Ashamed to be Republican

The Bushites and neo-cons have done such a disasterous job of running the country and starting unprovoked wars of aggression that Republicans are, if not abandoning the party, at least going out of the way to avoid reminding voters which party they belong to.

Echidne reports that even the Party leadership are running their election campaigns sans mention of the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, committed Republican Pete McCloskey has written a Dear John letter to his fellow Republicans, writing with a heavy heart that they should vote for Democrats in the upcoming elections. He writes:

I have found it difficult in the past several weeks to reach a conclusion as to what a citizen should do with respect to this fall's forthcoming congressional elections. I am a Republican, intend to remain a Republican, and am descended from three generations of California Republicans, active in Merced and San Bernardino Counties as well as in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have just engaged in an unsuccessful effort to defeat the Republican Chairman of the House Resources Committee, Richard Pombo, in the 11th Congressional District Republican primary, obtaining just over 32% of the Republican vote against Pombo's 62%.

The observation of Mr. Pombo's political consultant, Wayne Johnson, that I have been mired in the obsolete values of the 1970s, honesty, good ethics and balanced budgets, all rejected by today's modern Republicans, is only too accurate.

It has been difficult, nevertheless, to conclude as I have, that the Republican House leadership has been so unalterably corrupted by power and money that reasonable Republicans should support Democrats against DeLay-type Republican incumbents in 2006.

Now you know why Republicans no longer talk about "traditional values" -- they've abandoned them. The GOP has now become the radical party.

And the Rude Pundit [warning: extreme language] points out that Bush and Cheney have virtually disappeared off the websites of a number of prominent Republicans up for election this year.