RIP, GOP (An Exhortation)

This is a MUST read from Daily Kos. One could only hope that he is correct about this being the beginning of the end for the Republican party. After the atrocities in New Orleans (not to mention Iraq, etc) they deserve nothing less. The expression that keeps coming to mind is that this is "man's inhumanity to man" exposed for all to see.

I would love to reprint the whole article, but here are a few of the many gems:

"I honestly believe that we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the so-called conservative movement, and the Republican Party that it currently inhabits. The slow-motion horror that the nation is witnessing on the flooded streets of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is the final, irrefutable evidence that the GOP is not fit to govern this great nation.
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"Democrats and liberals have watched in apoplectic horror as Republicans have gained ground at all levels of government despite hard evidence of corruption, incompetence, and failure. Foolishly, we, navel-gazers that we often are, have thought that the trend was about us; something that we were doing wrong.

"Well, we have erred, but not in the way that we usually think. . .The Republicans haven't been winning because they have a better plan or sounder policies. They have been winning because they have spent billions of dollars on a coordinated media campaign to make a slim majority of voting America feel good about the worst aspects of their natures.

"How hard is it really to convince people that being selfish is the way to go? Where is the higher calling in predatory greed? What invention is required to pander to the lust for revenge?. Where is the challenge in stoking people's fears about personal safety, or in feeding the flames of prejudice?

"Tragedy has a way of revealing character. The constant drumbeat of death from the war in Iraq, and now the cascading nightmare that is the Gulf Coast flood has peeled away the veneer and we can see the GOP leadership and the larger conservative movement for what it is: a sham. They have nothing. They offer nothing. They come to destroy, not to build. They have no vision for a greater public good because, for them, the very notion of a public good is anathema.
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"Make no mistake: as we watch our fellow citizens drown, starve, and die in the street in New Orleans, its not incompetence or lack of planning that is killing them. It is willful neglect. It is the direct result of reducing the government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." This is what "starving the beast" looks like."

Truly, read the whole thing. It's well worth it.