Since I was a young ‘whipper snapper’ I have been interested in politics…..my most fond memory was in 1956 helping my grandfather send out flyers for the GOP…….

I bet most of my regular readers will find it interesting that I helped with a GOP campaign….you have to remember back in the day the GOP stood for something….not like today….polar opposites.

1956 the GOP had great ideas to work toward….a better society.

1. Provide federal assistance to low-income communities
2. Protect Social Security
3. Provide asylum for refugees
4. Extend minimum wage
5. Improve unemployment benefit system so it covers more people
6. Strengthen labor laws so workers can easily join a union
7. Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of sex

Can you believe the GOP was that forward looking?

You can learn more here…..https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1956

My grandfather liked Sen. Robert Taft because of his basic non-interventionist standings.

Robert A. Taft?

Senator Robert A. Taft (1889-1953), son of President William Howard Taft, became known as “Mr. Republican” for helping to rebuild his party after the Great Depression and the Democratic dominance of the New Deal years. When the 1946 election gave the Republicans control of the Senate, Taft chose not to serve as majority leader. Instead, he chaired the Republican Policy Committee, where he helped plan his party’s legislative agenda. He also chaired the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee and sponsored the Taft-Hartley Labor Act of 1947. When President Harry Truman called Congress into extraordinary session in 1948, Taft blocked all legislative action, inadvertently contributing to Truman’s successful reelection. Taft did agree—reluctantly—to become Senate majority leader in January of 1953. Tragically, he died of cancer just seven months later, at the age of 64. In 1959 Congress dedicated the Taft Memorial Bell Tower on the Capitol grounds. That same year, his portrait was added to the Senate Reception Room, part of the Famous Five collection—perhaps the Senate’s highest honor.

In case you may be interested of a Repub with principles then this should help…..https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Taft#Distrust_by_Old_Right

Those were the days.

Fast forward to today….tell me just what does the GOP actually stand for…..I mean this group did not have a platform for the 2020 election…

The GOP is now the party of poverty, disease, and death….say what?

Republican-controlled “Red” states, almost across the board, have higher rates of:

• Spousal abuse

• Obesity

• Smoking

• Teen pregnancy

• Sexually transmitted diseases

• Abortion

• Bankruptcies and poverty

• Homicide and suicide

• Infant mortality

• Maternal mortality

• Forcible rape

• Child poverty

• Homelessness

• Spousal murder

• Unemployment

• Deaths from auto accidents

• People living on disability

• Robbery and aggravated assault

• Dropouts from high school

• Divorce

• Contaminated air and water

• Opiate addiction and deaths

• Unskilled workers

• Parasitic infections

• Income and wealth inequality

• Covid deaths and unvaccinated people

• Federal subsidies to states (“Red State Welfare”)

• People on welfare

You ask how can this be?  Well look at the history from about 1964…https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/03/01/gop-has-become-party-poverty-disease-and-death

Why would anyone vote for this group of ‘slackers’?

What could explain this…to choose a do-nothing bunch over actually ideas that would benefit everyone….why?

Decades of political decisions and policies have created a massive and growing chasm between the economic and social disaster unfolding in small-town and rural parts of the United States, and the prosperity and safety of cities and suburbs. Many of those successful urban and suburban areas have reaped the rewards of electing largely moderate, competent Democratic leaders. Meanwhile, rural areas have elected Republicans drawn from a party that is increasingly incompetent, corrupt, and willing to engage in outright racism to win elections.

https://www.rawstory.com/conservative-america/

2022 election approaches and the GOP has basically the same toothless plan they have had for 4 years or so……NOTHING.

Given how unfavorable the current national political environment is for Democrats — on top of the fact that the president’s party almost always loses House seats in midterm elections — criticizing the Biden administration for inflation and the rising cost of living could very well be a sufficient strategy for the G.O.P. to win control of Congress this year.

Republicans’ missing 2022 ingredient: A positive and constructive agenda

Sadly we no longer look to parties for good ideas….instead we vote for personalities not policies….and this has aided in the divide and chaos this country is now experiencing…..

In past elections we have had debates between candidates this allowed them to express their ideas to the whole country….but now that may be a thong of the past….the party that had NO platform in 2020 (the GOP) has decided that it no longer wants to speak to the people of this nation….

The Republican National Committee had been warning for months about no longer participating in the presidential debates organized by the commission that’s held them since 1988. Spurred on by former President Donald Trump, Republicans have picked up their criticism of the Commission on Presidential Debates as biased toward Democrats, and their leaders have told candidates to stay out of the events in future races. The RNC voted Thursday to withdraw from the nonprofit commission, the Hill reports.

“We are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make their case to the American people,” Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement. The nonprofit organization was set up by both parties, per CNN. McDaniel said the commission hasn’t enacted the “simple and commonsense reforms” her party wants, including holding the debates before any voting takes place and using moderators who haven’t worked for any of the participants.

Like Trump, McDaniel wants the RNC to have more to say about which journalists are chosen for the debates; C-SPAN’s Steve Scully, who had worked for Democratic nominee Joe Biden decades earlier, was picked as a moderator in 2020. Trump also complained in 2020 about the second debate being held virtually because of the pandemic, and the muting of his microphone when it wasn’t his turn to talk—a decision made in response to his interruptions in the first debate. Democrats have had complaints about the debate process over the years, as well, but are not now urging any changes.

I guess it makes sense when you have NOTHING to offer the country as a whole….only silly ideas that divide the nation into tribes.

I cannot foresee any change in this trend any time soon….unless people start caring about their neighbor and stop worrying about what bathroom someone uses or what is taught in our schools.

The future of the US is looking bleak!

These divisions are tearing the very fiber of this nation apart and sadly it could be permanent….

It may be time to stop talking about “red” and “blue” America. That’s the provocative conclusion of Michael Podhorzer, a longtime political strategist for labor unions and the chair of the Analyst Institute, a collaborative of progressive groups that studies elections. In a private newsletter that he writes for a small group of activists, Podhorzer recently laid out a detailed case for thinking of the two blocs as fundamentally different nations uneasily sharing the same geographic space.

“When we think about the United States, we make the essential error of imagining it as a single nation, a marbled mix of Red and Blue people,” Podhorzer writes. “But in truth, we have never been one nation. We are more like a federated republic of two nations: Blue Nation and Red Nation. This is not a metaphor; it is a geographic and historical reality.”

To Podhorzer, the growing divisions between red and blue states represent a reversion to the lines of separation through much of the nation’s history. The differences among states in the Donald Trump era, he writes, are “very similar, both geographically and culturally, to the divides between the Union and the Confederacy. And those dividing lines were largely set at the nation’s founding, when slave states and free states forged an uneasy alliance to become ‘one nation.’”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/06/red-and-blue-state-divide-is-growing-michael-podhorzer-newsletter/661377/

For god sake stop being a by-stander and stand up for your country and our way of life!

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“lego ergo scribo”