Dear Republican Party:

I'm betting that right now you are wondering what happened? Wondering how did we come so low in only 12 years when it took the Democrats 40 years to betray the trust of the voting public and lose the house. Why, we had the "Contract With America" and we had tax cuts and we had a war time President who had such high ratings just 5 short years ago. Well, I'll tell you what went wrong folks: You did.

You sat on your fat butts and spent like you were democrats. You refused to fight for the principles you were elected on. You broke your promise to the American people and they remembered that when they went into the voting booth. You fell down on the job.

Oh sure, you did some good things, but almost each and every time you rolled over for the Democrats and all but apologized for doing it. Need an example? When you passed the Tax Cut the Democrats took the high road and said "Tax cuts for the rich," and you rolled over and let them get away with it. When the war in Iraq started going less than perfectly, the Democrats said "no blood for oil" and "Bush lied and people died" and you kept quiet rather than call them out on playing politics in a time of war. When the Democrats and others of their ilk predicted a major meltdown in Afghanistan, you soldiered on and said nothing lest you be proven wrong when you should have stood up, argued for the rightness of the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan and you should have sent a delegation to the President and said, you need to speak out more often, you need to LEAD, but no, you kept quiet.

You seemed like a bunch of simpering high schoolers wanting the Democrats to desperately like you. Well, guess what, they don't, they won't and now they have the power.

You tried to buy things for your district thinking that if it worked for Democrats it should have worked for you. You let disgusting tirades of a United States Senator standing before the greatest deliberative body in the world and whimper that if you didn't let him have money for a bridge he would resign. You needed to stand up to Stevens and say "Fine, quit, you still aren't getting money that is needed elsewhere." but no, you took the money and gave it to Alaska via the back door where they could spend that money just the same.

You let a United States Senator pork up for repairs to a rail road that didn't need repairing. You spent, and spent and then when all the money was gone, you spent some more.

You let the Democrats demonize you on Social Security, on welfare reform, on taxes. Don't you get it, Democrats want the power that you had; and now they have it. You broke the contract with America and you did it in a smug self satisfied way that turned off the voters. Oh, the Democrats will be gloating now, and some of the libs/Dems who are readers here will come in and gloat, and you know what, that's fine because you fell on your sword and let it happen.

You will be tempted to blame the Democrats, the voters, the bloggers, indeed, you will be tempted to blame everyone but yourselves, but that is where the blame lies my friends, on you. There will be much gnashing of teeth and wringint of hands on the right side of the blogosphere, many will decry the victory of the Democrats. But you know what? The Democrats earned every vote they got, they earned it by out manuvering you on every front. The prime piece of evidence of this is that the Democrats had no program except "We're Not Repubicans," and it worked. So think on that for a while if you will.

Many Democrats ran on a more "conservative" ideaololgy than ever and they won big time. You are about to face reality. America wants governance and since you showed you couldn't do it, the Democrats will now get the chance. I don't think they can do it either, they will not have learned the lessons of the last 12 years either and will most likely revert to the usual leftish style that has governed Democratic policy and practice for the last 35 years. And in that reverting you will find your opportunity.

But you could also blow this opportunity. You have two years to get it right, two short years. Quit-chur-bitchin and think what got you elected in the first place, and do it again. Otherwise, lean back and get used to the idea that the Democrats will be in power for a long, long time.

Many months ago, I wrote you another letter here. You didn't listen then, maybe you'll listen now.

You have failed miserably at reforming the way government works. And, I'm not sure you even think we have noticed. You are going blithely about your business as though we were too stupid not to notice. Well, you are wrong. Further, you are wrong on so many counts. We expect good government and we are not getting it with you in charge. If we wanted all this scandal, spending like there is no tomorrow etc., we would have kept the Democrats in place in '94. But, we wanted change. You started off right but quickly lost your way.

So, I'm putting you on notice. You will have to EARN my vote this year, and you have damn little time to do it. You need to clean up your act and you need to start now. Not next week, not next month, not next year. Now!

Remember, I don't need you, I can get some Democrats to do the same thing you are doing (and probably increase my taxes too.) But you need me in a most desperate way. You need my vote!

UPDATE: John Boehner is running for minority leader:

Why we lost seats. I'll be talking with everyone in our Conference in the coming days about how we can rebound. If I haven't talked with you yet, I will soon. Widespread concern about the war in Iraq was clearly a factor, but to my mind the issue was much closer to home. Our voters stopped thinking of us as the party of principle because we lost our commitment to and confidence in our core principles. We fell into the trap of exploiting the marginal advantages of majority control instead of constantly advancing those principles. We got used to talking with those whom we'd already convinced instead of persuading the unpersuaded. We got used to playing not to lose instead of playing to win. And somehow, we grew to accept the notion that we were entitled to continued majority control, instead of having to constantly earn it.

Posted at 01:17 AM | Comments (33) | Add Comment
Post contains 1179 words, total size 7 kb.