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The Capitol Fax has a great rundown here, where Representative Paul Froehlich says he left the Republican Party because of disagreements on the Iraq War, Bush’s abuse of Habeus Corpus, Republican immigration rhetoric and Republican anti-environmentalism. Today’s Chicago Tribune quotes Froehlich as saying,

“‘Today is my 30th wedding anniversary,’ Froehlich said. ‘It feels like I’m going through a divorce because I’ve been a Republican for more than 30 years…. ‘In some ways, the party’s left me, in moving away from traditional Republican values.’”

I am reminded of Ronald Reagan’s famous description of why he left the Democratic Party. We have here, as I said two years ago, another Reagan moment, this time for why people are leaving the Republican Party. As I quoted there from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman,

“Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. ‘Today’s conservatives,’ he wrote, ‘differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday’s conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.’

‘The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. … [But] it is not only government that doesn’t show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn’t show up either, sacrifice doesn’t show up, pulling together doesn’t show up, ‘we’re all in this together’ doesn’t show up.’”

President Ronald Reagan is often trumpeted for what he said, and not always for what he actually did - or the results of what he did. He famously said, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” which he preceded with “[i]n this present crisis,” a qualifier oft overlooked of late. In the same speech he further modified his stance by the admission, however small, that “it’s not my intention to do away with government” and that “[g]overnment can and must provide opportunity… [and] foster productivity.” Addressing this positive aspect of government, one that helps its citizens be, in the words of the U.S. Army, “all they can be,” is what Republicans have forgotten for working Americans, those working class, middle class (and even upper-middle class) people who now pay more in taxes for money earned by the sweat of their brows than those who enjoy life’s dividends earned through their idle wealth manipulated by others. This is not an argument to deny the rich their wealth, in this country they have always had that, it is an argument to make work pay for the worker. America is no longer the “land of opportunity” - this is the legacy of the current Republican Party - and it’s a major reason, not the only major reason, why the Republican Party has failed Americans.