Where Are Republican Leaders Hiding?
By Sher Zieve (09/29/05)
I’ll admit it. I was wrong. I’d thought that President Bush won the 2004 election. I’d also thought that Republicans held the majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. However, from the actions or more appropriately non-actions of Republican Congressional “leadership”, victory does not seem to be the case. They’re still acting as if they lost. Unlike Democrats, Republicans sit on their hands when leader-members of their Party are vilified. Apparently hoping the denigrations will “just go away”, they simply choose to ignore them. Have our Republican leaders become so afraid of controversy that they now refuse to enter into any and all battles? If so, are they anxious that they too will be vilified, as have President Bush and most recently Rep. Tom DeLay, by the leftist mainstream press? Sure looks and sounds like it.
The mainstream press doesn’t like us, Republican guys and gals. It never will. It will continue to disparage us. So, any continued acquiescence to the Democrat Party will buy us nothing. Are those of you who have been elected to your respective offices, so concerned about Democrats calling you mean names that you no longer feel the need to actually listen to your constituencies—the ones who actually elected you?
Apart from for Senator Trent Lott, where is the Republican outrage for the bogus indictment of Rep. Tom DeLay? With the exception of the sounds of shoes running in the opposite direction, the silence was and is deafening. Heaven knows that the mainstream press, all Democrat leaders and television commentators have thoroughly embraced the DeLay charges with both excitement and glee. Even though Democrat hack district attorney Ronnie Earle, after 10 years of trying, finally brought the non-indictment-indictment against DeLay there is no expressed indignation from the Republican leadership. And the press and Democrats have now adopted and are shouting the lie that DeLay is accused of “money laundering”. Not only does that language not appear in Earle’s “indictment”, the 4-page double-spaced document doesn’t even truly charge DeLay with anything!
It took the partisan Earle 6 times-of-trying before he could convince any grand jury to actually charge DeLay with anything and Earle’s current charging paperwork contains the weakest possible language. But, that didn’t stop all of the TV networks from breathlessly and joyfully reporting the charges and strongly intimating (as they consistently do with Republicans) that he is already guilty. DeLay is one of the strongest Congressional leaders in the Republican Party. Therefore, the Democrats had to find some way to force him out of his House Majority Leader position. They affected it with, at best, a spurious document. We the people get it. It hasn’t gone over our heads. So, where are the Republicans leaders who will speak out against this mockery of jurisprudence? None of us can seem to find them.
And then there is Hurricane Katrina debacle. The Republican run House committee’s questioning of former FEMA Director Michael Brown, by members ‘investigating’ the Katrina response, fell just short of drawing and quartering Brown. We already know about Gov. Blanco’s and New Orleans Mayor Nagin’s failures and blocks to assistance. However, when Democrat Louisiana Governor Blanco appeared the next day before the Senate Finance Committee (to ostensibly answer questions related to her own response to the disaster) she said she didn’t want to talk about it. So the committee, including all Republican members, said “OK”. Again I ask: “Where are our Republican leaders?”
We the people elected you to office and, oddly it now seems, actually expected you to fight for the principles we know are the best for the country. However, unlike the opposition Democrats, our Republican leaders have stopped listening to those who elected them. I have to give kudos to the Democrat Party. No matter how destructive these organizations are to the country, it still listens to its money-providing-and-voting-for-them leftist base groups.
I am just one small conservative voice calling out into the increasing wilderness of true Republican leadership. There are a few of you who are still out there. But, any real Republican conservative leadership seems to be waning more and more each day, as an increasing number of RINOs rear their heads. To survive and continue to correct the damage created for decades by the Democrat left, the Republican Party now needs leaders willing to be street fighters; not more from the compromising country-club set. Note to Republicans: If you still need proof, look to what the Democrats are doing and how loudly they shout. One thing remains certain. You need to be heard.
Some time ago, I suggested that sensible and sane Democrats needed to form a new Political Party; one that represents moderate and conservative Democrats. But, it now appears it’s equally important for conservative Republicans to do the same thing. We need to place the term “courage” firmly back into our Party. And this time we need to mean it.
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