the Republican Party or Help! I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up
The Republican party was formed in the 1850s primarily in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that opened possibility of expanding slavery to new territories. The original founders of the Republican Party were anti-slavery Whigs and Free Soil Democrats based on "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men" ideology and a radical vision of modernization based on higher education, railroads, banking, industry and cities.
Republicans argued that free market labor was infinitely superior to slavery.
The basic idea of the Republic was a rule by law in which individual liberties could not be taken from a person without due process or regardless of popular whim.
Republican foreign policy was almost isolationist. They wanted nothing to do with foreign wars and saw the entanglements of treaties as a threat to peace and prosperity.
This was the party of Lincoln. A noble and progressive thing that fueled the fire of American growth and commerce.
So... If I may be so bold as to ask: What the f**k happened?
How did the party of individual liberties become the lap dog of the religious right?
How did the party synonymous with isolationism become the party of preemptive and protracted wars?
How did the party of progressives that championed education become populated with religious fanatics that believe in creationism?
How did the party of fiscal conservatism become the party of record setting deficits?
It's a long a circuitous route that milked the Red Scare in the fifties and went south in the sixties to court racists. In the seventies the GOP was tainted by Nixon, Watergate and Vietnam so it reached out to religious leaders and embraced "family values" and Reagen in the eighties.
In their whoring for votes, closeted homosexual politicians ran on the fear of AIDS and gay bashing courting the religious right and the votes of a broad coalition of Christian and Mormon denominations nation wide.
The failed Bush Administration of 2000-08 (unpopular wars, economic malaise) brought the GOP crashing to earth in one of the most crushing nationwide defeats in modern history.
However- the lackluster performance of the Obama Administration and the democratic parties big spending policies, big money backers and elitist leanings have soured quickly.
Republicans are set to make a major comeback in the mid-terms and Obama is pushing Bush's unpopularity numbers.
The big question is has the GOP learned anything? I'm not sure that they have. Running as the opposition is a hell of a lot easier than actually leading and taking the heat for making decisions.
I would suggest that if they really wanted to make an impact, if they really wanted to lead the country forward, the answer in in thier past.
The progressive ideas on which the republican party was founded are every bit as alive and vital today as they were in the 1850s. Probably more so. At some point in the past, we quit building America and ever since then we have gotten progressive smaller: smaller as a player on the world stage and smaller as an economy. We have gone from an industrial superpower to a fast-food service economy without enough jobs or economic where with all to drive the federal behemoth of a government that both parties have built.
It is time for a radical change in direction that changes our course from just another socialist nanny state to a nation ready to meet the future. Just like the 1850s platform vision of modernization based on higher education, railroads, banking, industry and cities, we need a new agenda for the next century that casts aside the trappings of the old world and its conflicts and leverages the power of our scientific and technological base.
America can be that shining city on the hill again but republicans can not do it by pandering to peoples fear and bigotry. Republicans need to rediscover the ideals that they were founded on.
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