by Tom Brennan

Created on: July 01, 2009   Last Updated: July 04, 2009

The Republican Party is currently undergoing a "reality check". Unfortunately it is getting its data from totally unreliable sources: radio entertainers, their own polls, and from no one else, particularly the voters. The last election was not decided in the Supreme Court, it was decided in the ranks of an enraged citizenry. The social fabric of Washington DC leads most legislators to feel secure and distanced from "reality". All too often the privilege, the perks, and the drama of being covered by media and quoted by sound biters and talking head media hosts removes the original and usually good intentioned purpose of standing for office.

The current debate about the future of the Party appears to be based on several personalities: General Colin Powell, a genuine Army general with distinguished service, and Rush Limbaugh and former VP Cheney, a radio entertainer and a member of an administration which failed on multiple fronts. The Republican Party seems to have abandoned any sense of principle in recent years. John McCain was perhaps the most viable and responsible candidate for President several elections ago, however George Bush's committee had employed Karl Rove as a consultant. Mr. Rove devised a rumor campaign that hinted that Senator McCain had suffered serious problems from his years of imprisonment in North Vietnam that precluded his being a good choice for President. George Bush won the nomination and election. More than likely, the response to September 11, 2001 would have been a more effective one than what the Bush administration presented had McCain, an experienced military officer and hero, been in command. Unfortunately, the McCain committee hired Rove to work on his failing campaign in the last months.

Former VP Cheney carries so much baggage, corporate suspicions over the granting on contracts for billions of Iraq rebuilding money without competitive bidding, the torture of prisoners in US held custody (Cheney has no military service of any kind, nor did Rumsfeld), their defense of the torture techniques as having kept the US free from terrorist attacks (actually the size and efficiency of Al Quaeda is the issue, as well as the mindset of the opponent making torture ineffective), all of these point to a corporate rather than a patriotic mindset. We are not to be governed by faceless corporate types, but by elected representatives. Excessive corporate influence in government today is the product of a "free market", deregulated Republican attitude. A Republican Congress and the a Republican administration promoted the deregulation that led to the economic disaster we are enduring today. The Bush administration gave away over $700 billion with little or no accountability to failed/failing financial institutions (these same institutions are also pursuing Americans who have lost their jobs due to the bank's financial misdeeds, double-dipping at its worst). All we have heard is Mr. Limbaugh's wanting for the Obama administration to fail. If Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Cheney were to leave their secure offices and actually talk to those who have lost jobs, homes, life savings and retirement funds, they might be fearful. The rage is at extreme levels. The Republican party abandoned principles for success, bottom line for integrity, swapped pundits and sound bites for solid, dependable truthfulness. The Democrats did not win the election, the Republicans forfeited any right to be believed or trusted and will have to win that back. By somehow permitting a radio entertainer and a disgraced former Vice President to become their spokesmen, they have chosen the worst possible representatives of a failed process of disengagement from reality. Principle, gentlemen, principle.

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