Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (From a Former Republican)
Frank Schaeffer
New York Times best-selling author
Posted March 8, 2009 | 04:09 PM (EST)
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.
I used to be one of you. As recently as 2000 I worked to get Senator McCain
elected in that year's primary. (McCain and Gen. Tommy Franks wrote glowing
endorsements regarding my book about military service, AWOL.). I have a
file of handwritten thank you notes from Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush I
and II. In the 1970s and early 80s I hung out with Jack Kemp and bought
into his "supply side" myth and even wrote a book he endorsed pushing his
ideas.) There's more, but take it from me; my parents (evangelical leaders
Francis and Edith Schaeffer) and I were about as tight with -- and useful
to -- the Republican Party as anyone. We played a big part creating the
Religious Right.
In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very
anti-American they are, (the theme I explore in my book Crazy For God).
They wanted America to fail in order to prove they were right about
America's "moral decline." Soon after McCain lost in 2000 I re-registered
as an independent in disgust with W. Bush. But I still respected many
Republicans. Not today.
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. And can you picture the
gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock
slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson's and who now says he wants an
American president to fail?!
With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party --
you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an
image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at
just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of
our country. Instead, 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 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.
As the father of a Marine who served in George W. Bush's misbegotten wars
let me say this: if President Obama's strategy to repair our economy,
infrastructure and healthcare fails that will put our troops at far greater
risk because the world will become a far more dangerous place. So for all
you flag-waving Republicans who are trying to undermine the President at
home -- if you succeed more of our troops will be killed abroad.
When your new leader Rush Limbaugh calls for President Obama to fail he's
calling for more flag-draped coffins. Limbaugh is the new "Hanoi Jane."
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.
Just imagine where America would be today if the 14 to 20 million voters --
"the rube base" who slavishly follow the likes of Limbaugh -- had not voted
as a block year after year thus empowering the Republican fiasco. We would
have a regulated banking industry and would have avoided our current
financial crisis; some 4000 of our killed military men and women would be
alive; over to 35,000 wounded Americans would be whole; we would have been
leaders in the environmental movement; we would be in the middle of a green
technology boom fueling a huge expansion of our economy and stopping our
dependence on foreign oil, and our health-care system would be reformed.
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.
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No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and
reasoning as fear. - Edmund Burke