Repeal the Republicans

Repeal the Republicans

Yesterday, the country got good news. The job report offered proof that what economists and businessmen had been indicating for some time was actually true. Our economy is healing, not quickly, as it was very damaged when the financial system of the world collapsed. But healing steadily.

I found the Republican response to the news most informative. There were two different approaches. Gov. Romney claimed that good news wasn’t actually good. Most of his party claimed, without evidence, that the President had manipulated the figures.  As a lifelong Republican, I found this reaction too infuriating to endure.

A quick reminder of what faced the Democrats when the majority of American voters chose them to lead us out of the terrible crisis that the Republican leadership had created for us all. In a few short weeks, we all lost 40% of what we had worked a lifetime for. The value of our houses had dropped like a rock. The value of mutual funds we saved for our retirement plummeted.  Three quarters of a million of us were losing jobs every month. Middle class Americans were suddenly learning how to live poor.

So what did my party do? Pitch in to help repair the damage they had caused? Put suffering Americans ahead of their political ambitions? No. Time and again over the last 4 years, they have thrown us under the bus. They have looked on our misery as their political opportunity. Republican leaders decided that they could prevent economic improvement, and in our despair we would turn to them for help.

This is the most cynical, callous, anti-American plot I have seen during my long life. I am deeply ashamed that the party that Lincoln founded, and that I supported for a lifetime,  has sunk so low.  The current version of the Republican party gambled with our lives for personal power. And now, there is good evidence, incontrovertible evidence that this gamble has failed. Now we have the power to make them pay for the extra suffering they have caused to so many of us.

This election is our opportunity. We have the power to send these right wing outliers to the trash-heap of history where they belong. We can punish them for their actions and at the same time allow the party of Lincoln to rebuild.

There is a month before the election. In that time, Americans need to pledge themselves to do three things.  One, register to vote if you still can. Two, vote. Three, chose every Democrat on the ballot. A total purge of the Republicans in Congress is the only way to tell them that it isn’t only Governor Romney that we don’t like, it is their party, their policies, their scorn for our suffering that we will no longer accept. It is time we make them pay for their choices.