You may choose to believe or disbelieve this; it doesn’t matter to me. However, I am going to speak the truth about something that has troubled me since the arrival of the MAGA/QAnon/Big Lie crowd.
It is that I miss the Republican Party I used to know and that I grew up studying and seeking to understand.
The Republican Party has been consumed, swallowed whole and re-cast into a political organization I don’t recognize.
It’s not that I am a closet Republican. Indeed, I consider myself to be an independent who tilts more toward Democratic policies than to Republicans’ world view.
I do favor a strong national defense; I generally support nuclear energy; I am a strong family values American patriot.
I also believe rich Americans should pay more in taxes; that government can be an instrument to help those who need assistance; and that American Civil Liberties Union’s mission to embrace our Bill of Rights should be a model for all pols to emulate.
The Republican Party is now run by a cabal of kooks who insist that our 2020 presidential election was stolen from the most recent GOP president; that a tyrant in Moscow is somehow justified in invading a sovereign nation; that we should overturn a standing law that legalized abortion in this country; that conservative judges indeed can legislate from the bench; that climate change is a hoax; and that globalism — in a world that is shrinking — means we are surrendering our sovereignty.
How in the world does one debate with that crowd?
Thus, it is that Republican Party that once stood for principles worth defending no longer exists. The Grand Old Party is being run by wackos, fruitcakes and extremists. What’s more, the GOP insists that everyone else in this great country join them! Those of us who disagree with ’em are the “enemy,” and must be destroyed.
I want a return to some semblance of what we used to have in this land: two major political parties that could debate their differences and then honor the decision of the voters who then decide which side has won the argument.