How far will Traditional Republicans Go Before Saying Enough is Enough?

As I have blogged about before, my first five votes in Presidential elections went to Republicans. My parents always voted Republican. Many of my friends and relatives are confirmed Republicans. Although I started my adult life as a Young Republican, the Republicans eventually drove me away.

It is clear that the Tea-flavored Republicans of 2012 have tacked so far to the right that they are in danger of falling off the politcal spectrum altogether. Now the party favors crippling Medicare and Social Security, education, health care, and everything else in order to give more tax breaks to people who don't really need tax breaks. Despite the banking meltdown, they call for less (no) regulation of the financial industry. Did we learn nothing from the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression?

Of course, the Republicans want to continue wasting our funds on a "Defense" Department that is so bloated now that it is eating up a larger and larger percentage of our taxes. We spend more on "defense" that all of the other countries in the world put together. Now Mitt apparently wants to give the Defense Department an additional 3 trillion dollars more than the Pentagon has requested over the next 10 years. How much is enough? This would not seem necessary in a world where the big threats are small bands of terrorist religious fanatics. How will additional aircraft carriers and long range bombers help us with that problem?

Republicans don't believe in following the long-established law permitting a woman to make her own personal decision on whether to carry a child to term. Now they want to eliminate even the rape and incest exceptions as safe havens for women seeking abortions. Folks, nobody likes the idea of abortions but there are always going to be abortions. The question is whether they will be safe and legal abortions. The Republicans apparently want to go back to the days of coat hangers in the alley.

Republicans want to defund Education, Big E. They want to eliminate government worker unions and anything they can eliminate related to organized Labor. Teapublicans see every problem as an excuse for aggressive military action. They think that the Second Amendment means that every junior high student should have an AK-47 in his locker. After the recent shootings in Colorado, a high school friend posted that everyone should have an automatic weapon and that if that had been the case, the Colorado shootings would not have happened. Really? Truly? Everybody should carry around an automatic weapon just in case? The Kansas/K-State football game should be played with everybody in the stadium packing heat? Do we really want to live in a society like that?

The Republicans have fielded a candidate for President who has the most minimal qualifications. No foreign policy experience whatsoever. And that appears to be fortunate for us. He can't tell the truth about anything. He has changed his position on every possible issue 180 degrees over the past 15 years and yet he denies that he has ever had any different opinion than he does right now. He has ALWAYS been right-to-life. Except you can find numerous videos on the internet where a younger Mitt says that he is staunchly pro-choice. He thinks we are all idiots, apparently. He appears to have no core principles whatsoever. People sometimes complain about me posting my positions on FB. But at least I HAVE positions. Mitt Romney appears to have no established principles at all. What does that say about his integrity, or lack thereof? Do we really want a President who we cannot trust or believe? Even a lot of conservative voters can see through his opportunistic conversion to the conservative cause. They spent months trying to find a feasible Not-Mitt.

And if Obama didn't actually conduct an apology tour, he should have. Our pugnacious aggressions over the Bush years have cast us in a very negative light all over the world. Most of the world believes the it is the United States rather than Iran that is the biggest threat to world peace. Obama's less aggressive approach to foreign policy has helped our reputation in the world considerably but we are still widely viewed as the world's Superpower bully. The last I saw, Mitt Romney had 43% of the likely voters in his camp. I would be willing to bet that those 43% of likely American voters are virtually the only people in the entire world who want Mitt Romney to be elected President of the United States.

And why the constant hate for government? People, we have to have some form of government. We have to have police, fire departments, roads, bridges, sewers. Nobody likes paying taxes. I certainly don't. But even though I like my Audi TT Turbo, I also need my roads and my bridges and my stoplights to be able to drive my Audi TT Turbo. We have to accept responsibility to help pay for these common expenses for things that society simply has to have in order to be a workable society. And, personally, I would rather pay the 3 or 4% in additional income taxes that Bush shaved off for me and see the country be put back in a healthy financial position. What good does a fortune do me if the counrtry is going to hell in a handbasket? Out of pure Ayn Rand-like self-interest, if the country is not doing well, ultimately I am not going to do well. Yes, we can sharply cut spending and we should. But is paying a little bit more in income taxes or payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare really such a disaster? Grover Norquist has been oft quoted as wanting to shrink government down to where it can "be drowned in a bathtub." Really? Some commentators have said that the people in charge of the Tea Party and the Republican Party are no longer just wanting smaller government. They are essentially just anarchists.

Not content to stand for election on their merits, Republican-controlled legislatures and officials around the country have engaged in a concerted program to suppress the vote of likely Democratic voters. Picture ID laws, gerrymandered voting districts, shortened voting hours in minority housing areas, not enough voting machines in predominantly Latino and African Americans areas of town. Anything they can think of. The list goes on and on. We are now seeing a revival of the old Nixonian "Southern Strategy" by a desperate Rommey Campaign. If you don't remember those days, Republicans make a not-so-subtle appeal to white voters based on racial and ethnic resentments. Lazy black people on welfare. Mexican immigrants taking your job. You know the story. The Republican Party drove me away twenty years ago. There are lots of sensible older people in this country who have always voted Republican,who think that Democrats tax and spend and give away all their hard-earned tax payments to welfare recipients, etc. But this is not your father's Republican Party, folks. These people are off the charts extreme. And despite what Fox News and Mitt Romney want you to believe, the current administration is not the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. And Obama is not the Manchurian Candidate. In fact, by any reasonable standard, the Obama Administration has been pretty middle of the road. Obama is essentially a 21st Century version of Eisenhower. (And, as an added bonus, he plays golf a whole lot less than Eisenhower did.) In a perfect world, I would personally like to have seen an emphasis on enviromental issues, for one thing. Lots of Liberals and Progressives have been very disappointed by this administration. The Republicans are telling you to vote against an Obama Administration that is really just a figment of their own imaginations.

How crazy do these people have to get? What is it going to take for right-thinking, reasonable people to make the decision that I made all those years ago? Where is the point where long-time Republican supporters finally say: enough is enough.