Barry Goldwater, where are you?

Barry Morris Goldwater

(January 1, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–1987) and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. He was also a Major General in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. He was frequently referred to as "Mr. Conservative" in numerous media articles.

Or... How I became a democrat without changing parties...

I mean it, Barry, what happened to our party?  I know you’re spinning in your grave as we speak, and I for one, would like to apologize.  You see, I’m a republican.  Well, not really, anymore.  I’m a fiscal conservative, small government, less entitlement, social moderate.  That USED to be a republican, but guess what, now it’s a moderate democrat.  See?  I changed parties and never went down to update my voter ID card.

I really did like being a republican, the Reagan years were a heady time for me.  The problem is, Ron started something kinda bad for the party.  This year, 2008, the slippery slope that he started down has reached the bottom, and poor old McCain is paying the price for it.  I kinda feel bad for him, he could have been a republican, but he had (or felt he had) to sell out and hire the likes of Sarah Palin.

Yep, Reagan started the courting of the religious fringe of the right wing republican party and since that time, no serious republican has been able to move without giving in more and more to the fringe.  No talent hacks like our current presi-dictator have relied on the cash cow that is the religious right and gotten elected.  More and more they pander to the likes of Pat Robertson and James Dobson and more and more the Republican Party loses it’s esteem and history.  And yes, I’m to blame, it’s my fault.  I didn’t see the handwriting on the wall and I didn’t stand up for the Republican values that were established with the party.  So now, I’m a democrat and lumped in with all the rest.

With the current president, I find myself embarrassed to say I’m a republican.  I staunchly maintain that I am a conservative.   I have searched my mind and history to find something, anything he might have done that was either worthy of the title Republican or at least, conservative.  Try as I might, I fail.  This jackass has destroyed my party and taken down a pretty decent guy like John McCain with him.  Poor John was a moderate conservative and his own party, my party, disowned him.  These fucking neo-cons tried to tear down a guy that had more in common with republican values than any of them ever  has ever known.  He was forced to pick the mouthpiece of the Religious fringe wackos as a running mate to solidify a base of foaming, power-hungry mongrels who think that the Ten Commandments are in the Bill of Rights.

NEWSFLASH - ATTENTION NEOCONS - Hey assholes - if you want a theocracy, move to fucking Iran, they have it there, and how is it working??

Don’t Romney, Paul and Huckabee look good now?

Come Tuesday, who knows.  I may just vote for McCain, knowing that I’m in the fringe 33% of the people who will do the same.  Barack Obama is the next President of the United States, get over it, NeoCons.  You built this debacle, and now you get to stew in it for at LEAST 4 years.  And dear god I hope you roast, I hope you burn in the very fires of hell that you try to scare the shit out of everyone with.  You pathetic fucktards deserve nothing less for destroying my party and taking away from me my right to vote for a republican.  Obama will tear down every pillar that you have built in the last 8 years and laugh at you while he does it.

Well, Mr. Duncan and Ms. Davidson, you brought this all down on your heads, and for the love of god, RESIGN!  Leave the leadership of the Republican Party to republicans.  Do you think it was odd that a JUNIOR senator from Illinois could spank the living shit out of you?  Does it bother you that Joe Biden, the doormat of the Senate is going to be bitch slapping you around the beltway?  Do you honestly think that this country SUDDENLY all decided to vote democrat?  No piss-brains, when you traded conservatism for cash, you did this.  You screwed us all and I’m going to do more than withhold my RNC dues.  I’m going to actively campaign to make sure you and your ilk are turned out from the leadership of MY party.  I’m going to find every way I can to make you look like the stupid whores that you are.  Don’t think for a moment that this loss is John McCain’s fault.  It’s yours you fascist fucktards, you and everyone else who thinks like you.

Yep, my party may have left me, and I was floundering there for a while, but guess what.

DAMNIT, I’M A FREAKING REPUBLICAN!!!!!!!!

I’m going to take this damned party back from you, you pathetic excuses for conservatives.

So NO, I’m not a moderate democrat anymore, I’m a damned republican.  I’m tired of hanging my head in shame, looking back at the “good old days”.  I may not vote like it this time, but I swear to you I’ll get this party back.  I may live in the backwater bullshit state of New Mexico, but this is your notice, NeoCons, Bush apologists and all you freaked out fanatics of the right wing...

Republicans are coming, and hell’s coming with us!!

My friend Tony provided a counter-rant... or a support-o-rant, you decide...

Tony

NEWSFLASH - Goldwater's granddaughter is supporting Obama.  She also says that if her grandfather were alive he would vote for Obama as well.

Barry Goldwater?  The man accused the National Education Association of being a communist front.

As much as I found most of John McCain's politics reprehensible, at least he seemed to be an honest man.  That man disappeared after 2000.  No one forced him to suck up to the Christian right.  Do you remember Bill Keating and the Savings and Loan scandal?  Right in the middle of it all, there was John McCain's ass hanging in the breeze.

Small government?
The Wall Street debacle (prior to the bail out) - small government.
Privatization of intelligence and the military - small government.
Over 40 million people with no health insurance - small government.
Predatory lending practices and sub-prime mortgages - small government.
And last but not least, that giant, bloated, festering, Sun blotched elephant in the middle of the room, the defense budget - small government?

Less entitlements?  Christ, that empty-piñata-of-in-issue has been dangled for decades.  "Hey look?  I just found 10 people manipulating the welfare system.  Therefore a thousand others must be manipulating it too and the whole system is bad."  The federal poverty level for individuals (one eligibility requirement for entitlement) is around $15,000 a year.  Try living on that.  I don't know what the poverty level for families is.  However, while you're looking that up, look up the demographics of the primary recipients of welfare.  Hell, if you look at presidential records on welfare gutting in the last 20 years, Clinton is on the top of that list.  Unless, of course, by entitlements you are including corporate welfare in which case both parties have been breast-feeding that for long as I can remember.

Speaking of neocons and theocracies, if you haven't already you should read the book Blackwater.  Jeremy Scahill interviews countless old-money Christian fundamentalists in positions of high influence.  They are quoted as saying that they're especially qualified to counter Islamic fundamentalists because they understand how the mind of a zealot works.  Of all the depressingly disturbing things Scahill wrote about, that rings in my head as one of the worst.

I truly do look forward to you taking on the Christian right.  I'll even help.  Of course, once the subject of religious faith comes up, EVERYONE gets scrutinized. But hey, I don't mind being on the hot seat if you don't.

Anyway, Joe Biden is the MasterCard Senator.  Everyone seems to have forgotten that he was instrumental in gutting the bankruptcy laws during Bush's first term.  Everyone except those with catastrophic medical bills they can't pay or whose homes are being auctioned off as we speak.  As far as Wall Street goes, lest we forget that Obama has obliterated campaign fund-raising records, much of which Wall Street bankrolled.

Even if Barak Obama was willing to make the very hard choices necessary to fix the economy, deal with global warming, and put out the fire that we've lit in the Middle East, neither party would back him: "that would be political suicide."

Now how's that for a rant?

Tuesday, October 28, 2008 - 10:55 PM