An Open Letter to the Republican Party

            I have just completed the process of changing my voter registration from Republican to Independent, and I thought you might be interested in some of my reasons for doing so. The Republican Party is not the party of Lincoln any more, or for that matter the party of Eisenhower. Somewhere, beginning with Nixon, the party lost its way. Nothing that the party ever stood for in the past is now true, and the party has been taken over by radicals and extremists. I can no longer say that the party stands for anything that I believe in, and I doubt if the Republican Party even knows, itself, what it stands for anymore.

            First of all, the party displays an attitude of arrogance. They have said to the American people that the party is going to do what it wants and will destroy anyone who questions them. Their approach to campaigning, for example, has been nothing short of Gestapo tactics. Not once did they debate John Kerry on the issues but relied entirely on secretly funded ad campaigns meant to demean Kerry’s service to the country. I don’t know whether Kerry would have been any better for the country than Bush, but I voted for him for three main reasons. First, he won the debates; Bush demonstrated that he knew next to nothing, and for what little bit that he could articulate, he needed to be prompted by Carl Rove. I want a thinking person as President of the United States, not an ideological robot. Secondly, the war in Iraq is a fiasco (more on that later). Finally, Bush is not what an American president should be. Internationally, he is a joke—a scary joke, to be sure, but not admired or respected in the world community. He lacks depth of thought, compassion and vision; in short, he, like the party he represents, is arrogant and self-absorbed.

            The war in Iraq is a tragedy and a fiasco. Anyone who would lead his country into such a misguided, ill-conceived war is a criminal. It’s amazing how stupefied Texans become over oil; they lose all rational thought and become totally obsessed with Texas Tea. Bush, Cheney, Rove, Ashcroft, Rice, et al, lied to us about Hussein’s role in 9/11. These lies have been uncovered and documented, and the Republicans, through their arrogance, continue to lie about it. The Iraq debacle will be seen by history as a dark time in our history because of the lies and deception on which the war was based.

            Another reason for my leaving the Republican Party is the state of our economy. America is a wealthy country full of opportunity, but only for a handful of people. Under the Republicans, the distribution of wealth has become so skewed that, more than ever before, a ruling, economic elite has been created. More and more wealth flows into the hands of fewer and fewer people; more and more people slip into poverty every year. No one, and especially no Republican, represents the poor. No congressperson, with a big salary and perks, with contributions and bribes from large corporations and powerful lobbies, with exotic vacations paid for by those who expect something in return, can honestly say he or she represents the poor. The Republicans have thrown themselves to big business and the wealthy by creating tax breaks for them so that they will prosper, but Regan’s trickle-down theory never did work, and he, himself, had to raise taxes three times. I use to respect Republicans because they were fiscally conservative, but today’s party has run our economy into the ground. It’s almost as if the Republicans have said, “We know the Democrats will eventually be back in power, so we’re going to do what we can for ourselves financially while we have the chance and then the deficit will be the Democrats’ problem.” Bush’s administration has done nothing for fostering growth, crating jobs, improving wages or improving education—the basis for a good economy—but instead is contented to ship jobs overseas and let the profits fall into the hands of a few.

            Bush’s administration has been characterized by some of the worst cronyism ever. Brown heading FEMA is the most obvious. What kind of arrogance does it take to appoint someone with no qualifications for such an important job?—the arrogance of George Bush and the Republican Party! What kind of arrogance does it take to appoint to the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, his personal lawyer, a person who was never a judge, never argued before the Supreme Court and has no constitutional law background?—the arrogance of George Bush and the Republican Party! Harriet Miers stated that George Bush was the most brilliant man she ever met, a statement which in itself ought to disqualify her from any court, let alone the Supreme Court. Nobody thinks that Bush is brilliant; he has proven that to us over and over again. But this cronyism is symptomatic of a party which is shallow and myopic and, therefore, tries to perpetuate itself by filling the ranks with people who do not question, do not lead and are loyal to a fault.

            Finally, most disturbing is the Republican Party’s domination by the evangelical right. Beyond the obvious violation of the constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state, the alignment of the Republican Party with “born again” Christians is exclusionary at best, insidious at worst. These evangelical Christians have a very limited view of Christianity, a very clear agenda which includes: overturning Roe v. Wade, putting prayer back into the public schools, teaching creationism (under the guise of intelligent design) in the public schools, appointing judges who adhere to their particular religious doctrine and actively campaigning against those who do not. They are intolerant, self-absorbed snobs and represent the worst aspects of religion, and this is what the Republican Party has become. George Bush, Tom Delay, Rick Santorum—none of these people display what a thoughtful person would consider Christian actions and attitudes. If the Republicans stay in power, we are rapidly approaching a theocracy much like the ones in the Middle East which we are trying to destroy. That is not the America I want to live in.

            So I see no other alternative, since the Republican Party is filled with demagogues, liars, indicted felons and obsequious cronies, than to switch my registration to Independent and, try to work to put America back on track and help it become all it was meant to be—a country with freedom of expression, meaningful work for everyone, security for the elderly, honest politicians, the subordination of corporate interests to the interests of the people and respect, even admiration, from the world community.