Why I Am No Longer A Republican

[Dardedar]

Why I Am No Longer A Republican



March 3, 2013

"When I began writing this I was overwhelmed with the desire to hit something…or vomit. Over the coming weeks that desire has lessened to a slow simmer of absolute disgust and dismay at what has become of the party that I used to love and support. I was once a Republican living in a red state. Today I’m a registered Democrat living in a blue state. This is my story and why I left the Republican Party.

It all started in 2007. I was a 27 year-old divorced woman with no children. I was a survivor of severe domestic abuse. I was single with no money, no home and no plan other than to try and be something more than what I was. I had a car, my clothes and hope.

After moving to a new state with the help of friends, I found a very cheap apartment in a part of town that I still cringe over. My 2 jobs at minimum wage didn’t bring home enough for luxuries like choosing where to live and what to eat. There were days that I had to decide whether I was going to put gas in my car so I could get to work or eat. I always chose work. At least at one of my jobs I would get breakfast and lunch 2 days a week. I could make a $3.99 pizza with 8 slices last for 7 days. I could eat on a can of beans and a pack of crackers for even longer.

I applied to the local university in my town and went back to school while maintaining my two jobs. I took between 15-18 credit hours each semester while working. All of this was possible because of government loans and scholarships.

I went to counseling 2 times a week to work through my PTSD that was caused by the domestic violence I experienced. The church that the counselor worked out of paid for my appointments because I was too poor to pay for them and my counselor said I wouldn’t improve mentally without them.

The biggest fear during this time was that I might get physically sick and need to go to the doctor. When you’re poor, healthcare is something that you dream about. It’s something that you pray you won’t need. It’s the anxiety of “what if” that keeps you awake at night. I went to work sick. I took finals while running a 104 fever. I ruptured 3 discs in my back and couldn’t walk for a week. I wasn’t able to get it treated for 3 years. I lost one of my jobs. I found another minimum wage job. It didn’t offer health insurance.

Basic healthcare is not a luxury. It is not just for those that “deserve” it. In the country of abundance that we live in, healthcare should be affordable for every citizen. It’s reprehensible that I can buy a DVD player for less than what it would cost me to go to the doctor and get an antibiotic. Here in the United States we have some of the best medical technology and doctors in the world. Why do we think that only a few of our citizens should be entitled access to them? Why didn’t my Republican party see that? I was left with no answers."

The rest... here

[Dardedar]

They're on the run...

Beat the Retreat

Two pieces – one by David Frum, the other by David Brooks – speak to the ongoing frustration they and other respected conservative writers are having with the Republican Party. To tell you the truth, my heart goes out to them. You can almost feel their desperation. Times being what they are, I’m surprised we haven’t seen a hanging.

In “Are Moderate Republicans Useless?” Frum reminisces about an era when the Republicans actually accomplished something significant.

Between 1969 and 1983, they repealed New Deal regulation of civil aviation, trucking, shipping and railways; New Deal regulation of consumer banking and finance; and a vast swathe of controls of energy production and pricing. They stopped the construction of public housing, replacing it with Section 8 vouchers. They closed Great Society programs like the Office of Economic Opportunity and Model Cities. What have the immoderate Republicans of the Tea Party era accomplished? Bupkus.

What went wrong? Many things, but start with this: Tea Party Republicans terrified the country. In 2011, they came within inches of forcing an entirely unnecessary government default. In 2012, they campaigned on a platform of ending the Medicare guarantee for younger people (while preserving every nickel of it for the Republican-voting constituencies over age 55) in order to finance a big tax cut for the richest Americans. Through the whole period 2009-2012, senior Republicans engaged in strident rhetoric of a kind simply not used by major party figures since the demise of Burton K. Wheeler and Alben Barkley. “Death panels” and “Ground Zero mosques”; Michele Bachman, Herman Cain and Donald Trump taking turns as the Republican front-runner; speakers of state legislatures praying for the death of the president and a former speaker of the House denouncing the president as a Kenyan anti-colonial alien to the American experience—we could fill this page with examples of important Republicans currying favor with their voting base by behaving in ways that the non-base would regard as reckless, racist, or just plain repellent.

A fairly honest and thorough exposé. Frum has never had any trouble leveling criticism on the GOP.

Brooks, in a piece titled, “A Second GOP,” longs for the formation of a “new wing” of the Republican Party, so that it can be more competitive in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic and Rust Belt states, all regions that are either heavily Democratic or trending that way. Such an offshoot would not be nearly as extreme as the current party has been.

Americans are still skeptical of Washington. If you shove a big government program down their throats they will recoil. But many of their immediate problems flow from globalization, the turmoil of technological change and social decay, and they’re looking for a bit of help. Moreover, given all the antigovernment rhetoric, they will never trust these Republicans to reform cherished programs like Social Security and Medicare. You can’t be for entitlement reform and today’s GOP, because politically the two will never go together.

Well, allowing for the obvious biases that both men possess, my problem with the pieces has nothing to do with their take on where the Republican Party currently is. You’d have to be blind not to see it. The real issue is one of denial. Neither man can bring himself to accept the brutal reality that the Republican Party that once was a major political force in the country and is now no more than a shell of its once former glory, is incapable of extricating itself from its self-imposed fate. [Though in the case of Frum, I suspect he's a lot closer to reaching an epiphany of sorts than Brooks, who, more often than not, is far too lofty and ethereal for my tastes.]

I mean, really, when Richard Nixon is the reasonable Republican in your argument, you know you’re grasping at straws. The sad truth is you’d have to go all the way back to Eisenhower to find a reasonable Republican who wasn’t a megalomaniac and who could add and subtract. That’s not much of a track record, especially when the next stop on the reasonable bus lands you right at the turn of the last century. That would be Teddy Roosevelt. If this is the Party that Frum and Brooks are longing for they might want to set their Wayback Machines before they go to bed tonight. That’s one helluva journey."

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