Essentially, it began when John McCain chose to have Former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin as his running mate. While McCain was known to be a more moderate republican with a history of working across the aisle, his second in command was known as someone who generalized people and had a political love affair with Joe the plumber.
I believe that the Republican Party is a good alternative to what democrats have to say when it comes to financial issues and even individual rights issues. In theory, a republican would allow a gay marriage because it should not be up to the government how two consenting adults go about their life. In theory, a republican would allow women contraception, but just would not want to pay for it. The fiscal moderate conservative who wants big government out of the lives of the people no longer exists and is replaced by one who will not vote to raise the debt ceiling, which allows the government to pay off its loans. The new republican would rather have a candidate whose sole purpose is to beat the president, rather than one who would benefit the country. The new republican is so focused on defeating someone he or she disagrees with that they have forgotten why they ran for office in the first place.
The new Republican Party would rather overturn Roe V. Wade than focus on the children who are living in poverty. Governor Romney has said on multiple occasions that he would like to begin the process of overturning Roe V. Wade which puts the government in the position to tell a woman what to do and what not to do with her body.
But the biggest problem the GOP has faced is that they do not stand for anything. They stand for defeating the President. They stand for doing the opposite of what those across the aisle propose without a negotiation. They do not stand for what the American people what.
The GOP has come a long way from Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Regan and the idea that people should pick themselves up by the boot straps and make their millions.
As a lifelong democrat, I do not believe in the ideas of the Republican Party. I do believe that their compromise with democrats will make for a better country and to get any republicans to negotiate, we need more republicans like the former Governer Charlie Crist who said that he “did not leave the republican party, the republican party left him.”
The idea of a people completely independent of a government is a good one, but one that is unrealistic. People rely on the government and in order for the government to work for the people, we need two rational parties who are willing to compromise and that will not happen until the GOP ostracizes the Tea Party candidates from the political spectrum.
By Dan Clark
