My party, the Republican Party, has been taken over by extremists and has been thusly repudiated by the American voter.<\/p>\n
The Abramoff scandal, the Foley scandal, and the leadership’s failure to address them didn’t help. But the real problem, I think, was in the party’s departure from its basic principles — that government should only do what people (or local governments) cannot do for themselves; that the government closest to the people is best, etc.<\/p>\n
The GOP wasted time on things like banning federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, and actually grew federal intervention in areas of local government like education (using up a lot of money at the top end of the problem, not at the classroom level where it might actually produce results). They didn’t get very far in the area of decreasing our dependence on foreign oil, where they could have made a change by using domestic resources and increasing research on alternatives instead. They didn’t fix social security, or medicare, or the other entitlements that make up most of the federal budget.<\/p>\n
At the time of my midday post yesterday, the stock markets were decidedly down (foreign as well as domestic), but by the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P500, and the Nasdaq were all up. I think the DJIA hit a record high.<\/p>\n
The world will not end. Actually, having a divided government for a couple of years might bring significant improvement. I hope that the division is such that we will not see a swing to extremism on the other side, but that they will grow focused on a few priorities and actually work together to forge a centrist compromise on a few things that would made the biggest difference to our future.<\/p>\n
As a nation, we have the ability to do amazing things, but we haven’t been performing up to that ability of late.<\/p>\n
How’s that, Doc?<\/p>\n
Afterthought: George Will<\/a> said it better.\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My party, the Republican Party, has been taken over by extremists and has been thusly repudiated by the American voter. The Abramoff scandal, the Foley scandal, and the leadership’s failure to address them didn’t help. But the real problem, I … Continue reading