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By Stuart Steinberg (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)
On Wednesday night I listened to the two biggest douchebags of them all—Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani—continue the Republican mantra that Democrats and liberals do not put the country first. Romney was ranting about “Eastern elites” and the East Coast liberal media. Here’s a guy, now from the East after leaving Michigan many years ago, who is worth $500 million dollars. I guess that’s not elite and he agrees with John McCain that you’re not rich until you make more than $5 million. Here’s a guy who has moved from being quite moderate, even liberal on some issues, to the extreme right just so he could be president. And I don’t remember him crying about the East Coast liberal media when they were favorably reporting on his health insurance plan for Massachusetts, or the fact that he ended up supporting gay marriage in Massachusetts, or that he used to favor a woman’s right to choose. Not to mention all the taxes he raised in order to balance the Massachusetts budget. He raised the fees on—the NRA was livid—gun licenses, marriage licenses and driver’s licenses. Boy, that really helped out working people. And, oh yeah, he’s another “country first” guy who never served in the military, had five deferments and then a high draft lottery number. I guess he never knew he could volunteer and enlist like many of us liberals did. Giuliani said that the country would be less secure, less safe and would, no doubt, be attacked, if Barack Obama is elected president. Here’s a guy who got, what, eight votes when he was a presidential candidate? Well, I guess he knew what the American people were looking for. Oh, wait, he was the Mayor of New York on 9/11, so that qualifies him for…what? Last time I checked, his own policemen and firefighters hate his guts because of his failure to provide them with the materiel they needed to protect themselves after the attack on the Twin Towers. He was appointed to the Iraq Study group and never attended a meeting, finally claiming that he was resigning because of his “previous time commitments.” That, in fact, was a lie. According to Newsday, Rudolph Giuliani's membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel's top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said. He cited "previous time commitments" in a letter explaining his decision to quit, and a look at his schedule suggests why -- the sessions at times conflicted with Giuliani's lucrative speaking tour that garnered him $11.4 million in fourteen months.
Giuliani failed to show up for a pair of two-day sessions that occurred during his tenure, the sources said -- and both times, they conflicted with paid public appearances shown on his recent financial disclosure. Giuliani quit the group during his busiest stretch in 2006, when he gave 20 speeches in a single month that brought in $1.7 million.
I guess some things were more important than the war in Iraq and the American soldiers dying there. He was too busy being a law clerk to serve in the military and got a judge to get him a deferment as an “essential employee.” I never knew that being a law clerk was like being a nuclear physicist, or a firefighter, or a policeman. Man, am I ignorant. Did he put the country first, or what?
So, I guess that about sums it up. The Republicans profess they are the real patriots, the true Americans, the defenders of the faith. The rest of us are traitors, would endanger the country, have a skewed belief system and do not adhere to Judeo-Christian values. But, Republicans have never supported the true cause of civil rights. They have never supported equal rights for women. They have never made things better for the poor or working people. They have never supported the constitution. In the end, they just really suck. When I hear them claim to be “the party of Lincoln,” I burst out laughing. They no more represent the ideals of our greatest president any more than they represent the ideals upon which this nation was founded.
Therefore, in response to the Republican Party, which claims to be the only ones to put the "country first,” I have this to say: blow me.
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