[iamthewalrus109]

In response to issues of political change and GW Bush winning the election of 2004, well what can I say, I see GW winning and I find that just to acknowledge change as a natural process is not enough.

Of course change is ineveitable, especially in politics, but the reason I started this thread was to aknowledge this time as one of possible dirision in this country along the same lines as slavery was in the 19th century. This is no Vietnam, it's deeper than that. Now of course I can't say who is going to win this one, authroitatvely and without question, but, having said that, I don't believe in polls, polling data, and/or any news organization. I look at what happened in 2000, what's going on politically, and the status of the state voting infrastructure. I earnestly believe that GW Bush will emerge from a cloud of dust again, plain and simple. When he does he's got nothing to loose at that point, barring impeachment. He's bascially got a blank check with this election, if he wins, and believe he will. He won't have to worry about campaigning, or reaching out, he can then swagger his way through another four years. The prospect of this means a few things for the Republican party, much more so than Watergate or Vietnam!! It's that simple, there has to be an analysis of where to go from here.

Being of the moderate Republican strain, I have no party anymore, and there's no way I'm going Dem, not in a million years, my assertion is that the stakes are higher right now than they were in 1968, 1974 etc. To simply acknowledge this as which way the wind just happens to be blowing right now is absurd to me. There needs to be a serious consideration here, of what's around the bend. Granted there isn't alot to be done, but I think there should be a movement of clear thinking intelligent Republicans out of the party now, and this doesn't mean to start voting for tax and spend zealots simply cause they're not stupid and coo-koo and it doesn't mean appending yourself to a lackluster thrid party candidate, it means standing up to the corporate control of the parties and trying to preserve the tradition of the Republican party. There is such a thing as inherent values, and the Republican party should reflect those traditions. Social justice and fiscal responsiblity seem to be highly lacking in this equation, I think both are possible given examples set by TR, DDE, and early RMN administrations. I thought Reagan ran afoul of Republican tradition, much less what Bush and the neo-cons are doing.

A quality sorely lacking not only in the Republican party but in this country is sacrafice. While our service men and women, who constitutue only a small fraction of this country, sacrafice their lives everyday, regular Americans go about they're business, expecting more and more every year, without really doing anything for it in the end. If someone thinks getting up and going to work everyday is all that you have to do, while people are dying in Iraq and entire populations curse the way that we sustain our lifestyles, many times at their expense, than that individual lives in a state of ignorance. What makes the needs of Americans any more important than any other individuals in the world. Herein lies the major problem: We expect to sustain these greedy little lives forever, not realizing that the polices that support this greed, are based on violent and opressive trade practices. I laugh at what the democrats and the Republicans call free trade. In essence if every American scaled back, we could probably afford not having to be so agressive in our search for resources and products, but this will never happen I'm afraid. We'll persist in such a manner until this country runs itself into the ground. Forgive me for trying to find a way out.

-Walrus