GOP - LOOK TO YOURSELVES NOT ELSEWHERE

GOOD MORNING WORLD

If I am being too political for the reader of late accept my apologies in advance.  It is what is on my mind or hits my fancy.  This blog after all is eclectic writings and certainly I have no single thread consistently every day.  I flit and float from the chaos that is my mind.

A couple of days ago I read a post on my servers homepage that said the GOP was going to look into changing the electoral college as they think that might be why they lost the election.   My first reaction was the current slang – OMG!  For me that means Oh My Gorry or Golly!  Are they nuts?  Are they not blaming others?  Is that not what they have been railing at the present administration for doing for 4 years.  Let us take a good strong look at ourselves please GOP!

Who are we really?  Are we still the GOP Grand Old Party that was established in the 1800s.  It is the younger of the two parties.

THE HISTORY: (from good old wikipedia)

-The Republican Party (also called the GOP, for “Grand Old Party“) is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery activists in 1854, it dominated politics nationally for most of the period from 1860 to 1932. There have been 18 Republican presidents, the most recent being George W. Bush.

-Currently the party’s platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S. political spectrum.^[1][2][3]

-Founded in the Northern states in 1854 by anti-slavery activists, modernizers, ex-Whigs and ex-Free Soilers, the Republican Party quickly became the principal opposition to the dominant Southern Democratic Party and the briefly popular Know Nothing Party.

-The first public meeting where the name “Republican” was suggested for a new anti-slavery party was held on March 20, 1854 in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin.^[5]

-The first official party convention was held on July 6, 1854 in Jackson, Michigan. By 1858, the Republicans dominated nearly all Northern states. The Republican Party first came to power in 1860 with the election of Lincoln to the Presidency and Republicans in control of Congress and again, the Northern states. It oversaw the saving of the union, the end of slavery, and the provision of equal rights to all men in the American Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861-1877.^[6]

-Early Republican ideology was reflected in the 1856 slogan “free labor, free land, free men”, which had been coined by Salmon P. Chase, a Senator from Ohio (and future Secretary of the Treasury and Chief Justice of the United States).^[7] ”Free labor” referred to the Republican opposition to slave labor and belief in independent artisans and businessmen. “Free land” referred to Republican opposition to plantation system whereby the rich could buy up all the good farm land and work it with slaves, leaving the yeoman independent farmers the leftovers. The Party strived to contain the expansion of slavery, which would cause the collapse of the slave power and the expansion of freedom.^[8]

So the history says we were pro blacks, pro landowners, pro business, pro arts and against large monopolies – plantations?  Are we not pretty much the same today?  Perhaps our National Committee leadership needs to be reminded of these beginnings.  This is not what we are portrayed as in the media is it???

We are no longer an all white party as evidenced most recently by Herman Cain and Allan West.  Colin Powell himself a registered Republican was wrong when he accused the party of having a ‘dark vein of intolerance’.  The party has been becoming more diverse.  This can be seen with 2 Hispanic Governors, 2 Indian-American Governors, 2 Hispanic Senators and finally an Afro-American Senator.  The mainstream media is no where to be found on reporting these facts.  If there is intolerance anywhere it needs to go as we the people – the average ones – are not.

The worst thing is we are continually blasting ourselves.  This latest idea put forth by the chairman Reince Priebus to change state laws to reflect a proportional division may have some validity.  Maine and Nebraska already have moved away from the winner take all vote.  The timing is horrid.  The electoral college is not to blame for the Republican loss.  The Republicans are to blame for the loss to Barrack Obama in 2012.  This discussion is of the electoral college change is ignoring the actual problem – our leadership.

The best question I have heard lately was “Why will our President negotiate with the Taliban and Pakistan and not with the Republican Party?’  The answer was simple.  “The Republican Party will give in to the President and the others will not.”  Listen to that GOP!  Stick to your guns!  Vote your values.  Put people up for election who promote what we believe and they will get elected.  Look at 2010 for an example.

We are a fiscally conservative party.  While we need to compromise as that is how we make our government work, we do not need to give in to robbery.  Every spending issue that comes before our congress has the potential of robbing our children of the good life we have enjoyed.  Each child born in this country under this President will arrive already owing $50,000 is the last estimate I heard.

We cannot sit on our couches and complain if we are not motivated to action.  This country is ‘we the people’.  So my action is to let them know how I disapprove of what is going on.  I write our Senators and Representatives.  I write the Speaker of the House. I have no great intelligence.  I read and write about issues from my small corner of the world.

I made a small contribution to the campaign last year.  I am now getting notices of ‘thank you give more’ and one contained a membership card.  I simply cut them all up and send them back in the prepaid envelope with my name visible.  I write a note that says when you begin to listen to the average people who make up the majority of this party I will once again contribute.

This time I am going to include this blog post.  The Republican party is more conservative than the leaders of our party.  I am not talking extreme conservatism bordering Libertarianism.  I am talking plain people who work and keep to a budget in their own homes trying to save some for the future. They need to listen to us.  They are not.  When conservatism is taken seriously in this party again and our candidates promote this we will once again win elections.  It is not the electoral college – the enemy is us!!

…..ONWARD TO MORE MISADVENTURE…

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