Kudos…

…to Russell Sadler at Blue Oregon for highlighting the kind of story we not only should be hearing more about, but that we should be doing more to create. This time it's the tale of James Chaney, a prominent Eugene Republican, who has abandoned the party with admirable rhetorical flourish...

“We’re poisoning our planet through gluttony and ignorance. We’re teetering in the brink of self-inflicted insolvency. We’re selfishly and needlessly sacrificing the best of a generation. And we’re lying about it,” wrote Chaney.

“While it has compiled this record of failure and deception, the party which I'm leaving today has spent its time, energy and political capital trying to save Terri Schiavo, battling the threat of single-sex unions, fighting medical marijuana and physician-assisted suicide, manufacturing political crises over presidential nominees, and selling privatized Social Security to an America that isn't buying. We fiddle while Rome burns.”

“Enough is enough,” wrote Chaney. “I quit.”

Next time, how about making it your neighbor, or one of the folks at work? You know, the ones who ID as Republican, but just don't belong anymore. OK, they're pretty conservative, and completely shameless about the twin SUVs in the driveway, and don't get them started on taxes…

But on the other hand, they expect their kids to get a world class education, including science class, and they think their dad's pension should be rock solid, and carrying health insurance for the kid in college is a struggle since the tuition hike went into effect and…

Fact is, there are a lot of people in who identify as Republican are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the direction of their party. We need to increase understanding that a vote for a Republican member of Congress, no matter how great a guy or gal your local Republican Congresscritter may be, is a vote for the leadership of the DeLay gang. A vote for a Republican city clerk may simply add to the ranks of the farm team that's been assembled by the radical destructionists and fundie Taliban that infest the upper reaches of the Republican Party today.

OK, so we can't bring every rational Republican completely across the divide to progressive enlightenment, one way to topple their tower of destructionist babble is to chip away at the base. If we can help some of them understand that rational people don't belong in the increasingly radical nest of corruption and sedition that's become the condition of the Republican Party, well, it's a start.

Friends don't let friends remain Republican.