<http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/06/26/ed.col.chaney.0626.html>
June 26, 2005
Guest Viewpoint: The party's over for betrayed Republican
By James Chaney
As of today, after 25 years, I am no longer a Republican.
I take this step with deep regret, and with a deep sense of betrayal.
I still believe in the vast power of markets to inspire ideas, motivate
solutions and eliminate waste. I still believe in international
vigilance and a strong defense, because this world will always be home
to people who will avidly seek to take or destroy what we have built as
a nation. I still believe in the protection of individuals and
businesses from the influence and expense of an over-involved
government. I still believe in the hand-in-hand concepts of separation
of church and state and absolute freedom to worship, in the rights of
the states to govern themselves without undo federal interference, and
in the host of other things that defined me as a Republican.
My problem is this: I believe in principles and ideals which my party
has systematically discarded in the last 10 years.
[...]
My party has repeatedly ignored, discarded and even invented science to
suit its needs, most spectacularly as to global warming. We have an
opportunity and the responsibility to lead the world on this issue, but
instead we've chosen greed, shortsightedness and deliberate ignorance.
We have mortgaged the country's fiscal future in a way that no
Democratic Congress or administration ever did, and to justify the tax
cuts that brought us here, we've simply changed the rules. I matured as
a Republican believing that uncontrolled deficit spending is harmful and
irresponsible; I still do. But the party has yet to explain to me why
it's a good thing now, other than to say "... because we say so."
Our greatest failure, though, has been in our role as superpower. This
world needs justice, democracy and compassion, and as the keystone of
those things, it needs one thing above all else: truth.
Republican decisions made in 2002 and 2003 have killed almost 2,000 of
the most capable patriots our country has to offer - volunteers, every
one. Support for those decisions was gathered through what appeared at
the time to be spin and marketing, but which now turns out to have been
deliberate planning and falsehood. The Blair government's internal
documentation only confirms what has been suspected for years: Americans
are dying every day for Republican lies first crafted in 2002, expanded
and embellished upon in 2003, and which continue to this day.
[...]
While it has compiled this record of failure and deception, the party
which I'm leaving today has spent its time, energy and political capital
trying to save Terri Schiavo, battling the threat of single-sex unions,
fighting medical marijuana and physician-assisted suicide, manufacturing
political crises over presidential nominees, and selling privatized
Social Security to an America that isn't buying. We fiddle while Rome
burns.
Enough is enough. I quit.
Of course, for those that know me and are acquainted with my political
viewpoints, I quit the Republican Party a long time ago... namely, on the
day the US unjustly invaded Iraq.
