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Edited on Sat Apr-29-06 09:59 PM by NanceGreggs
To Whom It May Concern
By Nancy Greggs
This missive goes out to my fellow Americans in the Republican party, in a spirit of bi-partisanship – because when I say I want to be a Uniter-Not-A-Divider, I actually mean it.
I realize that the 2006 mid-terms, as well as the 2008 presidential election, are already lost for you people. But as a patriotic American, I thought I’d reach across the aisle, as they say, and give you guys a few pointers on where you’ve gone wrong.
The obvious place to start is the present state of the nation, where your party has an unquestionable stranglehold on the Congress, Senate and White House. Simply put, that means that everything currently going wrong – Iraq, the economy, the national debt, job losses, etc. – belong exclusively to you. In future, you might consider promoting a Democratic majority in one of these areas, just so you can convince voters that they have someone to blame other than yourselves.
You might want to reconsider some of the titles you endow on your elected officials – and ‘Compassionate Conservative’ comes to mind right off the top. If you’re going to promote that kind of rhetoric, you should give some serious thought to the idea that people actually expect their elected officials to live up to the bumper-stickers.
As amazing as it may seem in retrospect, the fact that G.W. Bush has plunged millions of Americans into poverty while handing out tax cuts to wealthy individuals and corporations has been perceived as something a little short of compassion. As for being conservative, those national debt numbers have a pesky penchant for showing up at the most inconvenient times. (And ix-nay on the oto-phopnay shots of Mr. Compassionate partying while an entire American city is underwater. You’d be AMAZED at how many Americans actually get jazzed-up about that kind of thing!)
Another word to the wise, if I may? If you’re going to constantly refer to one of your own as a ‘presidential hopeful’, you might give some thought to choosing someone who isn’t under investigation for, let’s say – strictly by way of example, of course – stock fraud, as well as fraud involving charitable donations that found their way into the bank accounts of said Mr. Presidential Hopeful’s family members. It’s bad enough when the aforementioned facts rear their ugly head in the press, but when that SAME ‘presidential hopeful’ has also made a fool of himself by video-diagnosing a brain-dead woman as ‘alert and cognitive’ – well, you can see the uphill battle you’re leading yourselves into there.
I realize it will take some doing, and a lot of your ‘best and brightest’ will fall by the wayside as a result, but doing a quick count of who is under investigation or indictment, or is likely to be in the near future, could save you a lot of heartache when choosing viable candidates in future.
There’s also this ‘Glass House’ theory that seems to take on a life of its own, and you would do yourselves a service by being on the lookout for that syndrome on a regular basis. I’m talking about the ‘honesty in government’ stand taken by your party members who wind up going to prison for taking bribes, or the ‘bringing decorum back to D.C. politics’ rants by people who tell their political colleagues to go f*ck themselves (hey, I’m not naming names, but you guys are savvy enough to put two and two together, right?). Just doesn’t sit well with the average voter, and forewarned is forearmed.
Now, I hate to even broach the topic, but you guys have GOT to be more careful with the ‘Christian’ vote. Those whacko Jesus followers may get on board for things like anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage legislation, but when you blatantly promote TORTURING people, they tend to be on the squeamish side. It could cost ya – just sayin’. And once they’re off on that tangent, they start bringing up things like feeding the poor, caring for the sick, sheltering the homeless – man, you REALLY don’t want to GO there, not with YOUR track record.
You’ve also got to be a little more foresighted, my friends, if you’re ever going to get one of your own elected to anything higher than dog catcher in the foreseeable future. Voters, as you undoubtedly know by now, can be real nit-pickers when it comes to things like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. You just CAN’T go tossing things in the garbage like due process of law, right to legal counsel, search warrants – yadda yadda. I know, I know – some people can be so hard-nosed about that kind of crapola. So the next time you think about promoting one of your own for the presidency, you might take that crazy mindset into consideration.
I want to be diplomatic here, but maybe it’s better to just throw the next point squarely onto the table: Yes, intellect matters. As old fashioned as it may sound, SOME voters think the president of the United States should be able to speak English coherently. It’s pretty old-school, I know, but a lot of people can’t wrap their tongues around words like ‘misunderestimate’, nor their minds around concepts like ‘putting food on your family’.
While it may seem quaint, a lot of citizens would rather their president DID NOT make an idiot of himself in international settings. So when you’re thinking in terms of who to run in your primaries next time around, being able to tell the difference between the name of one country and another might be just the thing to separate the wheat from the chaf, if you get my meaning.
I realize how unfair it is to bring up past mistakes, but like they say, if you don’t LEARN from the past – well, you know the rest. But you might want to think before you speak when it comes to things like IMPEACHMENT. If I can be blunt about it (because hey, we’re talking amongst friends here, right?) that’s one thing that will really come back to bite you in the ass.
If you’re going to get on the impeachment bandwagon over a sexual act between consenting adults, you gotta figure that things like lying the country into an unwinnable war that cost billions of dollars and thousands of casualties is going to look rather GARGANTUAN by comparison. But you know that now, right? ‘Nuff said.
And now we come to the Big Kahuna of political no-no’s: Good God, WHATEVER you do, do NOT treat your own supporters the same way you treat the opposition!
Honestly, people, I would have thought you knew this by now – but I’ve got to cut you some well-deserved slack here. You’ve been awfully busy lately, what with trying to come up with excuses as to why the country is in the sorry state it’s in. So I guess some really important things got glossed over in the chaos and panic.
You can’t expect the people who voted for you and supported you from day one to pay the SAME price at the gas pump as the guy who voted AGAINST you, and be happy about it! You CANNOT outsource the job of a Republican voter along with the job of his Democratic co-worker. You CANNOT pull the plug on a Republican grandma’s prescription drugs along with her Democratic bingo competitor’s! Before the next election cycle, you have to develop some kind of secret handshake, or maybe a special de-coder ring, so that you Republicans can recognize each other. Otherwise, voters are just going to figure out that you’re in it for YOURSELVES, and not for THEM – and that’s a sad day, my friends, as your recent poll numbers have shown.
Okay, I’ve said my piece. I hope you all take these friendly reminders in the spirit in which they were given.
Now, let’s get out there and have ourselves a mid-term election this November, and a presidential election in 2008! I know you won’t exactly be biting at our heels this time around – but hey, in a decade or two, the American citizenry might have forgotten what’s been going on during this administration, and they could be forgiving enough to give you guys another kick at the can!
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