2008 Presidential Elections. The year my closed mind opened. The year the national party decided they knew better than the rank and file of the party. The year that began the ultimate betrayal of party values. The year the GOP braintrust decided to pick a virtual unknown and proven intellectually void candidate for Vice President. 2008 was the year I cast my first vote for a Democratic Candidate for office, President Barack Obama.
I sat watching the news and thought "Who"? What's a Sarah Palin? Then she spoke. I saw pictures of her hunting from a helicopter. Then the Couric interview, "What newspapers do you read?" Then her foreign policy, "I can see Russia from my house". And the conservative machine and its cult like followers began supporting this absolutely unqualified person. I couldn't lower my intelligence or abandon my personal ethics to the level of accepting a Sarah Palin for anything other than a party cheerleader. They wanted to put this person one heartbeat away from the presidency.
Let's go back in time. December 2003 my father was coming to the end of a battle with lung cancer. By Christmas the disease and the medications took their toll. I stopped to see him one day just after New Year 2004, my father a lifelong employee for a major defense contractor who knew times were good when the US was at war, said to me "You have to make sure Bush gets reelected". Just a couple of days later dad slipped into a coma and peacefully passed away.
I considered what he said to be his last request. When I voted in November, against my better judgement I voted for GWB a second time. My disenchantment with my party had already begun thanks to the questionable invasion of Iraq bolstered by the reports of false intelligence from a "Chicken Hawk" Bush administration. Add to that the Cheney-Haliburton stories and American kids dying in the desert and the disillusionment kept growing.
2008 brought the long overdue crash of the economy that spanked America and the world just before the election. Republicans, who have forever decried government regulation refuse to admit their hands off approach to banks, Wall Street, loans and credit had anything to do with the predicament America found itself in. We taxpayers began bailing out the economy that by the way, crashed under George W. Bush. The bailout continued under new President Obama. Saved was the American Banking System. Saved was the American Auto Industry. Avoided was a second Great Depression. Basic stability was brought to the American economy by President Obama and a Democratic Congress, despite the Republicans.
Enter America's new terrorist organization, the Tea Party. An offensive group of self appointed conservatives who took the right wing over the edge and scared republican politicians into leaving moderate positions and not working together with the other side for a better America. The Tea Party politician is an American citizens nightmare. They are obstructionist hard liners looking to set back progress and civil rights a hundred years. Their stands on immigration, minorities, government programs and lying about the birth and religious background of the president, show the racist beliefs they hold dear. But as they scream about welfare for the poor, nothing but the sound of crickets when it comes to corporate welfare.
In 2011 my state GOP had local town committees look at the way in which republican candidates for office were selected. For decades candidates were selected at a caucus in the town in which I live. One night the Republican Town Committee met in a meeting that was barely advertised and eliminated the selection caucus. Instead the town committee would pick the candidates to be voted on by the party faithful at election. The state GOP response to complaints was "Well why would you want to serve on a committee if not to pick candidates you wanted". Thus, the local GOP disenfranchised its own party faithful. It took away the party faithfuls voice, it took away the right to vote.
That action by my own party was my final straw. Just 8 months earlier in September of 2010 my daughter called me on the phone to tell me her husband, my son in law was killed by a roadside IED in Afghanistan. My son in law died protecting the rights of Americans. He died fighting for American ideals. America is not Republican or Democratic, Independent or Libertarian. Our way of life, our ideals, our freedoms fought and died for by men and women of courage for the last 236 years.
My local Republican Town Committee soiled and sullied the memories of the brave men and women who have fought and died for our country and continue fighting an dying for us today. Just weeks after their hidden vote this group of self appointed, self annointed, arrogant legends in their own minds had the unmitigated gall to honor those whose memory they spat on when they took away their own party members right to vote.
I saw problems before 2008, but then I saw devastation in the selection of someone as unqualified as Sarah Palin to run for Vice President. Her selection was a slap in the face to educated, intelligent Americans of every party. The fact that Sarah Palin was picked over current GOP Candidate Mitt Romney speaks volumes about his qualifications (but that's another story). The taking away of voting rights from members of the republican party was encouraged within the party at the state GOP level and most likely at the national level.
We now see disenfranchisement of voters is a campaign strategy countrywide by the GOP and its state committees. Any group that takes away the rights of its own members obviously has no problem taking away the rights of the other side too.