Mourning the loss of my Republican party

Last night’s Republican debate very plainly shows why I conclude that my party is so out-of-touch with reality that they do not have any chance of assembling effective leadership. The top 10 presidential candidates talked on national television for a combined total of 64.5 minutes without any of them ever once mentioning even a single word about any of the three largest threats we face as a nation: 1) the growing gap in wealth and income inequality, 2) the impact of climate change, 3) corruption of government by large financial institutions as allowed by the Citizens United decision.

Unless you are a one percenter primarily focused on protecting the status quo (few one percenters I know fall into this category), I can not understand how any intelligent person who is paying attention can make a logical decision to support the Republican party now. But that thought is actually what triggers my sense of despair: too many Americans are just not grasping the big picture. Today’s Republicans apparently latch on to a few politician positions that match their core beliefs and then fail to assess significance of those positions in the bigger picture. Few people, it seems, consider the overall welfare of the entire current and future population in their voting decisions. Too many voters focus on an overly simplified analysis and “what works for me”.

When it comes to national politics, our two party political system is all that any of us alive today have ever known. But the fact that a Socialist, the ethically challenged wife of a former President and a person most recently known as a comedic game show host poll as the top three contenders for the Office of the President of the United States office is a clear and simple sign that we’ve gone in a wrong direction.

It should have been easy for the Republicans to get behind a moderate candidate who could assemble the votes to defeat the Democratic candidate in 2016. But that just simply isn’t going to happen. Our nation’s political system is broken and apparently nobody seems to be able to fix it.