When I heard about the death of former Illinois U.S. Sen. Charles Percy, I was reminded of one big question-- where has the Republican party gone?
Back when I was growing up, there were Republicans who really stood for true conservative values but had the guts to take on their own party's leadership, even presidents, when they wrong. Charles Percy was one of them.
More below.
When I saw this snippet from the article about Percy's death, I thought of how much down the toilet the Republican party has become:
Percy's differences with conservative Republicans showed early on as he clashed with Nixon, opposing two successive U.S. Supreme Court nominees — Clement F. Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell.
He was the sponsor of a resolution calling for a special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal and became a critic of the Vietnam war.
He rankled the Reagan administration by opposing the nomination of Earnest Lefever as head of the State Department's human rights program. Lefever had said he wanted the job only so he could dismantle the program.
Where is this sort of a Republican now? Sadly, there are few, if any, to be seen.
With folks like Percy and others no longer welcome in today's GOP, the Republican party has become nothing but a reactionary right-wing organization bent not on furthering the lives of people but maintaining political power at any cost, even denying otherwise eligible individuals the right to vote.
Today's Republican party is bent on policies that are designed to sabotage our economy and then blame everyone else for what they did. That isn't the Republican party I used to know.
Today's Republican party wants to cut down President Obama for the sake of cutting down President Obama while refusing to take the blame for the results of their actions.
I'm glad that Charles Percy had the guts to fight against GOP leaders when they were wrong. It's too bad no one in the GOP is willing to follow his example and challenge the reactionary and irresponsible ways of today's GOP.