Yearning For The REAL Republican Party — By Tommy Purser

As I write this column the counting is not yet over for the 2020 Presidential Election. I have so looked forward to its end.
I have lived for more than seven decades and have never experienced the division, the rancor, the hostility as it exists today in this country I so love. I, like many of the Baby Boomers of my age, have been so exceedingly proud of the role my father played during World War II to fight the advance of Nazi hate, genocide, racism, and world domination.
Yet today, right wing haters, Nazi wannabes, genocide advocates, racists and intellectually challenged cretins are being supported, egged on, and encouraged by the President of the United States.
It all makes me fear that the brave work of my father and military veterans before, after and during World War II is threatened to become inconsequential. A waste of time, effort and lives, all in the unfathomable worship of a narcissistic, compulsively lying, hate mongering con artist who has literally conned millions of Americans who, sadly, have no idea they’ve been conned.
I was first eligible to vote in the 1968 Presidential Election. I proudly cast my vote for the Republican candidate that year.
In 1972, I again voted Republican. And again in 1976, voting against Georgian Jimmy Carter. In 1980, I opposed Carter once again. In 1984 and 1988 I continued my loyalty to Republican principles.
But, with the economic collapse during the George H.W. Bush presidency, I began to question the legitimacy of what the Republican party stood for. For the first time in my life I voted Democrat in 1992. Eight years later, the economy had bounced back and I again voted Democrat. George W. Bush won that election and, again, eight years later the economy was in shambles. After Barrack Obama was elected the economy slowly, but surely bounced back and, when Donald Trump took office the economy was booming. I remarked many times that Trump’s greatest accomplishment was not destroying that economy.
But he found a way, like his two previous Republican Presidents to destroy the economy once again. I am so sad to see what the once proud Republican Party has become.