third-trimester abortions on Flag Day”.

Long ago, back when I was young and immature, I didn’t pay much attention to things like politics and the world around me, I considered myself a Conservative… maybe even a Republican. Then I started paying attention. By the time Ronald Reagan left office, the fact that he had quadrupled 204 years of National Debt to $4 TRILLION DOLLARS in just 8 short years turned me into “an Independent”, but still a Conservative that didn’t oppose George HW Bush from becoming President. But when “41″ left office with the country in a recession and an additional $1 TRILLION added to the debt, I parted ways with Conservativism entirely and fought to get Ross Perot on the ‘92 ballot. Instead, Democrat Bill Clinton won, which troubled me (it has always bugged me that more people don’t seem to understand the danger of racking up enormous debt. I blame that on Ronald Reagan, who taught an entire generation that it’s okay to live on credit).

By 1995, with a shrinking deficit, a skyrocketing stock market, plummeting unemployment, and sickened by a GOP that seemed intent on launching trivial investigation after trivial investigation trying to “get” the Clinton’s on “something/anything”, I became a proud Democrat. The first time I had ever heard someone use the word “Liberal” in positive terms instead of as a slur was after watching a documentary about the late Robert Kennedy. A clip was played of someone describing RFK as “a good Liberal candidate”. That’s when I became a Liberal. I haven’t regretted either decision ever since.

But my provocateur friends still haven’t caught up with reality.

I still receive “humorous” emails portraying Democrats as “politically correct, brain-dead, surrender monkey’s”. One video that arrived in my inbox recently… a clip from the movie “The Ghost Breakers” (1940), is but one example:

This was followed by a few other tongue-in-cheek slams of all things Democrat. Which struck me as incredibly curious… when you slam Democrats, you’re essentially declaring to the world that you are A PROUD REPUBLICAN. Considering everything that has happened this past year, I’m incredulous that anyone would still want to be associated with the Republican Party or this Administration.

We are about to begin our FIFTH year in Iraq… for a war we were told would likely take “six days, six weeks… I doubt six months”. We were assured it would be “paid for with Iraqi oil revenues”. Andrew Natsio, chairman of the Federal “USAID” program, repeatedly assured an incredulous Ted Koppel on the April 23, 2003 episode of Nightline that the ENTIRE Iraq war would cost American’s no more than $1.7 Billion dollars:

TED KOPPEL (Off Camera) And we’re back once again with ANDREW NATSIOS, administrator for the Agency for International Development. I want to be sure that I understood you correctly. You’re saying the, the top cost for the US taxpayer will be $1.7 billion. No more than that?

ANDREW NATSIOS
For the reconstruction. And then there’s 700 million in the supplemental budget for humanitarian relief, which we don’t competitively bid ’cause it’s charities that get that money.

TED KOPPEL
(Off Camera) I understand. But as far as reconstruction goes, the American taxpayer will not be hit for more than $1.7 billion no matter how long the process takes?

ANDREW NATSIOS
That is our plan and that is our intention. And these figures, outlandish figures I’ve seen, I have to say, there’s a little bit of hoopla involved in this.

The pricetag on the Iraq War has already topped $320 BILLION DOLLARS. That’s $9.8 Billion a month, and the total cost to the American tax payer when you factor in long-term medical care for all those injured soldiers, replacing spent/destroyed weapons and machinery, and reconstruction, the pricetag soars to a heart-attack inducing $2 Trillion Dollars. But that hasn’t stopped the Bush Administration from giving the wealthiest 1/2 of 1% of Americans (those making $5 million dollars a year or more) 50% of their “economy growing” tax cuts. Problem is, the economy is growing at an anemic pace. The “housing bubble” that propped up the economy thanks to rock-bottom interest rates has threatened to burst in light of rising interest rates.

When George Bush was campaigning for President in 2000, he attacked the Clinton Administration for the recent rise in gas prices, saying that Clinton should be pressuring OPEC to “open up the spigots” to help bring down the price of gasoline. Truckers were threatening to go on strike because the price of diesel had topped $1.45 a gallon. The price of a barrel of oil when George Bush took office: $28 a barrel. Earlier this year, the price of oil peaked at $78.40 barrel oil back in July of this year, with the national average price of gasoline over $3 a gallon.

If you’re a Conservative, between bouts of slamming “the Liberal Media” and blogging on “Free Republic Online”, you’re almost certainly familiar with “World Net Daily”… often referred to as “World NUT Daily” for it’s outrageous Conservative spin… revealed Tuesday that “Soybeans Make you Gay”. Of course, from reading the mainstream media headlines this past few weeks, it appears more likely that “being a Conservative” makes you gay. First, we learn that Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL)… head of the GOP’s Child Predator Task Force… was making sexual advances towards underage teen male pages. But rather than remove Foley from the task force, Republican leaders buried the news and did what they could to keep it a secret, prefering to keep children subject to a child predator rather than jeopardize their hold on Congressional power.

Then came Ted Haggard, who bragged to friends that he counseled President Bush “every Monday” on issues of Faith… and now “Paul Barnes“, who confessed to his congregation via video tape Tuesday that he had been struggling with homosexuality since the age of five.

Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of the Vice President, revealed to the world last week that she is pregnant. In the state of Virginia where she and her “wife” (as Mary calls her) Heather live, Heather will have NO parental rights should anything happen to Mary, thanks to a state ban that this Administration she so stalwartly defends, widely promotes.

Back in August, I started issuing a monthly challenge to anyone that could name one single policy success to come out of the Bush Administration. Needless to say, no one ever came up with a single one. Iraq is a growing mess, where “a roaring success” now would be leaving the country in any shape EVEN CLOSE to the same condition as when we went in… at peace without civil war or sectarian violence, a working infrastructure and functioning secular government with no weapons of mass destruction, hostile to al-Qaeda and serving as a check on Iran. Instead, it is far more likely that we will leave that country with a bloody civil war, a weak government strongly allied with Iran and leaning towards radical Islam.

Our new friend, Pakistan, created a sanctuary for al-Qaeda along their Northern border with Afghanistan and forbids the U.S. from entering to go after Osama bin Laden. So much for “no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor them”.

Our National Debt now tops $8 TRILLION DOLLARS. Gas an oil prices are out of control. The Middle East is exploding in violence. Our military has been streched to its breaking point while over-extended troops are stop-lossed into involentary second and third tours of duty. Four years into the war in Iraq, soldiers are STILL driving around in “Humvees”, a vehicle that was not designed for combat and is excruciatingly vulnerable to roadside bombs. Humvees retrofitted with “up-armor” kits are about as fit for combat as slapping steel plating on a GMC pickup. Meanwhile, our soldiers are now dying at a rate of nearly three men/women a day.

And I still receive heavilly passed-along bulk e-mails from Conservatives touting how much they “support our troops”… just not enough to give back that tax credit so we can buy our soldiers some better body armor or military vehicles, and you’ll notice there are no long lines of Republicans at your local military recruiters.

Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay, “Duke” Cunningham, Tom Noe.

Why would ANYONE want people to know they still consider themselves a Republican anymore? It has become a badge of shame, not pride.

This entry was posted on December 13, 2006 at 2:55 am and is filed under Political News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.