The Republican Party has ruined America

As a youngster growing up in Vancouver in the 1960’s, I remember my Dad expressing his admiration for Barry Goldwater. As a Canadian, Dad could not vote for Senator Goldwater, of course, but he damn well would have had we been Americanos. Dad’s father grew up in Le Sueur County, Minnesota, and moved to Saskatchewan while still a young man shy of 20 years just after 1900 and joined the railroad where he worked as a locomotive engineer until he retired in the year I was born, 1954.

I caught a youtube segment of Goldwater condemning the “radical left” at the nomination event you see a caption of above. This is, of course, a default setting for opponents of Republican candidates in debates and such since. I laughed when I heard Ms. Kelly Loeffler, the GOP candidate opposing Raphael Warnock in the 2020 Federal Election runoff debate in Georgia use this term continuously in an attempt to disparage Rev. Warnock and Democrats.

I have no idea Gramp’s political leaning but sure as heck Dad would have been a registered Republican. I know he didn’t like JFK and George McGovern and told me so directly. Dad was conservative, no doubt about it — he didn’t like long hair, hippies, drug-taking and lectured me occasionally on the execrable nature of ingesting same. Didn’t care much for Bob Dylan, Pete Seger and Barry McGuire either.

He loathed communism and implored me to write an exposé on this virtually satanic ideology in my last year of high school in 1972. He didn’t take kindly to liberal view points and the artful struts of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau. I am sure he loved Ronald Reagan but I truthfully do not remember him sharing that sentiment with me.

Dad was also a born-again Christian and this brought him pastoral comfort during his life. I’m different from Pop. I’m a liberal and woke and were Dad still with us we would be discussing and likely arguing a lot over the crap we see reflected daily throughout American life.