Rant: Has the GOP Outlived Its Usefulness?

Based on recent political events, I think the Republican party has been pulling away from the conservatives, and in particular, Christian conservatives, leaving us slowly behind without the majority of Christians even noticing. It would seem to me that we are seeing the Republicans become increasingly centrist and, for some odd reason, even bowing to Democratic pressure during a time of a Republican majority. What is wrong with this party?

Think about it: “our” party has recently decided to nod approval toward a Medicare prescription bill… a bill that will cost an unimaginable amount of money to provide prescription drugs coverage to medicare recipients. This is crazy. It makes sense that Medicaid provides prescription drug coverage, but why Medicare? Why does every American senior need socialized prescription drug coverage?

Frustratingly, the part of the bill that might help dodge the large costs, allowing people to go to managed care providers for “enhance” coverage, is just a senior scam in the waiting. Right now, through what my grandmother is going through, I can see what managed care does to medicare: steal it from those who can afford to pay extra for the managed care and are tricked into signing up for it. In this case, the managed care provider called the shots as to how the hospital treated my grandmother and then refused to pay for rehab afterwards, assumedly, all the while collecting the medicare benefits my grandmother paid for through taxes — benefits that would have paid for all of these things!

So, at best, the prescription drug benefit will socialize an industry and bring the government more into everyday life. At worst, it will just feed more money into the beast that is HMO's. Neither option is good, and I can't see why any sane politician would support this.

At any rate, I'm going off track. I'll just say this: This bill is such a odd thing to support for Republicans that I think Rush Limbaugh was stumped as to what was going on — the best he could come up with was that this was an attempt to take a campaign issue away from Democrats. If I recall correctly, he even admitted once to being stumped. When was the last time that happened?

There are lots of other problems with the Republicans, right now. Many support the, I'll say it, evil PATRIOT ACT. Many support destroying embryos for stem cell research. The administration has supported turning a blind eye to Microsoft's behavior that violates antitrust regulations. The administration and congressional Republicans supported the final McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform bill. Colin Powell went on MTV and told teens to ignore the biblical morals that parents and religious leaders teach them and decide their own morals — “forget about taboos, forget about conservative ideas” regarding premarital sex and condom usage. The GOP Chairman was “honored” to meet with an organization that actively promotes the homosexual agenda to show the party's “tolerance.” These are all catastrophic failures going against the positions of the very people that elected these politicians.

I wonder if it isn't about time we started a new party. We've been stuck with the same two parties for far longer than any of their predecessors. I still agree with most of the Republican platform, but I think the politicians within the party are ignoring that platform. Hatch, McCain, Bush, Powell, and Ashcroft are just a few people, all of which I have agreed with at times, who are supporting these bad policies.

I think President Bush still has potential, but maybe it's time people spoke up to remind him and other leading Republicans that it's good if they are [campaign slogan]”uniters and not dividers”[/campaign slogan] but it's more important that they support the policies the people who elected them thought they promised. Thought the party stood for. The policies many people still think are right.

That leaves the question: where did the old Republican party go and how can voters who still support its positions get it back?