By TRB
There was a chapter during my life when great Liberal-minded or Moderate Republicans walked the halls of Congress. They spoke well because they had done their readings of each side of every issue. They were impressive, not quite in the same way as a Lincoln, but their obvious integrity and character set them apart.
They sometimes even believed a Democrat Bill was too conservative.
This is back before the money from the corporations and before the theft of our rights by the United States Supreme Court, the same court that only last year awarded individual rights to corporations that actually exceed those of human beings. In the ruling, the court decided that money was just "free speech."
Since this unconstitutional ruling, the thugs have come out of the woodwork, even the thugs in the Supreme Court. One, Clarence Thomas, is married to a woman who is the head of an extreme right wing organization. It gets the kind of money from corporations Justice Thomas voted it should get.
Imagine the United States actually has a Supreme Court this shameful. Historically, the court has always worried about its credibility, thinking if U.S. citizens didn't trust it, they would not take seriously its rulings. That is exactly the problem this court has now.
The words the Court has given the bad guys are simple: If you have the money and you are willing to give it to the right person in Washington, then whatever it is you want your shall have. Your donation of unlimited amounts of money is seen by the law as "free speech." Further, it is nearly impossible to connect the favor to the money. They have it down to an almost perfect system.
The Liberal and Moderate Republicans of yesteryear are all gone today, leaving behind only three (all Senators) moderate Republicans (and then only once in a while), Olympia Snow, and Susan Collins, and our own Scott Brown, who looks like he might have to vote against his own interests on some occasions, just to keep the seat. Beyond those three exists a dark hole of ignorance and greed.
Today, the Republican side of the House and Senate is uniform - uniformly greedy, uniformly dishonest and uniformly without the kind of character that once made this a great nation. These are Republicans who have to meet, sometimes long into the night, just to decide what they will say they believe the following morning. They are led by an overly tanned man who can not speak for long periods without bursting into tears. One wonders what Abraham Lincoln would think of these so-called Republicans.
That, of course, is the real problem. They are not really Republicans. They are right-wing ideologues who have absconded with the name of a once-great political party. Names like Nelson Rockefeller, who had more money and brains than the entire Republican Party has today, come to mind. And he was a Liberal.
Remember the great Margaret Chase Smith? Olympia Snow and Susan Collins are mere shadows of this great Republican Liberal icon. There was Lowell Weicker, a Liberal Republican with an actual sense of humor. Today, both the House and the Senate Republicans respond to humor the way zombies respond to shots that miss the head.
Here in Mass. we had Edward Brooke, a wonderful man, a Liberal, who probably would have believed he had wandered into the wrong public building in Washington today should he suddenly find himself in the Senate chamber. Brooke was a bit of an intellectual. One can't help but wonder what he would think of Sarah Palin or that Republican politician who really didn't know that the Revolutionary battlefields of Lexington and Concord were located in Massachusetts, not New Hampshire.
There was John Chaffee down in Rhode Island, another liberal with a cutting sense of humor. Like a Kennedy, Chaffee had this sense of honor about him, too. I knew when the Republican Party began to look more like a zoo, he would step away. he did, in a way. He died back in '99, and his son Lincoln took the seat for awhile. But he came home too.
Do you remember the Republican Liberals John Chase and Richard Schweiker? I only bring them up because they didn't attend meetings to "develop" an opinion. They thought things over and they made up their minds. They would have been greatly insulted with the idea that someone else might make up their minds for them.
But this is what we have today - on the Republican side. The Democrats still really do have their "Mavericks," members that are either Conservative or Liberal or maybe Progressive. The news media know who they are because the right-wing news media, especially networks like FOX and CBS, complain about them all the time.
But Republicans today are pure. Pure right wing fanatics. And they are not hiding or riding the plains in white sheets to mask their identity.
This is the challenge America faces today. How do we get rid of these Republicans? I have looked at nearly every scenario and in every one the Republicans are bringing us down. And our families. You have to remember that the politician who claims you voted him into office is someone you might never have heard of if it wasn't for that large campaign contribution he got from your power company that just raised your rates by a third. Keep this in mind. This is how politics works now.
We have to stop pretending that we are back in the days when Republicans spoke with many voices. Those days are gone. They have been replaced by the days of the Republicans all working against us and our families.
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