'Where are these men and women with any integrity....?"

Fly by night

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Sat Jul-23-05 08:36 AM
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'Where are these men and women with any integrity....?"

This morning, I read the AP article about yesterday's Congressional hearings on the treason associated with "outing" Valerie Plame (before the link to it was taken quickly off my Netscape browser.) And I was struck by the last two paragraphs in the article:

"(Larry) Johnson (one of the former CIA agents), who said he is a registered Republican, said he wished a GOP lawmaker would have the courage to stand up and 'call the ugly dog the ugly dog.'

"'Where are these men and women with any integrity to speak out against this?' Johnson asked. 'I expect better behavior out of Republicans.'"

Where indeed? This is an argument I have been using for a while with local Republicans here in the Orange State. As someone who once registered as a Republican myself (in Wyoming, where the closed primaries made voting in the Repug primary important if you wanted to have any influence on local elections), I say to my Repug neighbors that the Republican Party used to stand for fiscal responsibility, restraint in foreign policy, states' rights, protection from government interference in our personal lives, supporting our soldiers and our CIA agents, and (if you go back far enough) environmental protection and support for civil rights.

But no more. Now we have an administration filled with congenital liars, pederasts, phony patriots and Bible-huggers who embarrass us at every turn. Not only are their policies and practices the opposite of traditional Republican values on the above issues, but their own level of personal integrity can't get much lower. We have Republicans openly accepting bribes from voting machine vendors in Ohio; we have male prostitutes, pneumatic porn stars and their pimps enjoying open access to the White House; we have vocal proponents for torture and suspension of civil rights running the Justice Department; we have secret energy meetings to plot our foreign adventurism (as Dennis Kucinich said, "Just how did our oil get under Iraq's sand anyway?"); we have right-wing radio heads openly endorsing assassinations of judges and professors; we have .... oh well, you get the picture.

We need an "Amber Alert" right now for those "men and women of integrity". Because without a revolution for decency within the Republican Party, our jobs to take this country back will be that much more difficult (if not impossible).

At least here in the Orange State, this line of argument has traction. And it obviously does in other states like Vermont (where a Republican candidate for Congress is running on an "impeach Bush" platform), in Missouri (where a former Republican Senator (Danforth) distances himself from the faux fundamentalist fanatics in OUR White House) and in other states. So this thread is posted to give all of you a chance to identify any other "men and women of integrity" who still remain in the Republican Party and what distinguishes them from the Republi-Nazis who have highjacked their party. It is also a chance to list other integrity-challenged examples from this pustulent pile of elephant poo that now passes for our national leadership.

Have fun and don't hold back. Reminding the honorable Republicans who are our neighbors about the highjacking of their once-proud GOParty is one step toward excising the oozing sore that now passes for our formerly "loyal" opposition.