and J.R. Dunn of American Thinker has done a wonderful job of helping start that process for the Republican Party, stating bluntly, “The GOP Must Take Out the Trash.” It’s an excellent piece (though I think his comments on the Democrats are overstated, that doesn’t invalidate his points about the party of elephants), and I commend it to your attention. I particularly appreciate Dunn’s point that even for conservatives,
voting for the Democrats in 2008 was a rational act. Not a very smart act, and in the fullness of time definitely to prove a mistaken one. But rational because the alternative was to vote for the party of Ted Stevens, Larry Craig, Duke Cunningham, Mark Foley, and a gaggle of beggars drooling for earmarks and willing to throw small children onto train tracks to get them. In 2008, the party of Trash went up against the party of Change. That brand of Change is no doubt empty, specious, and dangerous, but you can’t argue with the fact that it smells better than trash.You pay a price for tolerating trash. Perhaps not an obvious one, perhaps not an immediate one, but you always pay a price. The GOP is now paying that price, after getting its wakeup call in 2006 and refusing to roll out of bed. As for current efforts at reform, everything else is on the table except this one factor, despite the easily comprehended fact that everything else will be totally irrelevant if this one factor is not dealt with. Corruption cannot be ignored. As has been demonstrated time and again this past decade, sane, moral, and intelligent voters will not settle for a party comprised of the reprobates that have populated the GOP in recent years.
And though Dunn doesn’t mention Sarah Palin, I want to note that this is one of the major reasons I support her: taking out the trash is a major part of her political MO, and of her reason for being in politics.