My younger brother voted Republican until his death because he believed they represented the best direction forward for America and the world...I've voted Republican for national and local candidates since I attained the age of majority (which in my case was 21 since the 26th Amendment was yet to be ratified, although my enlistment in the military at 18 was accepted)...
In recent years local and state Republican candidates have received my support and my votes because of personal knowledge of them, and belief in the policies they represented...The last two presidential races saw my vote go to non-Republican candidates for the first time as I checked off the names for Libertarian nominees, even though some planks in the Libertarian platform will never gain my support...
Some will certainly look on those votes as "wasted" since I knew they had no chance of winning their races, but a vote for any other candidates would have represented even more wasteful decisions as neither the Republican nor the Democrat candidates showed me any intention other than to increase their own power...Today, I look on the national political scene in dismay as no recognized party organization has shown any direction toward a unified America...
Leadership has been replaced by the greed for power and personal wealth while each party has splintered into smaller factions of voters wanting to go their own directions with no heed toward a common goal, and no regard for the inevitable result: a nation with a small dab of satisfaction atop of a steaming mound of resentment...
The anybody-but-a-Republican crowd that has become the Democrat Party is forced to swallow the aspirations of either a barely concealed communist in his last grab at national power before his twilight descends, or a candidate who, had she been born a man, might have been convicted decades ago on any number of charges...The misery that an already suffering nation will endure in the grip of either can only be imagined in one's worst nightmares...
The Republican Party, struggling to uphold its perceived identity as the political home for conservatism, loses a bit more of its grip with each utterance from the noise outlets of the current herd pushing the American nation toward the brink of ruin...Once thought of as the best hope for survival of the American way of life, it has become so splintered as to more resemble a boiling pot of ooze with each fleeting bubble vying to pop the loudest, rather than an anchor in bedrock upon which the American people can base its hopes for the future...
Spearheaded by a pompous, vociferous showman best suited for a career as an unrepentant carnival barker, this group fairly jumps off the stage in its hand-waving, screaming attempts to catch the attention of anyone with an eligible vote...As this octopus slithers toward the nomination, the remaining tentacles scramble to sponge up the remains as the weaker ones wither and fall to the wayside...
The vaunted Tea Party movement is not even a true organized political party as it has splintered into smaller uni-directional groups which champion a select few candidates running under the banner of another, larger political party...Some of these groups are so fiercely adamant in their demands that they campaign against other Tea Party-backed hopefuls who would represent the greater good for all...
Missing in all this is the statesman who puts aside personal gain, and offers leadership to bring the nation back to cohesion, moving in a direction where all can see equality on the horizon, and view it as a desirable goal for all...Leaders who can put aside cronyism, personal animosity and a lust for wealth have all but disappeared from the American scene, and been replaced by those who may believe their own rise to the top of a low mound identifies them as the chosen ones, always forgetting that scum has ever risen to the top of any stagnant pond...
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