re: #370 WindUpBird

You don’t believe the Republican party can change? I believe it can. I am a Democrat who occasionally votes Republican and sympathizes heavily with fiscal conservatives who have to put up with snake-handling maniacs in their party. The country and the GOP will be a better place if you buckle down, and also endure some sacrifice and discipline, and end the AGW-denying, anti-science, anti-birth-control, anti-gay, mumbo-jumbo uneducated loon wing of your party. Kill off the influence of Focus on the Family. Kill off the Family Research Council. Remove the influence of these wicked, loathsome, and morally blackened, divisive people and you will have yourself a good party. An honorable party. A party that intelligent and responsible and hardworking Democrats like me can be swayed to consider. Swayed to vote for!There is nothing wrong with the promise of smaller government, lower taxes and polices that put more money into the hands of people.

Yes, yes and yes. God yes. I agree 100%.

I’m a liberal and a nominal Democrat. I work and go to school (I’m graduating in just over a month, thank God) and have applied to an MBA program in the hopes of starting next fall. I pay my own way and have never, ever taken a government handout, even when I was entitled to unemployment benefits after being laid off a few years ago. I have occasionally voted Republican in the past, but only for some local and state races and never, ever on the national level. Why? Because of the anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-birth control, anti-gay, religious fundamentalist wing of the GOP. I can’t in good conscience support any of that, so I don’t.

Watching the Texas GOP lurch even further to right makes me even less likely to even pull that lever on a state level anymore since the chances are that much greater that I’ll inadvertently end up supporting some 9/12, Limbaugh/Beck/Palin teabagger or a Creationist, anti-science loon that wants to roll education back 150 years. That’s *not* happening, which makes my voting options in this state limited. With the GOP going far right and the Dems being all but useless here in Texas, there’s not much to look forward to these days at the ballot box. =/

That said, if the GOP jettisoned those far right people and actually offered a sane, coherent platform of real fiscal conservatism, smaller, more efficient government, and leaving people the hell alone in their personal lives (since that’s what small, limited government would actually entail), I could be persuaded to vote for them more often, or even support a national candidate. Run the moderates out of the party and run candidates like Palin, however, and I’m staying far, far away, which is a damned shame.

I want a strong, coherent, SANE Republican party, free of the religious and social conservatives and one that actually has real principles to run on. Why? Because there should always be a strong, vibrant opposition party to whoever is in power offering a clear, articulate argument to the contrary. The teabaggers, nirthers, Limbaugh/Beck/Palin loons, Paulians, and the rest of the far right are just a bunch of screeching banshees that have nothing to offer except to say no. That’s not an opposition strategy. That’s just being a whiny brat because you lost last November.

But James Dobson’s organization is abominable and repellent. And giving his ilk more power WILL BE damning to the GOP. It will make the GOP impossible to stomach for my generation. Us 30-somethings who will be running the world soon. Look forward. Understand what the GOP is giving up as it chases the most superstitious and uneducated voters.

Peace.

Agreed. I hope someone takes heed. It would be a shame to see a major party fall apart because it insists on giving in to its most extreme elements.