The cause of raucous conservative rhetoric

A lot of the raucous rhetoric among conservatives today has come about due to the actions of the Republicans in power. As long as I can remember, Republicans have been generally consistent in their actions matching their words. Republicans who have not met this standard generally have not lasted long in office (Bush Sr. comes to mind).

Bush Jr. presents us with an unfortunate dichotomy of truthfulness: With our enemies, he has been brutally honest and backed up his words with force. But with his friends, namely the Republican Congress, he makes idle threats consistently. This is the same Republican Congress which was paid for by Jack Abramoff and God knows who else. The Republican Congress reminds me of France right now: a friend in name only.

I know the Democrats have been corrupt for decades. When a Democrat does something dishonest, I am not surprised. When the Democratic Party does something dishonest, I can say "What did you expect?"

When an occasional Republican does something dishonest, I can look at it and say there's one in every group. But when the majority of Republicans in Congress do something dishonest, that shakes my faith. Sure, I can say some of them got campaign donations without knowing who Abramoff was. But there are too many involved not to think they were selling out the conservative cause for campaign donations.

It was NOT the "Indian affairs" Abramoff bought votes for that bothers me. It was the implication that our representatives would sell their votes. Maybe what they did was perfectly legal. But unlike Democrats who view the law as the ultimate standard of morality, I expect better from Republicans. Republicans have always had higher standards than the Democrats. They have always had to, because any time they slipped up, the Media was on them like white on rice.

What some of my conservative brethren around here view as "being reasonable" or "negotiating with the Democrats", I see as becoming LIKE the corrupt, would-sell-their-mothers-for-a-campaign-donation Democrats.

When I see the absurd amount of pork spending, I have to wonder how much of it was paid for with campaign donations.

When I hear the Republicans talk about resurrecting the "Contract with America", that tells me how far they have fallen since 1994. They should not have to resurrect it, because they should have been following it all along.

My issue is not with the conservatives. We all generally believe the same thing, with a few nuanced differences here and there. What I don't share with some of them is faith in the Republican Party. The GOP will have to earn my trust back.