I consider myself a political moderate but in these highly contentious times it has become almost impossible to find common ground with the leadership of the Republican Party. They have taken up such ridiculous positions on so many issues it is almost impossible for any centrist to not look like a liberal Democrat these days. I don’t agree with everything the Democratic Party stands for by any means. I was never more disgusted with the Democrats than when Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011. I did not think any political leadership in this country could be worse than hers but the Republican Party proved me wrong.
The United States is a nation built on immigration and economic opportunity but when you look at the Republican Party’s plans for the economy you have to wonder what country they think they grew up in. The very fact that any serious Republican Party member would consider a fascist position on immigration (deporting 11 million illegal immigrants) is just mind-blowing. Have none of these people ever heard of the Holocaust? Why would we want to create an American Holocaust?
The only problem with immigration today is the H1-B program that empowers the wealthiest of technology companies to disenfranchise their more expensive American employees by replacing them with low-salaried immigrants. As the son of an immigrant father it pains me to speak poorly of any immigration program but the H1-B program has been abused far too often by companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple. It is time we put a stop to this nonsense, but where is the Republican Party when Congress needs to act to protect American workers?
When it comes to our nation’s foreign policy and national defense it is easy enough to accuse the Obama and Bush administrations of making many mistakes, but to watch someone like Donald Trump claim on national television that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, I have to ask where was this man in 2014 when Islamic State seized 2,500 chemical warheads from Iraq? How can we elect to office a man who doesn’t even know what weapons of mass destruction are?
And when it comes to our national economy the Republican Party stands on the principle of “less government”, which to them means shutting down the vital Export-Import Bank, which enables some of our leading manufacturing companies to compete for overseas contracts. Not only does the data show that the Ex-Im Bank creates jobs here at home, it also shows that the bank turns a profit from its operations, generating money for the taxpayers. And yet the Republican Party allowed the bank’s authority to expire last year so that it could not guarantee business for American companies vying for foreign contracts. What kind of insane leadership is that? It took five months for Congress to renew the bank’s authorization after it lapsed in 2015.
The Republican Party leadership also condemned the Energy Department’s loan program that was brought into headlines in 2011 with the failure of a company called Solyndra. They even call out Solyndra in their current political platform. And yet this loan program was created by President Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress in 2005; more importantly, it has turned a profit for taxpayers. Solyndra may have failed but the program itself has been a success, and now the Republican Party has vowed to end it. Do they not even know what laws they have passed?
The Republicans have a long-standing argument against raising taxes, claiming that harms the economy. And yet higher taxers were good for the economy in the 1950s when President Eisenhower, a Republican, declared that leaving wealth in the hands of the wealthy was a bad economic policy. Today’s American billionaires support the levying of higher taxes on the wealthiest 2% of our citizens, but the Republican Party opposes such a policy. Meanwhile, under the current tax plan (which was mostly devised by Republicans) American middle class families continue to struggle. Why do they insist on clinging to failed policies that go against the more successful policies of past Republican administrations?
There are those who warn us not to reach too quick a judgment when encountering something new. While this is good advice in general, I feel that we have had enough time to learn about the insanity of the Republican Party’s ridiculous policies. Until they come back down to Earth we voters need to look for alternative choices, even if that feels like picking the lesser of two evils.