A Gentleman’s view.

Health Care for the sake of making our business competitive again overseas is mandatory.

In spite of the hollering and screaming going on at the town hall rallies, no matter the signs of gloom and doom related to government takeovers of various segments of Corporate America, I can still hear the amazing quiet out there. With all the pundits covering the rallies and the hysteria about the disabled and the infirmed and ‘Death Panels’, there is still such stillness that the amazement that it exist almost takes my breath away. The Republicans have raised much fuss about the Wall Street Loans, and Big Bank Bailouts, that either people they selected to run those institutions had failed or the legislation they supported put forth by those people damn near broke all the banks. That was but one of the issues bringing the international markets to their prospective knees, another being the collapse of the Auto Industry parallel the banking failure. Major reason Auto collapsed; it couldn’t compete anymore because of legacy costs tied mostly to health care for retired and present day employees of the industry. Candidate Obama mentioned this several times along the way to the White House. It appears he’s forgotten a very relevant and directly connected to the economy today and the future.

The President Obama should revisit some of the positions taken by the Candidate again as this battle is directly related to the overall health of the United States economy now and more importantly, in the future. It has been stated over and over again in no uncertain terms that one of the most consistently overwhelming legacy cost for any American car or any other type of company competing with one product per country or many, no other had the added cost of health care because it is provided everywhere else. How is it that the Republicans who are supposed to be pro-business and anti taxation, have a problem with bringing down the cost of operating their business in competition with others fairly. They again are attacking an attempt to resolve what has become a burgeoning expense for many except the wealthy to include local, national and international businesses originating in America to allow one segment of business namely the insurance companies to treat all of us more fairly with their pricing. Attack the government for attempting to resolve the legacy costs of competition for the business community of all American companies. No one is using the former ‘Candidate’s position of making America a leader in the world of business again as well’, not even the Democrats.

Bush may have given the ‘get along attempt’ after a month or two, but it would not have lasted for as long as it has with Obama, and no one in his party would be threatening him with jack! He didn’t tolerate that kind of disloyalty within the rank and file membership of the Republican Party. He decided to go to war with Iraq and many within his own party thought that it was a bad idea. He made them tow the party line, and all your saw was support when interviews took place. Then, they accused anyone who opposed them of being un-patriotic or either advocating for the enemy, if not outright aiding and abetting them. They brow beat and hammered the Democrats through the next two election cycles with that same consistent theme; the opposition was weak on ‘National Security’ and weak on ‘Defense of our interest’. I believe that unless the President assumes a more aggressive tact and garnering the support he needs for passage of health insurance legislation, he may only achieve exactly what the Republican would most gleefully be ecstatic about; namely slamming this Black Presidents administration with such an major policy failure to the point of making him an lame duck for the rest of his tenure in office. May another black never seek this office again.

President Barack Obama is showing eloquence beyond his years with his patience in dealing with the Republicans on the most important issue facing this nation at this particular time in history after nearly having the world almost bottom out financially. He obviously came in with a lot already on his plate before he could attempt to serve up something in the best interest of those who sent him to Washington. What I don’t understand is; where are all the ‘Big Three Auto Company’ executives who were screaming about legacy costs of doing business including what is owed to pensioners related to health care continuing raising percentage over time? Why are they not screaming in defense of the need of this type of legislation as a means of reigning in this spiraling aspect of doing business in our society? We all know that the ‘Blue Dog Democrats” are essentially nothing more than Republicans who could no longer get into office under that banner in that particular district and switched over for convenience sakes. They by their very nature are still making decisions based in opposition to the warm fuzzy; we have to take care of each other approach to our problems that the Democrats are known for having. They come from districts with the same frame of mind and heart.

Former President Bush wouldn’t hesitate to hold fund raising support at the national level from those type of members in his party and maybe threaten them with campaigning against them in ‘other’ ways, meaning seemingly neutral advertising implying who knows what by radio and the well known outlet for the Party; the media talk show hosts. Transparency may mean letting the world know some people are putting their personal ambitions before that of saving the very industries that made the country into the powerhouse that America has become. He has got to tell the people that the Republicans don’t care if everyone does well in America, they don’t care if only some people have access to all the good that this country has to offer its citizens. The President has got to let the people know that the Republicans feel party loyalty is more important than national security that is directly tied to this country’s financial stability, as they so strenuously claim all the time. He has to tell America that the Republicans are not being very ‘Patriotic’.

I am posting this letter to the Republican Party by one of their former cohorts as testament to the Party’s current state of dishonor. I am hoping they decide to join the rest of us in trying to get our country back to the prominence it once had on the international stage.

You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the “architect” America just hired — President Obama — to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created.

I used to be one of you. As recently as 2000 I worked to get Senator McCain elected in that year’s primary. (McCain and Gen. Tommy Franks wrote glowing endorsements regarding my book about military service, AWOL.). I have a file of handwritten thank you notes from Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush I and II. In the 1970s and early 80s I hung out with Jack Kemp and bought into his “supply side” myth and even wrote a book he endorsed pushing his ideas.) There’s more, but take it from me; my parents (evangelical leaders Francis and Edith Schaeffer) and I were about as tight with — and useful to — the Republican Party as anyone. We played a big part creating the Religious Right.

In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very anti-American they are, (the theme I explore in my book Crazy For God). They wanted America to fail in order to prove they were right about America’s “moral decline.” Soon after McCain lost in 2000 I re-registered as an independent in disgust with W. Bush. But I still respected many Republicans. Not today.

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today’s wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson’s and who now says he wants an American president to fail?!

With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party — you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of our country. Instead, Republicans are today’s fifth column sabotaging American renewal.

President Obama has been in office barely 45 days and the Republican Party has the nerve to blame him for the economic and military cataclysm he inherited. I say economic and military cataclysm because without the needless war in Iraq you all backed we would not be in the economic mess we’re in today. If that money had been spent here at home on renovating our infrastructure, taking us toward a green economy, putting our health-care system in order we’d be a very different situation.

As the father of a Marine who served in George W. Bush’s misbegotten wars let me say this: if President Obama’s strategy to repair our economy, infrastructure and healthcare fails that will put our troops at far greater risk because the world will become a far more dangerous place. So for all you flag-waving Republicans who are trying to undermine the President at home — if you succeed more of our troops will be killed abroad.

When your new leader Rush Limbaugh calls for President Obama to fail he’s calling for more flag-draped coffins. Limbaugh is the new “Hanoi Jane.”

For the party that created our crises of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks… to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene.

Just imagine where America would be today if the 14 to 20 million voters — “the rube base” who slavishly follow the likes of Limbaugh — had not voted as a block year after year thus empowering the Republican fiasco. We would have a regulated banking industry and would have avoided our current financial crisis; some 4000 of our killed military men and women would be alive; over to 35,000 wounded Americans would be whole; we would have been leaders in the environmental movement; we would be in the middle of a green technology boom fueling a huge expansion of our economy and stopping our dependence on foreign oil, and our health-care system would be reformed.

After Obama was elected, you Republican leaders had a unique last chance to send a patriotic message of unity to the world — and to all Americans. You could have backed our president’s economic recovery plan. Since we all know that half of our problem is one of lost confidence and perception, nothing would have done more to calm the markets and project resolve and confidence than if you had been big enough to take Obama’s offered hand and had work with him — even if you disagreed ideologically. You had the chance to put our country first. You utterly failed to rise to the occasion.

The worsening economic situation is your fault and your fault alone. The Republicans created this mess through 8 years of backing the worst president in our history and now, because you put partisan ideology ahead of the good of our country, you have blown your last chance to redeem yourselves. You deserve the banishment to the political wilderness that awaits all traitors.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back Now in paperback