Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult
oth parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.
To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.
It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages.
I think you have contempt for anyone who does not believe as you do. You also seem to look at the conservative extremes and paint the whole population with the same brush. Just my observation over the years.
The left is angry because they are now being judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.
There you go again, whining about a liberal doing exactly what conservatives do on this board every day. What do you think of the article? Or is this just bash LJ Saturday?
That article could have been written by my 93 yr old Republican mom who has been complaining about the Republican Party for the last year or so.....I don't discuss politics with her much, we are at opposite ends of the political spectrum, I usually just listen. But she sure is disappointed with the Republicans.
Cutting less than 1% of the budget is extreme? We have been so used to the doubling and tripling of spending that any cut is seen as "dangerous" and "to the bone".
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
