Originally Posted by ptownrob

While I'm not sure I agree with everything that Kahuna's post quoted, much of it is spot-on concerning the republic party. When I was young, the republicans had room for Nelson Rockefeller, Barry Goldwater, Lowell Weicker, and dozens of others who today, by your own words you condemn as "not" really of the republic party.

So yes, your party- what's left of it- has swung so far to the right that it's taking its ideology like a drug addict. You hold up heroes who are just the opposite of that, and wonder why the majority of people react against them. You claim to have the corner on "righteousness"- patriotic, financial, religious and family- yet your heroes are the ones who continually are hoisted on their own petard. Then you condemn those who might point this out to you as being RINOS or Democrats or whatever name seems the most insulting at the time, as long as you don't have to self-examine yourselves.

I think of Matthew 27: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 “So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.

Family men condemning the downfall of the family? Newt Gingrich, Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, Tom Vittner. It's not that there aren't just as many Democrats who behave as poorly (or worse), but they don't stand there like paragons of virtue. Anti drug? One of the loudest voices was Rush Limbaugh. Patriotic? Oliver North, selling the very missiles to Iran that kill our own soldiers. Bush's war cabinet-multiple draft deferrments-no combat experience whatsoever, yet those with real combat experience were ignored. Financial? How many businesses did George Bush and his co-CEO's run into the ground? Yet like lemmings, the republic party followed him into the sea. Advisors? Ken Lay and a host of corporate crooks. Environmental advisors? CEO's of oil companies & Halliburton.

How long did you think enough (not all, just enough) Americans would wake up and see that the emperors had no clothes?

The Democrats will undoubtedly screw up in time, and the pendulum will swing back the other way. But if the republic party doesn't look to catch that pendulum because it has backed so far away from anything near the center of gravity, it will never catch that pendulum before it moves back to the left again.

We need a two party system, but if one of those parties is simply "the republic party of "no," don't blame voters for not seeing the alternatives to the DemocratIC Party.