Why I Left the Republican Party

I started my adult life as a Conservative Republican.  I was taught growing up that nothing was more important than having strength in your convictions.   President Nixon's promise in 1968 to get us out of the Vietnam war - as it went unfulfilled year after year, began to make me question whether strength in convictions was what really mattered.  Perhaps what matters is achieving the best result.  For the next couple decades I waffled back and forth between Republicans and Democrats.  

Republicans big ideological underpinning - that individuals should take responsibility for themselves - reflects a value crucial to a functioning society.  But I have never really liked the Republican tendency to hew so strictly to that ideology that they become oblivious to the plight of the less fortunate.  Republicans also talk constantly about freedom - another crucial value - but as they see freedom it tends to mean their freedom to act with impunity to the consequences of their acts on other people.  

CEO's walk away with millions of dollars from companies that collapse and cause great damage to their customers?  Republicans celebrate their entrepreneurial spirit!  

Massacres occurring in theatres and schools around the country?  To bad.  Can't impinge on any ones right to have a house full of guns - public just needs to get their own guns so they can shoot back.

I also thought in the early years Republicans were probably better at managing an economy - after all lots of noisily rich people are Republicans.  But history has emphatically rebutted that notion - the two times in the last one hundred years when Republicans have controlled the show we ended up in the Great Depression and the Great Recession. From the roaring twenties to the Republican wave that took over Congress in 1995 their policies have been rooted in promoting economic wishful thinking.  

Now, looking back at nearly 5 decades as a reasonably well informed voter the Republicans have lost me completely.  I can't even take them seriously.    

So I decided to check my current perception by compiling a historical laundry list of things Republicans have advocated and/or implemented in my lifetime that history revealed as dumb, mean spirited or both.

Economy

After incurring a big national debt from the Great Depression and WW II Congress used very high tax rates on the very wealthy to pay down the national debt.  With folks with really high incomes paying over 90% on the top part of their income the national debt was steadily decreasing from 1950 to 1981.  (We also enjoyed a pretty strong economy during this period - I suspect rich folks are more inclined to invest in things that produce jobs when the option is paying 90% to the Government).  Then Ronald Reagan got elected in 1980 and ignited the Republican obsession with cutting taxes, regardless of the consequences.  Didn't stop us from marching off to war, we just have done it on credit and hoped the bill will go away.  In the last 35 years, there are about 3 that were not adding to the national debt.

1995 - Republicans change the Capital Gains tax provisions applying to personal housing so anyone who wants to buy a house can get a huge tax free gain when they sell it.  Results - Whoops, the housing market became a casino full of speculators flipping houses.  It pumped up prices leading to a bubble and housing market collapse. 

About the same time Republicans created an exception to the immigration law to allow rich people to buy legal residency.  Now in the most vibrant cities and attractive parts of the country few citizens can afford to buy a house because wealthy people from other countries are coming in and plunking millions in cash to buy diversification and a bolt hole, even as we vilify the immigrants who do much of the dirty work in this country. 

Now despite the lowest interest rates in my lifetime the percentage of folks owning their own home has dropped significantly in the last 10 years.  In many parts of the country citizens are priced out of owning a home.  

1998 -  A Republicans Congress pushes Bill Clinton into cutting banks free of the regulations that hinder them from using depositors money to speculate on whatever they want.   Result - Banks pile money into complex derivatives that grow out of the housing market madness.   When the housing market stalls it produces the worst financial collapse since the great Depression.

2008 to present - Since the financial collapse Republicans double down on their notions that Government is the problem and essentially freeze Congress into inaction.  We have a modest recovery because Congress hasn't done anything really stupid, but Republicans are in denial about the fundamental problem - income inequality has undermined the consumption that drives growth.

Foreign Policy
2003.  Republicans invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein was building Nuclear weapons.  Whoops, turns out he wasn't, and our invasion ends up costing us lots of money, lots of lost lives and crippled young men, and has sent the Middle East into a spiral of total chaos we still don't see the end of and are trying our best to not get further entangled in.

Civil Rights
Republicans have harvested a lot of votes by advocating (fiercely sometimes) that Gays are not entitled to the same civil rights as other citizens.  Turns out even a Republican leaning Supreme Court can't quite jam the notion that Gays somehow aren't entitled to equal treatment into the Constitution.  

Environmental Law
Science has been warning us that the globe is warming for a couple decades.  I am not aware of any reputable scientist who seriously questions that if the globe warms even a couple of degrees it will have a major impact on our world, but in the face of the evidence for decades Republicans have continuously denied that the globe is warming and fought any effort to address the problem.   Now that we are experiencing one extreme weather event after another most Republicans have stopped loudly denying global warming but are still unwilling to do anything about it. 

Democracy-
One person one vote is crucial to a functioning democracy but Republicans have take advantage of their control of state legislatures to enact laws making it harder and harder for low income people to vote.