Truman's Conscience

Values

Okay. Former Jacksonville GOP mayoral candidate Mike Weinstein rebuffed the entreaties of local prominent Democrats Bucky Clarkson and Don McClure to join the Democratic party for a mayoral run now that Duval County GOP Chair Mike Hightower has blocked the way for anyone to challenge John Peyton within the GOP. Forget for the moment GOP party rules that prohibit County Chairs from endorsing Republican candidates before the primary, but hey, it's okay if you are a Republican, right? Of course GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Gallagher could tell you a thing or two about those GOP state party rules as he watches local REC county chairs endorse Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist over himself. And the reason Mr. Hightower gave that he’s staying with the GOP? As the Florida Times-Union reports his answer was short and succinct: “…..because the national GOP's values match his own.” The operative word here being values. Not local party values but the national values of the GOP.

Alright, let’s take a look at just a couple of those values: a botched Medicare prescription program that not only confuses our senior citizens (my mother in particular) but rips them off by rules that will not allow them to change plans for one year after signing on and then, without warning, jacking up the prescription drug prices within weeks of signing on, a bankrupt government with a recently raised debt ceiling to $9 trillion dollars, that’s right you read me correctly, trillion – that’s $791 billion dollars higher than the previous one (just for a point of reference the debt ceiling under Clinton topped out at $5 trillion – nearly half); 2,500+ dead and over 20,000 wounded American soldiers to disarm Saddam Hussein of his WMD’s that we now know never existed – this doesn’t even include the estimated 25,000 to 100,000 dead Iraqi citizens for this ‘adventure’; huge tax cuts to oil companies awash in historical record profits while cutting program funding for Headstart, state grants for foster child programs, education and on and on and on…..

Memo to Bucky Clarkson and Doug McClure: the GOP can keep Mike Weinsein. As an elected Democratic Party precinct chair I don’t want him or his values anywhere near my party. Got that fellas?