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| Yes | 67% | 122 votes | Total: 183 votes | |
| No | 33% | 61 votes |
Yes
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Add to FavoritesYes the republican party is broken. Not only is it broken, it is fundamentally flawed.The principles the republican party claims to uphold are shed and re-donned like seasonal attire, depending on the political climate. This has always been the case in politics to some varying degree or other, but the violent swings of the party have become like the flailing arms of an angry, blind giant. The republican party's ship is sinking and the rats are going overboard.
Talk show radicals were the first to jump ship. We hear them occasionally on AM radio which is a sign in itself. Our society affords us the luxury of hundreds of cable stations to choose from, none of them would dare give these radicals a forum. In an odd twist, the members that factionalized first are considered the De-facto leaders of the party. When looked at in a purely objective light, one would have to consider the GOP very unstable.
To further this party's lack of respectability comes the issue of taxation of the wealthy. The republican party feels the middle man should bare the brunt of taxation. They claim that the wealthy infuse our economy with liquidity and therefore should not be taxed as heavily. What they fail to mention is that any tax monies collected from the wealthy are re-infused into the economy. The money does not mysteriously disappear, it goes into public works type projects. The Hoover Dam was a public works project and that landmark's success speaks for itself. This now is being called socialism by the republican party in a desperate attempt to keep their affluent patrons as wealthy as possible. The simple needs and dreams of the 95% of Americans who are not wealthy are coldly overlooked by the republican party.
The final nail in the republican party's coffin is one being driven by an irrepressible force; the American people. There has been an awakening of sorts. More, and more people are walking away from the republican party. The polls show it, the last election reflected it. The American people are tired of the republican rhetoric, they are tired of the wealthy not paying their fair share of the taxes, they are tired of wars started on false pretenses, they are tired of the politics of fear, they are tired of not having affordable health insurance, they are tired of corporate greed let loose by republican politicians, they are just plain tired of the lies and they are doing something about it.
The republican ship has sunk.
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No
The republican party itself is not broken, but the current leaders who have lead it astray need to step aside. Once a party built on fiscally sound and secular viewpoints, it is now overrun with people who seem to favor larger government and religious extremists. Men the caliber of Barry Goldwater have gone from being the norm to the fringe; Ron Paul comes to mind. After allowing big business to have their way with the American economy with no consequences, how could they ever expect to win a presidential election? The national debt was at least doubled by the Bush administration through the creation of Homeland Security and through using private companies to help fight the Iraq War.
Yes, the war on terror was not something that was expected, but the overreaction was not necessitated and poorly executed. Instead of creating a large new government agency to do the job of other agencies already in existence, why not bulk up the current agencies with more manpower. Another idea could have involved pulling back some of out troops from every nook and cranny of the world to help secure the homeland. The use of the United States Armed Forces as an international police agency has proved to be disastrous and unnecessary, since we effectively contained communism around the world.
Why not keep our forces at home until we need them to respond to a situation? There is no reason the NSA and FBI could not have performed the same job that Homeland Security currently handles if they were given sufficient resources and a mandate to share and consolidate information on suspects. The increased security measures for airports, bridges and tunnels were realistically long overdue as we left ourselves vulnerable for way too long. Why would anyone be allowed to board an aircraft with any type of metallic blade? Why aren't commercial airline pilots, a good portion of which are veterans of the US military, not armed with low penetration guns? Rather than simply take these and other simple steps to correct the situation, we decide to invade a mountainous country that is still ruled by provincial warlords. Did any of the republicans ever stop to ask themselves why? Instead of securing ourselves at home with more protection, we embark on fighting a war that can not be won.
Killing terrorists that we armed to fight the soviets a quarter century ago makes little sense. All we have managed to do is inspire more people to become terrorists and fight their oppressors. We also managed to single handedly raise the world's opiate production by leaps and bounds. Which makes our losing war on drugs that much harder to combat.
That leads to another area where Republicans have strayed away from their core principles: drug enforcement. How anyone can argue that the government of a free society has any kind of authority as to what people do with their own bodies? The expansion of the prison industry is not the way to combat the problem of drugs in our society, as incarcerating individuals creates a much higher tax bill than fines and treatment. Non-violent drug offenders do not need to be in jail, on the taxpayers dime. They need to be at work, coincidentally where they would have been to earn money to purchase whatever drug they felt like consuming.
Do drugs ruin lives? Yes, but we should not be forced to pay for their punishment. By decriminalizing some or all drugs the government would not be legalizing these drugs, but rather reducing the penalties. Taking the jail time out crack possession is not going to encourage people to smoke it, as most people are smart enough to realize that crack will ruin their lives. Legalization would go one step further in allowing the government to tax and regulate drugs generating revenue while at the same time help to eradicate the need for a black market. By taking away the enormous profits, dangerous people will stop selling them. We could eliminate one third of our current prison system and cripple the cash flow of illegal organizations.
Why did the republican party walk down this treacherous road? The need for votes and the coinciding rise of social conservatism. Through practices that shrunk the middle class and a major voting block for the republican party, they were forced to turn to voting blocks that were normally on the fringe of American values. Going after a block of voters who view the bible as a history book and believe that building million dollar buildings in the name of an all powerful creator was not a good idea from the start.
Which brings us to another possible avenue of revenue generation, the church. I believe that churches which are run to turn a profit should be taxed, especially when the church fathers believed in swearing off worldly riches. Church and state are separate here in America and nothing would reaffirm this guaranteed right more than taxing their institutions, for the simple reason that the state does not tax itself. There are plenty of young people who voted for Obama due to the lack of a solid opponent. John McCain lost all credibility when he voted to bailout Wall Street in the way that he did, this country has chapter 11 laws in place for a good reason and Sarah Palin openly mocked herself on Saturday Night Live.
Instead of championing social issues that should be left up to individuals but are at the center of the evangelical and other fringe Christian organizations, they should have directly attacked the economy and how they intended to fix it. Unfortunately, they chose to fight a battle championed by a group of society that is considered scary by many Americans. Such as the fight to teach religion or rather 'intelligent design' in our public schools. Imposing the misguided views of the elderly and irrational on the rest of society goes against core republican dogma. Their views should be protected, but let them teach religion at a church, private school, or their homes. When president Bush said he received advice from god to invade Iraq he should have been removed from office for hearing voices in his head. Many intelligent religious people were scared by those comments as well, they sounded like something a middle east dictator might claim, a mandate to kill from a higher power. Imagine what would happen if the money given in charitable donations to the church was pulled back and about half was spent on humanist charities with the other half becoming disposable income and thus spent on goods and services.
The Republican party is not broken, but certain elements need to be pushed from the limelight to the fringe in order for the party to regain the power it neglected.
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