While most Americans were celebrating the birth of a nation of patriots, the Republican nominee for president, who made much of his fortune sending American prosperity abroad and sheltering much of his wealth in offshore tax shelters, and Republican leaders in Washington, who would make the practice of firing teachers and police the policy of the state, eagerly awaited a jobs report they fervently hope would be bad for America.
Mitt Romney is in trouble. The American people do not like him or trust him. They intuitively sense that he's not on their side. They are right. He is not. And it shows.
While the stampeding herd of the media were dramatically overstating the problems of the president, informing the nation about celebrity divorces rather than demanding that the Republican nominee stop hiding his tax returns for reasons that are obvious, Romney was failing to win the trust of the nation.
In the latest big lie of the far right, while the president was honoring American heroes at home on the Fourth of July, the right invented the fiction that the president was campaigning in France. Since the answer to the big lie is the big truth:
It is time to talk of patriotism and partisanship and a Republican Party that has lost its heart, its soul and its way. Ronald Reagan would be embarrassed by Republicans today. William F. Buckley would be angry and ashamed. The party of Reaganite optimism is now the party that hopes America fails and blames Americans first.
The Republican Party is now led by a man who insults his own father, a great man who believed the people have a right to know about those who would lead them. George Romney disclosed many years of his tax returns because he was proud of what he did, unlike Mitt Romney, who is not.
Mitt Romney says George Romney was wrong. The American people believe George Romney was right. I applaud Vanity Fair for doing what journalists should do, investigating the facts of the Romney finance. I cannot yet vouch for the accuracy of their findings, but I applaud their work.
And now, the jobs report arrives. This much is clear:
Never in the history of the republic has any great party been so passionately hopeful that America would fail as Republicans are today.
Never in the history of the nation has any great party dreaded good news for America the way Republicans do today.
Never in the history of America has any great party so callously and falsely blamed Americans who are jobless for being jobless, blamed Americans who are poor for being poor, blamed Americans who are hungry for being hungry or blamed Americans who are hurting for their hurt as Republicans do today.
Never in the history of the Congress has any leader done what the Republican Senate leader did, boasting that his great dream for America was not putting Americans to work, but politically destroying the president.
While then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) passed job-creating legislation in the Democratic House, Senate Republicans abused the filibuster even more than the bigot senators of the old segregated South in their drive to make America fail. Senate Republicans destroy America's hope for jobs with the same ferocity of their leader's hyper-partisan ambition to destroy the president.
Never in the history of the nation has any great party been led by a man who praises his own wealth with such conceit and claims this as his qualification for the presidency. Even leading Republicans have called him a vulture.
The party of Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan is now the party of "no" that hopes America fails and blames Americans first.
A version of this column was originally published at The Hill.