Inasmuch as the Republican party has given us many years of bad ideas persued with incompetence, the well-deserved slaughter should not be a surprise to anyone. And you might want to hold off praise for McCotter; his district is home to various auto facilities and adjunct supplier operations, including TRW. If he votes "nay" on some sort of auto assistance one would be shocked.

This is the party of George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush. These two men, with the help of Gingrich, McCain, DeLay, Paulson, Boehner, and their tv & radio clowns, Hannity, Limbaugh, and O'Rielly, plus many more promised much good and happiness, and delivered a double load of horror and unhappiness. In the past 8 years, the GOP has overseen the gutting of the US Treasury, the destruction of our standing in the world, and downfall of our great "main street" businesses. Bush 41's legacy is the start of this. As American healed from his butchery, the GOP harassed the Clinton administration (no perfect but good for America) over silliness elevated to high bathos dress up as high drama. In a healthy party, Boehner would not even be a waterboy. Write about the looting of America by those promoted by the Republicans and you will have something.

My answer to this situation. I will no longer support any
Republican National Committee etc. This means funding or any other help until they realize that other people are needed
to apply what is now needed. I will support financially and
any other way to Individuals who are conservative and
working to bring this party back to reality.

Reagan had it right and since 1994 Republican Senators
and Representatives have done 180 degrees from what the
should have done.
I know it! The public knows it! and that is why we are now
saddled with president Obama.

Dear John,
Lowell Thomas is dead, WWII is over and your stunningly unoriginal hyperbole is an inconsequential wheeze . It's time to put away your Time-Life World at War box set, wash your hands, put on some trousers and step out into the real world. John Boehner, The Maquis and Vichy, seriously who do you imagine you're talking to?

"Combat cells"?

Right-wingers took over the party in 1964 and lost the election resoundingly. Next, Nixon used them to get elected and then spent much of his time ignoring them, policy-wise. Reagan paid more lip-service to them, but also ignored many of their demands. Gingrich and company took Congress, but...you guessed it, never matched up to what social conservatives desired.

Now we're ending 8 years of an administration that listened hard to the right wing on many issues (by no means all). Is the Bush administration the first post-Goldwater one to truly empathize with social conservatives and take concrete actions to further their goals?

Yet hardcore conservatives act as if they're being overrun by moderates or liberals! The Right has simultaneously controlled and been rebuffed by the Republican Party leadership for 44 years.

No wonder they can act like victims as they continue their stranglehold over the membership.

Until the republican party jetson the religious right and neocons they will be in the no mans land for a verrrrrrrry verrrry long time. This country is at a point where they want government to be involved in helping their citizens. The only time republicans want government in their business is to bail out big business, the wealthy and forget the rest. Since when is it a crime to help people get affordable healthcare by having a single payer plane. We now know that Obama won a mandate to help get these things down. Now is the time for bold moves. If he can get these things done it will also help small business and will help people keep more of their own money. This country has moved to the middle left. No matter what the republicans keep saying this country has moved.

Regardless of who the Republicans choose as leaders, they will reside deep in the political wilderness until they come up with some ideas as to how to serve 21st Century America. And no, those ideas do not include:

1. Cutting taxes again for the wealthy, in an effort to give us more trickle down, or whatever you are calling it these days. This has worked out for only about oh, say, 1% of Americans. The other 99% is beginning to catch on and, Republicans, heaven help you if they do.

2. A continuing "war on terror". Republican policies have done more harm to this country than Osama could ever have dreamed of doing. It turns out that the truly scary terrorists were the guys in charge of managing American capital. Republicans and their Democratic stooges who bought into your deregulation nonsense turned these wolves loose on the rest of us. Thanks a lot.

3. Hollering constantly about banning abortion. I simply cannot think of a more irrelevant issue when we are looking into the economic black hole in front of us.

4. Hollering about "freedom". We get it already, OK. We all love freedom and are in favor of it. We agree with you that everyone should have it. We do not agree that the effort to reach this Utopia requires that we bankrupt ourselves. You are approaching self-parody with this.

5. The same goes for "patriotism". We'll all wear lapel pins if you promise to begin thinking about problem solving and lay off the platitudes for a while. We are all in favor of patriotism. We just wish big capital had shown more consideration for their country before they lost our financial crown jewels. Maybe you could preach a bit of patriotism to these guys (since none of them have been punished, I presume the leaders of failed mega business have landed on their feet in some other super-bonus jobs). Sqaudrons of your base grunting out "USA, USA" chants at your rallies is not going to put food on our collective tables and restore the American economy.

6 And oh yeah, you're not still in favor of privatizing my social security, are you?

Finally, since you have nothing positve to say, kindly stay out of President Obama's way while he does his best to clean up the mess you have made. Get back to us after a couple of years of soul searching and we'll listen to what your now bankrupt party has come up with.

Oh republicans, so quick with the nay saying, but mute when it comes to offering solutions. Boehner's results (losing 50 seats in 4 years) speak for themselves. But it's unfair to blame the TARP. It obviously did not solve the crisis, but we don't know for sure that things wouldn't have been worse with out it. But to be fair, no body was sure it would work, Bernake and Paulson were desperately searching for ideas, and Republicans were unable to come up with any. Well other than TARP. Remember it was Bernake, Paulson, and Bush who sold that idea, not Pelosi and the Dems.

How fitting that the party of fear tactics (remember the wolves?) should fall for its own lies (served up by their own Secy of the Treasury) out of fear!

Republicans? An empty party filled with empty people. Aargh!

Wouldn't it be marvelous if that wretched party disappeared? And in its place a truly new party emerged. One with substance, credibility, accountability, tolerance, and a true grasp on REALITY. Yeah right!

Leave room for the destructive policies of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton. He along with the infamous Lawrence Summers, and Robert Rubin, lead the charge after Bush 41 to deregulate and dismantle every program that helped to form this country.
FDR, did not willingly institute those measures, yet once done, they had the calming effect that was needed to shore up the country and start America on the road to recovery.
All presidents since Ronald(the Great Communicator)Reagan, have worked doubly hard to get the regulations on the banking sector of our economy, out of the way, so that the Wall Street Thugs, could rape and pillage the American People and force us to give them a pass and pay for their mistakes and shore up the financial sector. Should we now, faced with the global economic crisis, have to pay more, soon there will be a soft revolution and the people will take over the reins of government once again. Power to the revolting People, not the sheeple.

How much credibility can Republicans have?

In the L.A. Times, Neal Gabler has an article that analyzes exactly what "conservative" Republicans have been doing, tracing their strategy back to Senator McCarthy, not to Senator Goldwater, who in 1964 lost in one of the biggest landslides in American electoral history and wrested the party from its Eastern establishment wing.

What Gabler believes is that, because of this tradition, the Republican Party will continue to move rightward. Fear and blame; rabble-rousing; the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys and Bill O'Reillys; and now Palin. This is the direction the Party will take. Probably because it cannot be believed as the party of small government or fiscal responsibility or moral integrity; all credibility lost in the harsh reality of events; at least not until people forget and these actualities become memories and fade. It is a dangerous approach because it incites people to do violent things, especially as times become more stringent.

According to Gabler, the myth made it possible for Nixon to hide behind and co-opte conservatism, talking like a conservative while governing like a moderate, disenchanting true believers. Ronald Reagan, next, embraced it wholeheartedly, becoming the patron saint of conservatism and making it the dominant ideology in the country, even though he didn't practice it in terms of fiscal responsibility or size of government. George W. Bush picked up Reagan's fallen standard and "conservatized" government even more thoroughly than Reagan had, cheering conservatives until his presidency came crashing down around him. That's how Gabler believes the mythology tells it.

Gabler's thesis is that the real connection is from Sen. Joe McCarthy, to Nixon to Bush and possibly now to Sarah Palin. McCarthy attacked alleged communists and the Democrats whom he accused of shielding them, as well as the centrist American establishment, Eastern intellectuals and the power class, many of whom were Republicans, including moderate ones. McCarthyism became a means to play on the anxieties of Americans, convincing them of danger and conspiracy even when they didn't exist, which he used to build power and support. George H.W. Bush used it to get himself elected, terrifying voters with Willie Horton (and denigrating Dukakis as a commander-in-chief). His son used fear of 9/11 and convincing voters that John Kerry was a coward and a liar and would hand the nation over to terrorists, tried and true McCarthy tactics used very aggressively, and W. then used fear and stealth in pushing through totalitarian unconstitutional measures. The thread continued through McCain and then Palin, probably through Rove (who also coached W.), and I quote from Gabler, "That's why John McCain kept describing Barack Obama as some sort of alien and why Palin, taking a page right out of the McCarthy playbook, kept pushing Obama's relationship with onetime radical William Ayers."

It is, I believe a shame, because some of the original precepts of fiscal responsibility and keeping government out of peoples' lives and moral integrity are well worth preserving. The Republican Party which stood for those princples was a Grand Old Party. But, I hate to say it, those are all too easily trumped by fear-mongering and, I might add, difficult to achieve. I would nominate the Republican Party today as the Party of Fear, as opposed to the Party of Solutions. And, if that's the direction it's going in, yes, it's a shame.

The consistent thing about guys like Jeb Bush, in line with the old Republican philosophy, is to be against something, not for it; to be in a position to scare people, not to advocate good positive things. Putting people and ideas down is the tack they have taken; witness McCain's whole campaign; witness Sarah's natural proclivities. So Jeb Bush starts off by surfacing and proposing that the Republicans start a "shadow government" to watch, and criticize, and follow what Obama's Administration does closely.

What bothers me about this, deeply, I might add, is the fact that it is not being supportive in any way. No one is saying, if we want to survive, we have to work together, guys. No, the implication is that "they" (Democrats) are the enemy. And in this terrible time, when the country is literally falling apart, and everybody is unsettled, these isolated Republicans are settling in to be critical. As if they aren't losing their savings, too; as if they are exempt; as if, should the country really fail, they wouldn't be affected. Quite a blind spot. isn't it. They aren't even pretending to help, to support, to work with their counterparts to make things better for everybody, themselves included. How antedeluvian, how "old school", how traditional, how like McCarthy and all of the Republican demogogues, to stand back and continue criticizing the Democrats who are working very hard, very earnestly, to fix what went wrong with this country.

So Jeb Bush is nothing more than another toxic Republican, joining in the long line of negative right-wing naysayers and destroyers, no better than Limbaugh and Hannity and O'Reilly. Pretty disgusting, I'd say. Stand on the sidelines and criticize while the Titanic goes down; criticize everything the crew and captain does. Disgusting, guys, absolutely disgusting. For more, see: www.ocpatriot-runningcomments.blogspot.com.