The Republican Party itself was the result of a Whig Party split between pro- and anti-slavery factions in the 1850s. Are we now watching again the self-destruction and re-formation of our political parties? The far-righters seem bent on independence from anything but their own delusions. The far-lefter (Bernie-ite) Democrats seem content for now with reminding us that they are probably correct about tax reform, education, and immigration, even if they couldn’t muster the votes to pass anything except gas. Maybe we’re watching the first act in a recombinative drama where the moderates in both parties get something done and the others form their own parties….

nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away, and all your money won’t another minute buy
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
(Kansas, 1977)

Me, I’m feeling all “I told you so,” after re-reading my lament about the party of my youth, first published here in 2011. Turns out, I’m still favoring the ideas I favored then

I cried when the country elected JFK over Ike’s man Dick Nixon. It’s true; I was thirteen and a lifelong Republican, or so I thought.

The Democrats got lucky again when we elected their Georgia peanut farmer, (although he turned out more than OK as an ex-President), and later, a glad-handing, wanna-please-everybody, philanderer who just kept on philandering. And they had Gary Hart and Dukakis.

I voted Republican in every election except 1980 when I got behind fellow Illini John Anderson. I mean, really, a movie star…from California!?

But now, I can’t believe the Republicans are so transparently disingenuous, so obviously obfuscatory, so clearly obstructionist to stand in the way of progress, of moving ahead, of making needed changes happen for the 21st century.

I’m done, through, over it.

This year, I supporting anyone who will throw the Tea Party-ers out of Congress, just so we Americans can keep building momentum and making new laws that will propel us out of the past and into this century.

I’m for:

• Healthcare reform that will give our kids and their kids longer and healthier lives without dissipating their wealth on basic services or neglecting healthcare altogether until they are too sick be able to be helped. A healthy nation is…a healthy nation!
• Small business development incentives that encourage entrepreneurs to start new companies, create new jobs, and innovate their way to future prosperity for themselves and everyone else without fear that their government will choke off their success like the way an umbilical cord can end a newborn’s life. Government should be a source and resource of new business life and not its enemy.
• Real reform in the financial sector, so that we are not ultimately the victims of acquisitiveness, but its beneficiaries. We may not be able to legislate morality, but we must punish immorality that creates ridiculous disparities between the richest and the rest.

I know that at some level the Democrats are the same as the Republicans. But for these times, I’m for the party of President Obama. Any people who can elect such a man as President, coming against, in one act of national repentance, 400 years of injustice and what we used to think was cultural inevitability, then that people deserve better than the endless, mindless blundering of the Republicans, and worse, their apparent war on truth.

I just can’t stand it any more. How about you?