Congress is turning into a sandbox — and Republicans have the most to lose

Watching the recent "debate" on the floor of the House of Representatives over a resolution to withdraw our troops from Iraq, I couldn't believe my eyes or my ears. There, in full juvenile mode, were the people's representatives, engaged in screaming matches and threatening body language that was enough to make even Jerry Springer cringe. I know I did.

Just beneath the surface of this fracas, though, lay a larger political problem for both parties. In a time of war and deep uncertainty in the world, the American people are looking for leadership, sound judgment and bipartisan consensus from Washington; instead they're getting infantile behavior in the guise of national debate. So it's no surprise that they're losing faith in their elected officials. While this is worrisome for the Democrats, it could prove disastrous for my party — the GOP.

I saw nothing wrong with my fellow Republicans coming to the defense of President Bush and the administration's rationale for the war in Iraq after Rep. John Murtha, an early Democratic supporter of the war, called for pulling out U.S. troops within six months. But the behavior of some GOP members, and the personal invective they hurled at Murtha, gave me pause and caused me — and many other Republicans I know — to worry about what's becoming of our party and where it's headed.

For Republicans, all the intense, newfound focus on Iraq that the Democrats and some in the media are avidly promoting is coupled with a sharp rise in partisanship and both real and politically motivated ethics problems in the GOP (I consider the questions facing former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to be mostly politically motivated, while those surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Reps. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Rob Ney are very troublesome). And it raises a critical set of questions: "Who are we, what have we become, and what do we, as a party, stand for?"


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/3500967.html

that will explain everything.

I don't agree with this McKinnon fellow, but I DO like one of his thoughts. I like the thought of honest, upstanding, decent Republicans becoming so disgusted with the antics of the people who have taken over their party that they will choose not to vote.

I'm sure that right-wing propaganda has convinced a lot of suggestible Democrats that Democrats are hard-core Marxist-Leninists who seek to outlaw religion and who seek to force everyone into communal marriages. I also am sure that there are more than a few of that other party who are having long, dark nights of the soul and who are asking themselves if today's GOP is the sort of party they voted for.

He's still wrong about the issues. He claims that Bush took the U.S. to war for the right reasons, and views his party's woes as perception problems. In other words, it's not the policies that are wrong, it's al in the PR. He also thinks Bush is honest and dedicated. He's just another conservative moran.

It amazes me that these Cons don't read or listen to all the ideas put forth by Howard Dean, John Kerry, Russ Fiengold, and the hordes of DU posters who share solutions every single day. They simply choose to ignore our ideas, since they disagree with them out-of-hand.