After watching as much of the Republican presidential debate as my stomach and sensitivity could endure, I was reminded yet again why it has been a long long time since I have even considered voting for a Republican.
Even for local office.
There they were, the ten white men, debating in the scenic hilltop cathedral to Ronald Reagan. The same Reagan who institutionalized selfishness on the part of the upper classes, persecution of labor unions, decimation of our social safety net.
The same Reagan who countenanced illegal plots to fund Central American revolutionaries whose minions killed liberation theology nuns who actually cared about the poor in the teeming cities and those whose jungle lairs were being deforested by greedy international corporations and bribe-paying multibillionares.
In channeling Reagan, all ten of these white men not only specifically wished for the Reagan-led "good old days," but said that the GOP has lost its way because, well, we're not acting like the scrimping, tweedy bean-counting Republican bankers and investors who got their way in the 1980s.
The desire for balanced budgets is the only obstacle any of these ten white men have to the current President Bush. Of course, the fact that the budget is imbalanced because of an unjust war, ballooning payments to war profiteers and tax cuts for the rich.
And if any of these ten white men had their way:
We'd keep pouring more and more of our young people into the senseless war in Iraq.
As Halliburton would get richer and richer, we'd cut the social safety net even more.
We'd march further toward a theocracy with no abortions, no federally subsidized stem cell research, and school prayer sure to reflect only one religious tradition.
Reagan's dead. And I, for one, do not want to see his era re-launched.
Especially by any of the ten white men I saw on stage at the Republican presidential debate.