Republicans: Party of the School Yard Bully

I have another right-wing rant in my inbox this evening. This one treating Arlen Specter like the popular kid who decided to be friends with the geeks. It's called ostracizing those with whom you don't agree. The Republicans have turned into the party of the school yard bully. "We're taking our ball and going home!" That and when someone doesn't do something the way you want them to, you have to turn on them and tell the whole school that they're really a whore who slept with everyone. It's so fucking immature. I feel like I'm back in high school when I read this shit.

As we learned today, U.S. Senator Arlen Specter has decided become a Democrat in the face of a seemingly insurmountable bid for re-election next year in Pennsylvania... Even before his announcement today, Senator Specter's political future was in grave danger, with recent polls showing him trailing former U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey by more than 20 points.

After he crossed party lines to support President Obama's massive $787 billion "stimulus" package, Senator Specter conceded that his vote caused "an enormous political problem for me," yet argued it was a "matter of necessity." His purported willingness to put politics aside for the good of our country ring especially hollow in light of his decision today.

While we are disappointed that Senator Specter has put personal ambition ahead of principles, we are confident that the Keystone State will reject this posturing and elect a new Republican Senator who will stand by his word next year. The fact remains that Pennsylvanians are looking for principled leadership, not political opportunism.

Nevertheless, today's news raised the stakes for all Americans. President Obama and the Democratic Congress have spent more in the first 100 days than what was spent on the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War and Katrina combined. And you and I, along with our children and grandchildren, are going to pay this bill. Senator Specter has chosen to enable this runaway spending by joining the Democratic Party...

First of all, let me say I hold no idealist view of Specter's reasons for defecting to the Democrats. I'm sure that the reasons are probably self serving, but what politician isn't self serving? This is like the pot calling the kettle black. And Specter pointed out a very important thing today, and that was that the Republican party has moved further and further to the right. They have embraced the xenophobic, homophobic, religious fanatics, and that's pretty much what's left right now in their party. I want to point out that the Republicans are one hair shy of outright fascism, and the Democrats aren't even on the left, they're all moderate. They're pro-Corporate at the expense of the people. The only good thing about the Democrats is that they do want the government to stay out of our private lives, which is what the Republicans are *supposed* to be for, before they were hijacked by the Moral Majority... I suppose they're the Moral Minority now.

Secondly, who the fuck do these people think they are taking the Democrats to task for spending money on the economy and infrastructure while saying it's costing more than the two wars we're fighting and the clean up from Katrina. The stupid pricks didn't have to go along with the wars. I'm sure they'll try to blame that on Obama eventually too. We'd still have all that money and hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive, if we hadn't gone off to wage war in Iraq because Saddam flipped G.W.'s daddy off. The Republicans think it's okay to blow a huge wad of cash on killing people, but improving the lives of their constituents? Not on your life.