There is Always Hope...

This article is striking because it is written by a former Republican power player who recently left that party in disgust. The whole article should be read, but I just posted part of it here. This guy was one as tight with the Republican party as anyone, and even worked to get McCain elected. He has since rejected the dark side and has come into the light. Here's an excerpt:

Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (From a Former Republican)

"You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the "architect" America just hired -- President Obama -- to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created...

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party...

Republicans are today's fifth column sabotaging American renewal. President Obama has been in office barely 45 days and the Republican Party has the nerve to blame him for the economic and military cataclysm he inherited. I say economic and military cataclysm because without the needless war in Iraq that you all backed we would not be in the economic mess we're in today. If that money had been spent here at home on renovating our infrastructure, taking us toward a green economy, putting our health-care system in order we'd be a very different situation.

For the party that created our crises of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks... to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene.

After Obama was elected, you Republican leaders had a unique last chance to send a patriotic message of unity to the world -- and to all Americans. You could have backed our president's economic recovery plan. Since we all know that half of our problem is one of lost confidence and perception, nothing would have done more to calm the markets and project resolve and confidence than if you had been big enough to take Obama's offered hand and had work with him -- even if you disagreed ideologically. You had the chance to put our country first. You utterly failed to rise to the occasion.

The worsening economic situation is your fault and your fault alone. The Republicans created this mess through 8 years of backing the worst president in our history and now, because you put partisan ideology ahead of the good of our country, you have blown your last chance to redeem yourselves. You deserve the banishment to the political wilderness that awaits all traitors." Frank Schaeffer is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back Now.

One of the reasons I am posting this is that we are beginning to hear a lot of rightie-tighties saying that "the economy was just fine before the Democrats took over" (a local blog friend will recognize that one), and basically blaming the left and Democrats for all of America's current problems.

Now, there aren't many people left who have read my blog for the 5 years or so that it has been going, but one of my earliest and truest things obsrvations has been the inevitable pattern where Republicans massively screw things up, and the rest of us have to clean up the mess. I say "the rest of us" because there are more than just Democrats who have to work to repair the damage left by the Repukes.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with the world: If one of them can see the light, there is hope.