REFLECTIONS OF A GOP OPERATIVE
WHO LEFT THE CULT

by: Mike Lofgren, Truthout | News Analysis  Read all of Mike's articls on Truthout.

I decided to reproduce this article here because I thought it was important to preserve and disseminate these words for all to read. The beauty of the Internet is that important words such as these can be preserved for future readers even when or if the original is lost. Keep in mind the dated references as this was written a couple of election cycles in the past.

Goodbye to All That:  September 2011

Barbara Stanwyck: "We're both rotten!"

Fred MacMurray: "Yeah - only you're a little more rotten." -"Double Indemnity" (1944)

Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.

But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.