A perfect description of Republicans and what they stand for...

[chiburb]

At one time, the Republicans were the party of idealists and independent thinkers, the party of Lincoln and Mark Twain, but that party has been bought out by a gang of radio preachers and aluminum-siding salesmen who have demagogued us to death on taxes and school prayer and flag burning and homosexuality, and they have beaten us and given us Reaganomics and run the country into hock up to the hubcaps and thereby succeeded in practically immobilizing government.... We Democrats believe in government as a necessary force for good. Republicans did too, at one time, but now they have become nihilists in plaid pants, the party of the embittered rich who believe that they can trash this country for the rest of us and build themselves a comfortable walled compound somewhere upwind of the paper mill and send their kids to ivy-covered schools and buy the best medical care and dump their sewage in the river and to hell with everybody downstream.
Garrison Keillor, Washington Post, June 1996,