Some of our less observant regular readers have made the claim that I believe all Republicans are evil or bad or corrupt or whatever. Reading the past week or so of my posts would probably make you think that at first blush, especially if you’re not really reading exactly what I say.

I am, in general, not fond of candidates of the Republican party this election cycle, that’s true. I’m most certainly not fond of the President and his political machine. When I say things like corrupt or evil, however, I mean them somewhat tongue-in-cheek as criticism.. Those comments are focused directly at the party leadership of the GOP. I’m concerned about candidates that don’t speak out about issues where the President and his surrogates cross the line between spinning to outright lying. There are a lot of candidates running for federal office as Senators and Congressmen that are building on those lies to boost their own candidacy. There are a lot of Republican campaigns taking plays from the playbook that Rove and the Bush campaign perfected in 2000 and 2002.

It’s not politics as usual. It’s not right. It’s not good for our democracy.

A regular reader has taken to claiming that I have tunnel vision and that I don’t want to read what I don’t want to. If that were true, I wouldn’t read half the stuff I do read. I wouldn’t have conservative bloggers in my news aggregator. I wouldn’t read realist or neo-realist writing. I disagree with them in general, but am happy to be made to think and to research and articulate my reasons for my beliefs and my reasoning. We’ve had numerous discussions here on issues that we all don’t agree on. That’s welcome, as long as the disagreements are meaningful and thought out.

What’s not welcome is when people who know me or claim to be my friend create disagreements for the sake of creating controversy. When they are based on a presumption of my beliefs or a presumption of my politics even though I clearly state the opposite, it crosses a line.

What’s happened over the past 4 years is that we’ve crossed into some alternate reality in American politics. We have a major party in this country engaging in tactics I don’t remember seeing in the past 15 years. There are claims of massive voter registration fraud in several states, either paid for by a top GOP consultant and the RNC itself. We’ve got indictments about a scheme in NH during the 2000 elections to phone jam the Democratic get-out-the-vote operations. We have egregious push polling during the 2000 election by Bush supporters, spreading rumors that McCain fathered an illegitimate daughter. House GOP leaders may have offered a bribe to a sitting Congressman in exchange for a particular vote. There are more.

This major party needs to re-calibrate its moral compass. It needs new leadership. The only way I see that happening is to have them lose big this year. I know that it’s unlikely to happen, but I know how I will use my vote. My vote is going to be a message to both parties. The first is support for many parts of the Democratic platform, no doubt. The message to the Republicans, though, will be that it’s time to clean house and to start anew. In 2006, I plan on reassessing the Republican party and their candidates. Maybe in 2008, we’ll have a responsible Republican campaign for President.