I’m a prime target for the Republicans.
I know this, because my post-election mailbox has recently been chock-full of invitations to Republican inaugurations (for a price, of course), and other solicitations for Republican causes. Many of these solicitations are far from tentative – they presume that I am committed to their party. No doubt their direct-mail computers have taken note of my zip code (affluent), profession (known to lean right), and past support for individual Republican candidates.
But these days I’m not buying.
I have been scared left, in the sense that certain crime prevention programs have tried to use prison inmates to detail the grim realities of prison life to young delinquents, in order to "scare them straight." I have seen what the Republicans have done with power these past years, and I find it deeply troubling.
Although I don't usually take political direction from professional athletes, I think former basketball star Charles Barkley expressed the point most succinctly when he said "I was a Republican, until they lost their minds."
Now, I was never a Republican. Over the years, my official party affiliation has cycled between Independent and Democrat, depending on circumstances at the time. I have lived in red states, and I have lived in blue states. I have supported Republicans in blue states, and Democrats in red states. Mostly I tried to support the candidate who I thought would do the best job.
This moderate, centrist, nonpartisan stance made sense to me in a world where I thought that both parties were in basic agreement on the fundamental tenets of our democracy.
Such a stance makes sense to me no longer, because I have reluctantly concluded that my underlying assumption no longer holds.
The actions of the Republican Party over the past decade have convinced me (and apparently a number of others) that they have been taken over by a coalition of forces who share a basic mistrust of democracy, and a disdain for its rules and institutions. These forces include, among others, evangelical theocrats, authoritarian militarists, corporate apologists, and any number of cynical opportunists.
Under the sway of this anti-democracy cabal, the Republican Party has thrown over nearly all of their traditional values – small government, less intrusion into private lives, integrity in public service, racial justice, the rule of law, the list goes on and on – in the naked pursuit of power and money.
Under Republican rule, our standing among nations has been damaged, perhaps irrevocably, by a war of aggression in violation of multiple international treaties; and further damaged by their justification of kidnapping and torture as legitimate tactics, in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
This Republican administration, with the concurrence of the Republican Congress, has put forward a theory that the President is above the law, and may break it (warrantless wiretaps), change it (signing statements), or ignore it at his whim.
Under Republicans, deficit spending has soared out of control, and both our budget deficit and our trade deficit has been allowed to approach levels, as a percentage of GDP, more commonly associated with third-world countries under IMF receivership than with the putatively richest nation on earth.
Under Republicans, government corruption, cronyism, incompetence, and the manipulation of the appointment process for political ends has likewise brought us into depths more usually plumbed by banana republics than by a great nation.
Disturbingly, I see little evidence that the Republican Party is coming to its senses. George Bush seems immune to advice that he doesn’t want to hear, and most of the Congressional Republicans who survived the Democratic sweep this fall appear to represent the hard core of the authoritarian right.
When the Republicans regain their sanity, and become again a force for fiscal prudence and the protection of individual liberties, I will again support (selected) Republicans.
Until then, I am scared left, and refuse to feed the beast that threatens to devour the democracy that I cherish.