Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - It was my party and I'll cry if I want to
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Old 05-08-2009, 10:13 PM
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Default Wow! Didn't see this coming!

I'm kind of shocked seeing the majority of posts to this thread- but it also bothers me. America functions best as a two party system. We're not really able to sustain a three part or more coalition system, so two it is.

But we lose our vibrancy without the duality. I thing much of it is Karma or a pendulum. When one party gets so entrenched into governing dishonorably, the public swings the other way. Then the "out" party works that much harder to get into power.

I see two major problems though:

1.) The revolution of the "Right," which started thirty years ago with Christians being told they should "infiltrate" locally and work their way up the system, and politically, as that power began to indiscriminately exclude anyone other than the narrow "moral" platform of the so called "values voters."

I grew up (in NY) with the age of Rockefeller, I campaigned for Lowell Weicker, and I remember many moderate-conservative Republicans who ran for and won office because they were concerned about taxes, government and providing government services as "leanly" as possible.

It was only after Reagan, and I certainly place the blame squarely on men like Newt Gingrich, Oliver North, Rush Limbaugh and the like, who began to preach that up is down, fact is fiction. You are with us or with the terrorists. Republicans really had no place to go, and the right extremist wing just kept building up its power.

2.) The rejection of the powers that be in the Republican party to accept any one, or any idea, that does not fit into the ideological purity of the extremists who now control the party. Why was government sticking its nose into Terry Schiavo's life? Why couldn't conservatives be Republicans and still support environmental responsibility (Drill Baby Drill!)?

Why couldn't some accommodation for a mother's life be included in an anti-abortion platform. Are Republicans aware that, in its extremism, pro-life positions in the Catholic Church and the Baptist conventions require the doctor to sacrifice the life of the mother to save the baby- EVEN if the baby has little chance of viability? Talk about goverment intrusion into private lives.

My point: even as the regular guy or gal realizes the horrible pickle that the Republicans are in right now, the top influences of the Republican party are so out of touch with America that they genuinely believe that people just don't understand their call for extreme fiscal and social conservatism. "If we only could become MORE Ideological then people would follow us!"

It's time for Republicans to re-open their tent to allow other opinions and deep-felt convictions to have a say in the party's platforms and actions. "Regular" people, who may have voted Democratic, will undoubtedly become weary and even scared of all the expenses-fiscal and cultural- involved of the Obama goals. Personally, as a Democrat, and a strong believer in Obama and the platform of the Democratic Party, I hope that doesn't happen. But it will, it always does. And Democrats will invariably become arrogant.

I do believe, as I said, that this government needs the balance of powers- not only by branch but by political party to function best. Until Republicans powers-that-be begin to realize that moving even further right will cause damage to themselves even more, I fear that we may be in for one-party rule for a long time.