Republicans Firing Blindly…..At Each Other!

Let’s talk about the ridiculousness that is today’s Republican Party. I think I’ve been a bit disheartened that the things that really matter, like the deteriorating situation in Iraq, the fact that Congress has tossed aside habeas corpus and that we are now a country that condones torture, are not the issues that are getting much play in this election year and that we instead are spending all our time talking about a sexual predator that confused the Congressional page service with an escort service. But you head into an election with the scandal you’ve got, not the scandal you want, so I guess I might as well get with the program and start piling on. At this point, I don’t care how the Republicans leave Congress, as long as it’s fast and leaves them with lasting bruises.

The Republicans have launched vicious attacks on Democrats over the years, but watching them go after each other is much more fun. They all think they’re Cheney now, shooting at their “friends” in a circular firing squad. They’ll be picking buckshot out of their backsides for weeks after this first round of ass covering. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys.

Protecting sexual predators is nothing new for the GOP. The young pages working in DC were of no more concern to Denny Hastert and John Boehner than the sex slaves of the North Mariana Islands were to Tom DeLay, John Doolittle and their buddy Jack Abramoff who worked together to ensure that the Congress did nothing to address the poor working conditions and forced sex trade there. The Republican hypocrites don’t have any moral values, let alone family values, unless of course “my family will step on yours to get ours” can be considered a family value. They talk about the immorality of gambling while they steal money from Indian tribes to push through legislation in favor of gaming casinos. They talk about protecting children from Internet predators while protecting a child predator using the Internet to solicit sex from underage boys. They laugh at the stupidity of their supporters while they strut around so proud of their abilities to manipulate voters and the system. When will enough be enough?

Predatorgate could be the scandal that awakens the sleepwalking supporters of the GOP. It has amazed me for years that ordinary working Americans would vote against their best interests by buoying up a Republican Party that only serves the corporations and rich families that bankroll them, when all they get out of the deal is the false promise of “moral clarity”. The moral values of the GOP leadership have been laid bare for their supporters to see and I can only hope that the rank and file Republican voters are more than a little disgusted.

This scandal is like all the rest in that it stems from the way the Republicans do business. They talk about bipartisanship, but they exclude Democrats at every turn. Democrats weren’t shown pre-war intelligence, were kept in the dark about the NSA domestic spy program and they were shut out completely when it came to the known problems with Mark Foley’s inappropriate, immoral and possibly criminal behavior with young boys going back a decade. This Republican Congress has never been about serving the people, it has been about maintaining a stranglehold on power and lying, cheating and covering for each other have been their tactics. But greed is a complicated thing. Hanging together during the high times is easy, but when the house of cards starts tumbling, the dimes start dropping as everyone scrambles to save their own butts. The only thing to do now is keep the focus on them, stand back and watch them take each other down, either through infighting or from the sheer weight of their collective corruption.