Dear GOP:
I think it's time that we have a frank conversation about you because you seem to have lost your way. You're confused and conflicted and, quite frankly, a little hypocritical. You claim to be the party of limited government, but you started a war that you couldn't pay for. You took a budget surplus in 2001 and turned it into a giant budget deficit by 2008. You lambast Democrats for being "tax and spend liberals" while yourselves spending billions of dollars on wars and military build-ups...but without coming up with the funds to pay for it. You talk about small government and staying out of the lives of individual citizens on one hand while, on the other hand, calling special sessions of Congress to get involved in the affairs of one family (remember the whole Terri Schiavo thing?) and continually trying to tell people who they can and can't marry. You bash Democrats for spending money on "entitlements" at home while yourselves voting to spend billions on infrastructure in other countries. You blame Obama for the rise of ISIS in Iraq while conveniently forgetting that you all were the ones who attacked Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein (a man who was no threat at all to the U.S.), which created the void into which ISIS stepped in the first place. You claim to be the party of social conservatism and moral values, while embracing a thrice divorced pill popper as your biggest media star.
Oh, you've gotten a few things right. The Affordable Care Act is an abject failure that, while granting insurance to millions of Americans who didn't have insurance before, is causing many more millions of Americans to have to pay much more for much worse insurance than we had 5 or 6 years ago. But, in general, you have swung and missed much more than you've gotten base hits.
Your latest, and arguably your most egregious, error is hitching your wagon to Donald Trump for president. You started out with 16 or 17 candidates, almost all of whom would have been a better option than the guy with whom you wound up. Seriously, you don't think that somebody like Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or John Kasich wouldn't be clobbering Hillary Clinton in the polls right now? You basically nominated one of the only candidates in your party who probably can't beat Clinton.
Think about it: you claim to be the party of the high morals, but you nominated a vulgar, twice divorced, misogynistic bigot for president. You claim to be the party of limited government, but you nominated an egotistical tyrant who believes that he alone is the solution to all of our problems. Worst of all is watching you twist yourselves inside out trying to embrace a guy that most of you hated a year ago. Watching you try to gloss over or restate Trump's many incendiary comments to somehow make them less offensive. Watching you try to fall in line behind a guy that most of you considered an lightweight reality show idiot just a few years ago. Why? Because you hate Hillary Clinton so much. Most of your arguments in favor of your candidate are actually more about why you hate Hillary. Is Trump a loose cannon? Sure, but he's still better than Hillary!
Instead of sticking to your principles and either nominating a fiscal conservative or at least not falling in line behind someone who represents almost nothing you stand for, your hatred for Hillary runs so deep that you basically have forsaken all of your principles to support what you perceive to be the lesser of two evils. And now, it's blowing up in your face as result of yet more disparaging comments from Trump. You're all freaking out and all I can say is that you're getting what you deserve.
Why should you care what I think? What difference does it make if some dopey, small time blogger in the Midwest thinks you're all a bunch of idiots? Because I'm an independent. I'm someone who sometimes votes for Republicans and sometimes votes for Democrats. I'm the educated, gainfully employed, upper middle class, libertarian voter that you should covet and that you should never have to worry about. But I'm calling you out for your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your duplicity. You should have been able to count on me to vote for your ticket, but you've fumbled that vote away.
So, if the sky appears to be falling this autumn......if your party fractures into a thousand pieces following the election....if you wonder where it all went wrong, just remember that you brought this on yourself. It's not the "liberal media" or the "minorities" or the "entitlement babies" who caused your downfall. It's your own damn fault. If you're looking for someone to blame for your failings, you need to look no further than the nearest mirror. You're getting just what you deserve.
In the interim, I'll be casting my vote for candidates who are consistent and genuine and who actually stand up for what they believe in. Let me know when you think you've learned your lesson and maybe we can talk again.
Thanks for reading.
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