SPECIAL POST
The purpose of an
organization, whether it be political or otherwise, is to represent the
collective wishes of its membership in dealings with third parties or other
organizations. A political party is specifically
formed to represent its members in the affairs of government through the
process of nomination to office. Theoretically,
the party meets or otherwise conducts some type of mechanism to provide for the
members to decide who should be nominated and what the party platform should
be.
In 2008, just about every
member of the party recognized that McCain was a weak candidate; he had tried
unsuccessfully to win the party’s nomination before. Mitt
Romney was also running and couldn’t get past first base in the process. McCain lost to Obama and in 2012, the “would
be” Romney ended up getting the nod and the support from the party
hierarchy. The hierarchy then busied
itself with engineering his ascension to the nomination.
From a practical point,
you have to ask yourself how the guy who couldn’t beat McCain in 2008 could win
against Obama in 2012 when McCain himself could not; how can the assumed “second
best” do better than “the best?” That
should have been the first clue. As
things progressed, Romney never could get a convincing win in any state against
the remainder of the field until all of the others were forced out; he was
always getting below 50% of the vote, meaning that the majority of the members wanted someone other than him to ultimately become the
nominee.
But, the party hierarchy
was not to let a trivial thing like the wishes of the majority of the
membership to get in the way of its own agenda.
It did everything it could to undermine each and every other candidate for
the nomination, one-by-one cutting them out of the field like a border collie
on a range-day. As a result, a large
number of the membership stayed home on Election Day or voted for an
independent candidate. In fact, it is
clear that Obama did not win the
election; the Republican Party hierarchy handed it to him on a silver
plate. Obama's popular vote count in 2012 was significantly lower than what he achieved in 2008, but he still won.
As you can see, the organization no
longer represents the collective interests or desires of its membership. Furthermore, those at the top of the party
who hold office in Washington are proving themselves to be ineffective and out
of touch. In the matter of taxing the
rich, for example, 67% of Americans favor increasing taxes on the rich and the
majority of the rich support higher taxes on themselves. Yet, the House Republicans pretend to be unyielding
in their opposition to Obama’s demand to raise taxes on the rich. Most of the party membership would just as
soon get past this obstacle and deal with the remaining fiscal issues, but the
hierarchy won’t budge. Instead, the
House Republicans will fight the whole thing to the bitter end, then cave in to
Obama’s demands entirely as they have historically done before when, in fact, a
better deal could and should have been cut.
The party hierarchy is in
total denial of the fact that few members want anything to do with them anymore
and would just as soon seek other political alternatives. All of which means leads to natural the
conclusion that the Republican Party is now convincingly useless.
That’s MY AMERICAN
OPINION, respectfully submitted.
