Abraham Lincoln: The struggle of today is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also.

[ddeclue]

The difference between Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States and the first Republican President and his modern counterparts is that Lincoln had a vision for the future and believed that the business of the government was being of service to the people.

Today's modern Republicans have no vision and no empathy for anyone else.

They are thralls to their corporate masters - they have no concrete vision for a better tomorrow and take as an article of faith that government is bad and corporations are and personal greed is good. (see Gecko, Gordon)

They aren't interested in helping anyone but themselves and their friends. They live in a world of "I've got mine and go f _ _ _ yourself". They aren't interested in the suffering or problems of others - they have no empathy - their behavior is actually a good functional definition for sociopathic behavior.

Somewhere around the invention of Ronald Reagan as our 40th President, the Republican Party jumped the track. It stopped being the party of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower or even Richard Nixon that at least generally cared about ordinary people and became this tool of the corporate elite.

Some have called George W. Bush, the 43rd President, an apocalytic President who believed that the end was near - well it certainly appears to be near for the Republican Party which has failed to learn that their failed ideology is why they were thrown out of office in 2006 and in even greater numbers in 2008. They continue to believe that their problem is not the content of their message but rather the manner in which it has been presented.

Until the Republicans understand that it is the content of their message that is wrong - until they understand the need to moderate their ideology and work towards the common ground in the middle they will continue to further and further marginalize their own party until it one day becomes extinct.

The American public has seen the man behind the curtain and they won't be fooled any longer. They are no longer interested in the politics of division and the politics of personal destruction. They are interested in the common good and common sense.

If we see a Republican Party that looks like George W. Bush or Sarah Palin or Mitch McConnell in 2010 and 2012 you can kiss the two party system good-bye. They won't have been thrown under the bus by the voters, they will have jumped in front of it for themselves.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[ddeclue]

1. .

[Clio the Leo]

2. Gosh that man was timeless wasn't he? NT

[Bread and Circus]

3. nice piece