With all the attention being given to the presidential primaries this year, there’s very little press on some of the other races going on this year. For example, Texas has a Senate race going on this year, and while the Democrats will not finalize their nomination until the primary on March 4, incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn is already looking to smear his potential opponents.
The most galling thing that Sen. Cornyn has done thus far is demand that democratic candidate Rick Noriega submit his military records to the Texas Republican Party. Of course, no candidate is under any obligation to hand over any documents of any kind to their opponent.
However, the obvious implication is that Republicans are going to attempt to discredit any service record Noriega has-in spite of the fact that Sen. Cornyn himself has never been in the military, not to mention his rather vocal support for the war in Iraq.
Noriega has released his service records, which include a tour of duty in Afghanistan in addition to relief efforts during Hurricane Katrina.
This particular incident is just the latest in a pattern of Republican attacks against the American military. For a group of people that wraps themselves in the American flag, speaks rhetoric about "supporting the troops", and possesses a general fervor about patriotism, the present-day Republican party seems to lack any patriotism or support for the men and women in uniform, but rather supports the elite that controls the defense contractors who will largely never see the destruction their works will bring.
Why are our forces currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan using weapons and defensive technologies that are generally inferior to our opponents, who are generally not as well financed as our government? In fact, why haven’t we actually heard anything out of Iraq or Afghanistan lately? Are things going that badly over there due to a general lack of government support? We all know that people are dying over in Iraq because of a series of aggressive moves made and rubber-stamped by a conservative Republican congress.
Whatever happened to the Republican rallying cry of less government spending and a balanced budget? Instead, Republicans will invariably use the term "tax-and-spend Democrats". At this point in time, if someone accepts the label of "conservative" they should automatically be taken much less seriously, simply because the label is inaccurate. There are no conservatives in politics anymore: every politician wants to spend more of your money on his or her own pet projects.
Of course, the Democrats aren’t entirely off the hook, either; however, that’s a different rant for some other time.
