Woody, you "moderate" Republicans have been stiffed by Bush and the Far Right. Your party has been co-opted. As long as you "moderate" Republicans allow the Far Right to decide your agenda, the Republican party is not the Republican party of Lincoln nor Teddy Roosevelt (remember the Republican who was actually a trust-buster and broke up monopolies...Bush and his corrupt crew are the antithesis of this concept).
Your party tacitly advocates the suppression of minorities (of gender, race, religion, and lifestyle), it preaches religious intolerance blurring the seperation of church and state, it has eroded what was once a thriving middle class and is rapidly turning this nation into a third-world entity of haves and have-nots, it protects big-business corruption (Why isn't Kenneth Lay...the Prez's pal...in jail?), it has run up the highest deficeit ever when only a few years ago we had a balanced budget. It destroyed the good will, sympathy, and respect of the world that we had in the wake of 9/ll and turned what had begun as a just cause (attacking Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afganistan) into an unjustifible, egomanicial quagmire of an unwinnable war that drains untold billions of dollars and a hundreds of valuable lives from this nation.
It is currently treading on our civil liberties. It is not terrorism that has made me feel insecure, it is the current administration. By all rights, with the income I make, I'm supposed to be one of those The Republican Party is good for. I've never felt more financial, emotional, social, intellectual dread in my life than at this present time.
The Republican Party (and I have voted Republican in the past) has become the party of intolerant demagogues, intellectual bullies, arrogant and unapologetic greedy manipulators, dim-witted red-necked crackers, and apocalyptic bible-beaters. It once was the party that preached less government...but now they are the ones who constantly want to be in my bedroom, living-room, in my computer, controlling my TV remote, checking out what books I want to read...they want to invade my privacy and dictate to me how to live. They want to legislate morality and conscience. They spew hate-filled venom, declare any dissent as treason, and hone divisive extremist politics to a fine art. Strangely enough, the people they oppress the most...the ignorant blue-collar poor... are the ones inexplicably voting for them.
I don't understand people who remain faithful to a label when the meaning of that label has shifted to become something entirely different. Why remain loyal to the Republican Party when it has not remained loyal to you and has become to represent something other than what it was once known to represent? It is not the Republican Party I grew up with.
During the height of the Vietnam War, there was a bumper sticker that said: "America! Love or Leave it!" A friend of mine always wanted to print his own bumper sticker: "America! Why desert a sick friend?" I think America in the hands of this administration has become very sick indeed.
The "evil empire" Ronald Reagan spoke of years ago has become us. You don't need a reason to vote "for" anyone. Voting "against" Bush and all the attendant crap wrought by his term of office is enough of a legitimate reason. Forget party labels, think common sense. Anything would be better than the four years of abject failure we've endured under this regime.
