Frank Schaeffer

Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (From a Former Republican)


Dear Republican Leaders: The Republican Party has become the party
dedicated to sabotaging the American future. Check out the sermon I just
delivered about the Republican Party on CNN when being interviewed by
D.L. Hughley -- and/or read on.

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.