I've changed my mind about Republicans shutting up

I wrote an entry some time ago, just after the election, about how Republicans should just shut up, because that's what they told us Democrats to do after the elections of 2000 and 2004.

Now, I've changed my mind.

Please, please, please keep talking, Republicans. The entertainment value is overwhelmingly abundant and wildly, hysterically funny.

With Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage out there spewing conspiracy theory nonsense, with Limbaugh putting his foot in his mouth and Gingrich following suit, you're making 2012 that much easier.

And you have my full support in your willingness to run that farce of a candidate, Sarah Palin, again. As much as I really hate to see her in the news (she is so freaking annoying), I will take the splitting headaches just to watch your efforts go down in flames again.

Look, I'm going to be serious for a second. If you really want to be a viable party, if you want to be the party I thought I was voting for when I voted for George H.W. Bush (how wrong I was), then you have to get rid of the religious lunatics in your leadership. You have to get rid of the conspiracy theorists and the lying, hateful conservative talkers. You have to get rid of the free market ideologists and start engaging in capitalism with rational controls and protections for labor. You do not have to become Democrats, but you do have to get rid of the uncompromising ideology.

This country is not conservative. You did not lose because you weren't conservative enough, as some people would have you believe. You lost because you RUINED THE COUNTRY. That's right. You voted in irrational ideologues who had no business having access to the Treasury, who had no business deciding science policy, who had no business legislating their religion on us, who had no business passing bills of attainder (Terri Schiavo ring a bell), and you expect us to care when you throw your stupid little tea bag parties, where you whine and cry about how you're getting taxed unfairly? Most of the people at those parties received a tax cut under Obama's plan, and the only people whose taxes were raised had them go up four percent. Boo-hoo. I'll take a four percent tax hike for my income to go up to $250,000 per year.

The bottom line is that the more the crazies howl and scream, the more the rational Republicans out there--and I know some personally--will abandon them in favor of more compromise and more rational policy. There is nothing wrong with being fiscally conservative; I don't want the country to spend more money than it takes in, either. My problem with these recent protests is that all the protesters were nowhere to be found when Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress put us into that first ten trillion dollars worth of debt. They did nothing about it. Hypocrites.