A View From Left Field: Republicans Eat Their Own

I don’t know what it is, but the Republicans have a peculiar faculty for eating their own. After sampling their flavors of the month this presidential season, namely Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, Santorum and now Romney, they proceeded to “throw them under the bus.” While they debate on which types of capitalism are most offensive, I for one, wish to thank them for making this important debate public.

As the nation watches this melee, I can’t help wondering how anyone could support a party that is so disrespectful to its family members. Republicans have skewed so far to the right that they provide little room for anyone. To belong, you must declare God the answer to all things, and desire to shrink government to such a small size that, as Grover Norquist succinctly put it, “it can be drowned in a bathtub.”

The wealth in this country is increasingly collecting in the coffers of the top 1 percent, and, I might add, to the detriment of 99 percent of the rest of us. Like it or not, we are in a class warfare struggle and most of us are losing. The blame can be squarely laid at the feet of our unfair tax code. Follow the Republican agenda of less and less taxes and watch as our decline gets precipitously worse.

Quietly the GOP has sought to privatize everything … our military, our schools, our social programs and our retirement. Take away the legitimate function of government and you have a free-for-all. Maybe we can start wearing loin cloths, carry big sticks and return to a cave mentality.

We live in precarious times and our problems demand forward-thinking solutions. Let’s grow beyond gay bashing, Roe vs. Wade and theocracy instead of democracy. Besides, these issues have already been settled legally.

Our nation needs to switch focus and compete more effectively in an ever-challenging world. If we hadn’t knuckled under to greed for more profit, the world wouldn’t be selling us products that we can very ably produce for ourselves. Also, unemployment in the U.S. would be much lower and our national debt would be smaller or non-existent.