What motivated me to devote all my time to politics wasn’t tax policy or the environment or women’s issues or gay marriage or our health care system or voting rights or any particular policy. I’m a progressive on all those issues, but I would have remained on the sidelines if not for one thing: the Republican Party. By late-2003, I had seen enough to convince me that the most pressing issue facing the country, indeed humanity, was the power enjoyed by the Republican Party and the ways they were putting that power to use. I’m not going to list all their pathologies here, but they were well-embodied by people like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. As you went down the roster to the Tom DeLays and Jack Abramoffs, to the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons, to the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks, to the Ann Coulters and Michelle Malkins, it was clear that these were all horrible people who had no compunction about misusing the organs of state to kill hordes of people. And they just never stopped lying. They lied even when telling the truth would be more advantageous. It does not surprise me that decent people keep leaving the Republican fold. It did surprise me that so many people thought we could take our eyes off the Republicans the second we elected a Democratic president. For me, kicking them out and keeping them out of the White House was always the most important thing. When the fight became more about nationalizing banks and putting the private health care industry out of business than it was about preventing a repeat of what we all collectively experienced from 2001 to 2009, I could no longer follow the script.
Evil Republicans
