By: Kaleb Bengston
Republicans and Democrats, cats and dogs, asses and elephants. The two parties seem to be complete opposites. But they haven’t always been that way. The Grand Ol’ Party, GOP, is considered to still be the Republicans. But the GOP used to be progressive, believe it or not. It hasn’t always been paranoid, corporation loving and super conservative. So what happened? Why is there so much gridlock?
The problem was the shift to extremes. The left went even more left, and the right fell off of the chart. When you have near-socialists facing off against Tea Party members, you may as well have the First Continental Congress facing off Stalin’s regime. It’s pure headbutting on behalf of fundamentals, and there are no more mediums. It’s left or right with the Red and Blue, and anyone with moderate ideas “can’t make up their minds” or are those crazy libertarians.
We’ve had really good Republican presidents. Regan is a great example. He balanced our national budget, strengthened national security and ended the Cold War. He revitalized the Republican party after a long time run by Democrats. Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Reagan are considered by many political science analysts to be the best presidents this country has ever had. They were all Republican. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, led the country through a crippling civil war, and we still came out strong. Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, but, believe it or not, was the leader of the progressive movement at the time. He made the antitrust laws that prevented American capitalism from sliding into greed and collapsing in on itself.
So what happened to the Republican party? Today all we see is a split and momentous in-fighting. They pose that they still have the identity of less government and more states rights, but they contradict their own statement by turning their backs on the needy while trying to control the lives of women, men and unborn children. What happened to Barry Goldwater’s view of women controlling their own destinies? They swear by the Constitution, as they should, but turn around and force decisions about bodies and force their Christian beliefs into government where it absolutely doesn’t belong.
These men and women have a skewed sense of reality. The Republican party has fallen into a corporate love affair and a never ending cycle of lobby money and corporate interest. Corporations lobby for the candidate they want, almost always a Republican, and the candidate they want advocates for them, and the corporations keep making money to continue lobbying. That is the Grand ol’ Party working for big business, not you. Not all of them are in bed with big business, might I add. We have a few Republicans that still abide by what Lincoln and Roosevelt did. Ted Cruz, Ron and Rand Paul, Toomey and Flake; some are more radical than others, but they stand hard beside the constitution and don’t budge.
The Republican Party is on a decline. We will not see a Republican president for a long time, whether good or bad, unless they reform and come together in a more moderate fashion. Whoever runs for the Democratic party in 2016 will win, whether it be the next Clinton or whoever. It will not be a GOP member, because they are falling apart.
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