GOP freefall

Look at the last nine months or so with the national Republicans:

• The bungling of relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina
• The increasing insurgency and death toll in Iraq
• Tthe vice president accidentally shooting someone in the face
• The Defense Department maintaining a covert data-collection operation despite being told by Congress to stop
• The approval of a plan to allow an Arab country to operate six major American ports with little assurances of safety and security (let alone awareness of the public relations nightmare)
• The continuing scandals with Members of Congress such as Randy Cunningham and Tom DeLay
• The mishandling of a Supreme Court nomination resulting in a withdrawl
  
• The dwindling approval ratings of the president
• The backbiting and infighting in Congress and among prospective presidential candidates
  

I just have to ask: What the hell is wrong with the Republican Party?

The best things to happen to the Democrats for 2006 and 2008 have all happened in the last year. If the Dems can just use these issues to show how inept and foolish the Republican Party is at so many things -- running the country for one, remembering the people who voted for them for another.

Remember when Republican was a word that stood for something? It stood for smaller government, which is necessary for commerce and industry to prosper. It stood for restricted government, which meant the government should not meddle in the personal and private affairs of the people. It stood for fiscal responsibility, which meant that the government took what it needed and planned for the future.

Now, it seems, Republicans stand for everything they once opposed. This administration and its rubber-stamp Congress has approved a massive expansion of government and a reorganization of agencies that has not improved anything and made Franklin Roosevelt's alphabet soup look like broth. The Congressional leadership has worked to infiltrate government into nearly every facet of American life from birth to death, even calling members back for a late-night session to stop the humane end-of-life act of a shell of a woman in Florida. This administration and its short-sighted shills in Congress have approved huge deficit spending largely as a result of tax cuts for people and corporations most able to pay, tax cuts which will hurt the future of our nation and of our children.

Now, the Democrats must appeal to the people who, 25 years ago, were caught up in a wave spread by a handsome and charming former actor from California who made them feel good while he screwed them. If they can bring those people -- people now burned by a scorched-earth ideology -- back to the Democrat Party, all the while energizing younger voters and newer voters, a new day may dawn on the republic.

I don't know if it will happen in 2006 or even in 2008. But it will happen. The Republicans are in a freefall, and the only net is their reliance on fear, a net that has so many holes in it, I doubt it can withstand another fall.

-- Wenatchee, Wash.