Banana Republicans

They are the banana Republicans, a party with leaders who lie
about death panels that would supposedly murder the elderly in a healthcare bill
that is in fact a bailout for insurance companies and Big Pharma. The banana Republicans
lack the moral center to clearly denounce racism, and speak in code words that pander
to bigotry, and use tactics in which even those on the right who formerly dodged
the draft question the patriotism of war heroes in the Democratic Party.

Could it possibly be true that Sarah Palin, who could not remember
the newspapers she reads in the morning, could not pronounce Joe Biden’s name prior
to the vice presidential debate?

Could it possibly be true that the party that turned Bill Clinton’s
huge surplus into George W. Bush’s banana republic deficits talks about fiscal responsibility,
that the party that let bin Laden escape Tora Bora and gave away the victory that
was won in Afghanistan to pursue the Iraq war dares to politicize terrorism, and
could it possibly be true that the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt is the party
that gives honor to those who question the place of the president’s birth and is
reduced to making Guantánamo the flagship of their banana republic platform?

What has become of the Republican Party?

They act like the party of the right-wing strongman, dominated
by extremist voices far out of the American tradition, looking for the strongman
(or -woman) to lead them into the next election, incapable of anything except opposing
everything, secretly hoping that America fails, proudly proclaiming their admiration
for torture, happily yearning for political prisons that are detested by friends
of freedom around the world, bringing guns to town meetings, shouting down speakers
and calling it town hall democracy, voting in Congress with a unanimity equal to
that of the party of Pinochet and the politburo of Brezhnev.

Make no mistake, I have been and remain harshly critical of those
Democrats who fail to fight on matters of high principle, but make no mistake about
this, either:

The banana Republicans have tactics and attitudes that we have
not seen in national politics in the United States of America for a long, long time.
The best hope for Democrats, and Americans, is not the greatness or courage of the
party of the donkey, but the low esteem in which the banana Republicans are held
in the heartland of the nation, with the good sense of the American people.