Why We Are Running Candidates Against Democrats

We are running to take back our country from the political parties who have squandered and misdirected our resources, and destroyed any veneer of respectability.
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When people hear that we are running a candidate to
oppose Vermont Democratic Congressman Peter Welch in
next year's election, they are often quick to mention
that next term will be too late to impeach Bush or
Cheney. This is an indication that they either miss
the point, or that they are dedicated Democrats who
can't bear to see erstwhile allies bearing down on
their compatriots.

Allow me to explain our reasons for running. During
the last election cycle, the American people made it
abundantly clear that we wanted serious change. The
Democratic victory, which was larger that anything
that even the Democrats had dared to hoped for, was a
mandate to bring the occupation of Iraq to an end, and
to stop Bush from further damaging the country, if not
to hold him accountable.

Instead, we see the Democratic Congressional
leadership shying away from meaningful confrontation
with the President or Vice-President, and being unable
and unwilling to take a single significant step in
ending or even slowing the occupation. John Conyers,
chair of the House Judiciary Committee, the man who,
while serving in the Republican controlled House
during the last Congress, wrote the book on the
impeachment of Bush, now not only doesn't believe in
it, but is fighting tooth and nail to keep it from
being considered in his committee.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has declared impeachment
"off the table". She prefers to watch Bush and Cheney
twist in the wind for the next 18 months in the hopes
that the Democrats will thus inherit the White House.
What she and Conyers fail to include in their
political calculations are the numbers of lives to be
lost while those 18 months creep by and Bush continues
to act out on his policy whims. What she and Conyers,
and Peter Welch and the vast majority of Democratic
lawmakers who are going along with this masquerade are
conveniently forgetting to put into their calculus is
that they have taken a professional and moral oath to
defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign
and domestic.

We will run a candidate who knows that their first
loyalty is to the Constitution and their second is to
their constituents. We don't care who the next
President is. We do not want to give her or him
anything near the amount of power that George Bush has
amassed for the current executive branch. The
Democrats say "trust us, we're on your side, it will
all come out in the wash with the next election."

We
say, what have you done to deserve our trust? Where is
your defense of the Constitution?
Where is your moral outrage? Where is an investigation
that is really focusing on the crimes of the President
or the Vice-President and not just concentrating on
their underlings? Where are the results of all this
important work that you claim to be doing which is
precluding you from taking any action on impeachment?
Since when is some future judgment of history an
adequate substitute for justice served in response to
constitutional breaches and criminality?

If you want to know what a determined opposition can
do to a President from the other side of the aisle,
take a glance at Newt Gingrich's Congress and how they
went after Bill Clinton, yielding no ground and
effectively bottling him up and neutralizing him. The
best that these current Democrats can do is to waste
money rolling out the cots so they can stay up all
night with a pajama party talkfest about how bad they
think the war is. There is a reason that the only body
in this nation with a lower approval rating than the
President is the Congress. It is because they have
betrayed the American people. If we wanted discredited
Republican policies to continue, we would have voted
the Republicans back in.

The hubris and condescension that emanates from
lawmakers who tell us that in spite of the majority of
their constituents demanding impeachment and
accountability, they know better and are ignoring our
demands for our own good are infuriating and
nauseating. They, like the President, are putting
themselves above the constrictions of the Constitution
and think that they are wise Pooh-Bahs, when they are
nothing more than puppets for the corporate oligarchy
for whom most of our government functions.

We are running to take back our country from the
political parties who have squandered and misdirected
our resources, destroyed any veneer of respectability
that might have survived the Reagan/Bush/Clinton years
and have cast us into the darkness of endless war
against an ethereal enemy.

We have reached the end of our rope. We will accept
no more business as usual. No more excuses. We
recognize that only we the citizens can save the
Republic. If the Democrats are not willing to help,
then they had better get out of the way.

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