You can run, GOP - but you can't hide!

NanceGreggs

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Sat Apr-08-06 09:16 PM
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You can run, GOP - but you can't hide!

You Can Run, GOP - But You Can’t Hide

By Nancy Greggs

Abraham Lincoln, the president you are so fond of calling yourselves the party of, said it best. “You can’t fool all of the people, all of the time.” And sadly for you, the time of reckoning is now. It was inevitable, and you should have seen it coming.

Whoever coined the phrase, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” obviously never met a Republican voter living the nightmare you have created. A spurned woman’s wrath pales in comparison to the anger now being felt by those who believed your promises and your rhetoric, only to realize they have been betrayed.

And because – as you have never missed an opportunity to point out – you control the White House, the Congress and the Senate, there is no one else to pass the buck to, no one else to take the blame.

You broke it; you bought it. The disaster in Iraq, the desecration of our environment, the rising national debt, the faltering economy – all yours, every last bit of it. And all the spinmeisters in the world cannot untangle you from the noose you have so carefully, albeit inadvertently, placed around your own necks.

You promised your supporters protection. They’ve seen your response to Katrina. They now know you cannot keep them safe in the aftermath of a predictable natural disaster, no less a terrorist attack which, as you have unfailingly reminded them, is inevitable and will come without warning.

You assured your constituents that you were the party of fiscal responsibility. They’ve seen the national debt rise to unprecedented heights. They’ve seen their hard-earned tax dollars funneled into the coffers of Halliburton, the pockets of the wealthy, the accounts of the oil conglomerates. They’ve watched you debate million-dollar bridges-to-nowhere, while schools and hospitals struggle to keep financially afloat.

You promised your voters victory in Iraq, and triumph in the War on Terror. They’ve seen their soldiers come home with broken bodies and broken minds; they’ve seen the caskets you’ve tried so to hard to keep from view. They’ve seen the terror in the eyes of Iraqi children, and the suffering of the people you’ve allegedly liberated.

You held yourselves out to moral citizens as the guardians of family values. They’ve watched you gut social programs that feed hungry children and shelter the homeless, that offer assistance to the poorest among us. They’ve read about the raises you’ve voted for yourselves time and again, while they struggle to provide for their own families in the face of the rising prices and shrinking paycheques caused by the very policies you’ve endorsed.

You sold yourselves to your trusting followers with promises of bringing integrity and honesty back to Washington. They’ve seen the nightly news reports about how your political favours are available to the highest bidder. They’ve witnessed your fellow party members breaking the laws of our land for personal gain – or, worse yet, for political revenge. They’ve heard your president say that he is not accountable to them, nor to anyone, because he is above the very law he has sworn to protect.

You identified yourselves to people-of-faith as good Christians. They’ve seen the photos from Abu Ghraib. They know that good Christians, nor anyone with an ounce of humanity, would never countenance such barbarity, no less condone it. Even the most hard-hearted of your supporters have been reduced to tears by what they have seen, and by what you have allowed our country to become.

If you look at your flagging poll numbers, and wonder where your supporters have gone, I can tell you where to find them.

They’re on the unemployment lines, thanks to your support of the outsourcing of their jobs. They’re in the waiting rooms of local free clinics with their sick children, because you have made health care insurance a luxury beyond their grasp. They’re busy trying to find prescription medicine for their elderly parents, because you have protected the profits of the pharmaceutical industry rather than protect our most vulnerable citizens.

Some of them are homeless, because your policies have plunged them into poverty. Some of them are at funerals, burying sons and daughters who lost their lives fighting for what you call freedom in the Middle East; soldiers who died for lack of a few hundred dollars worth of body armour, while billions of dollars disappeared into the pockets of the war profiteers you handed no-bid contracts to with a wink and a knowing nod.

As the country goes to the polls this November, and again in 2008, you might wonder if your former party supporters will remember what you have done to them, to their lives, and to their once-proud nation. You might try to convince yourselves that all is not lost, there’s always the chance that you can still fool some of the people, some of the time.

Well, I wouldn’t count on it. You know what they say; an Elephant never forgets.