(Toward disclosure, I don’t have any Republican “friends.” If someone voted GOP, he or she cannot, by definition, be my “friend.” Nor do I have a single Republican relative. Regardless what DNA might prove, if someone who voted GOP shares my bloodline, I have disowned them; excommunicated them, so to speak, from any relationship we might otherwise share. Such I will not permit to dirty my threshold, nor befoul my air.) 

Even a cursory reading of the “survey” must lead you to ponder whether the Republican leaders regard their membership so stupid, so naïve, so gullible, so uninformed, or so shamelessly evil that something like the above will evoke anything other than embarrassment.

From January, 1995 through December, 2006 Republicans controlled the House of Representatives. That’s a fact, Jack. When George the bushmaster (a bushmaster is a venomous snake that slithers through the grass, by the way.) was appointed president by the Supreme Court in 2001, he went in with a solid budget surplus that so troubled Alan Greenspan that he lay awake nights, anxious that the National Debt might really be paid off.! Recall that Republicans were so enamored of Clinton’s economic plan that not a single Republican voted for it, and that “family-values-but-later-removed-from-his-post-for-minor-ethical-slips” House Majority Leader Gingrich shut the government down in a contest of wills with President Clinton.

In re Question 12, I’m straining hard to imagine the “economy,” to paraphrase the dishonored Honorable Donny-boy Rumsfeld, the one we wish we had but the one we have, has been much of a benefit to any American — Republican, Democrat, Independent, or Nonaligned-I-Don’t-Give-A-Damn-so-I-Don’t-Vote —  who doesn’t concomitantly reside in the airy top five percent such that there’s much left to destroy. Once you’ve suffered wage stagnation, once you’ve lost your job, once you’ve lost your healthcare, once you’ve lost your house and your life savings . . . how much more is there to lose?    

As to “endangering our homeland,” I’ll let the undisputed evidence, how the Bushies so loathed anything that was the least Clintonian that they were not the least interested in the pre-Inauguration security briefings on bin Laden and the emerging terrorist threat, speak for itself.  

Finally, on a personal note, I find Question 8 the most repugnant of all. It suggests what is a total lie: that Republicans over the past seven years supported America’s military veterans. On vote, after vote, after vote, the GOP fought tooth-and-nail Democratic efforts to treat “he who has borne the burden” with dignity, with respect, and with funding for services the vet earned via service to the country. Attaboy pats on the back and laudatory “support the troops” speeches on the floor were of tidal wave intensity. But spend the bucks commensurate with those words?

It’s just not within the smaller government Republican paradigm, and the GOP met every nuance of their philosophy when it came to America’s veterans. Too bad for the veterans they were not corporate chieftains. Had that been the case, “damn the torpedoes” and damn right! What d’ya need, you got it. Hundreds of billions in no-bid contracts that defraud, waste and abuse, that will never be investigated (they hoped!)? “¡No problemo!” Hundred of billions in bailout? “¡Hey man! Weez homies, me an’ you, right! We gotta stick together Bro. How much you need? Whoa . . . man, here, take some moe! Shee-it Dude, it’s the taxpayers so we doan worry none ‘bout that!” Tax breaks that break the federal bank? “Ah, c’mon man! I know ya’all cain’t hardly manage anymo’e with that hundred mil salary. Like, I know: a hundred mil doan go as far as it used ta. So howz ‘bout we give ya some help? How much a break ya’all need? Like I said, weez homies, right?”    

So there you have it.

— Ed Tubbs   

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