Was the Republican Party in such terrible shape before the 2010 elections?? Just my opinion and for the most part of what I've read that's all any of this is but the election of the Tea Party congress lead to the demise of the Republican Party. You have extremists like Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul (who makes his dad look like a genius), Sean Hannity, Ann Coultier and the list could go on for ever. Every time one of these total nut cases opens their mouth it drives more folks towards the left. There are great leaders who are potential candidates for the next election but until you get rid of the Tea Party from your delegation the GOP will never win another election........

Well, I am not in love with republican politicians and I think that it would be good for some of the old stalwarts to move on... But I honestly don't believe that the republicans are anti anti black or anti latino... there is room for differing views as to how immigration should be fixed, and I would hope you can see the unfairness if just giving people a free pass who came here illegally. The country is waking up to the depth of some of the issues and this includes republicans, they may be late in coming to the table on some of those issues but common sense eventually will rule the day. As far as the notion you have of republicans being against blacks and Latino's, I would suggest much of that is from a concentrated effort of the left to portray them that way and then a few pockets on state law makers that have handled some of the issues rather poorly. Personally I don't know the validity of the issues that for instance Arizona faces but I suspect they are much more severe than DC would care to admit... just a couple of years ago Phoenix was worse for kidnapping than Bogota Colombia which had always had the reputation of being the kidnapping capital of the world... you have national parks in Arizona where the government has posted for people to stay out of because of the drug and people trafficking in them makes them unsafe for our citizens to use them... I can't speak to Arizona, but I do know that the democratic party does not want to discuss many of the issues that state faces either. The democratic party did everything it could to present the republicans as being anti everything and to be honest they were very effective at it... and republicans did no present a well reasoned and palatable argument as to why this was untrue, then you had a couple of politicians and state legislatures that crossed a few different lines, but their actions do not represent the national party. A couple of examples of republicans losing fights that they should have won were both voter ids and school vouchers, voter ID was somehow won by the democrats even though 80% of Americans supported it... School vouchers offer the most benefit to inner city children attending failing schools, many of those parents fully support the idea, just watch the raffles for charter schools in NY and tell me that there is not support... The dems did a good job of defining the republican party as something that people can not trust and as a party only looking out for the wealthy... It is not true, that is not what conservatism stands for, but I agree with you that many see it that way.

There is a flip side... you say that the republicans don't care about the minorities, but I would ask you, what has the current administration and congress done to advance the condition of the African American community in this country.... The issues are deep Richard, you know this probably better than I do and the democratic party's lip service at some point will run thin and their unbridled spending with nothing to show for it will catch up to them.... The republicans will not come back until they can better articulate why there ideas are beneficial, but they certainly are not simply looking out for the rich, some of the individual politicians, maybe but that is not what the party stands for... and I promise you that you can find democratic politicians that are just as bought and paid for as are the republicans...

The republicans have an uphill road Richard... but those of us who are paying attention know this... it does not mean that we sell out our principles what it does mean is that we get rid of a few hard headed politicians and have better dialogues with each other and with the country... It is also time for the republicans to stop catering to the religious extremes, that does not mean that we not stand for our religious rights, but that we stop with the arcane pandering that leads to comments like "a real rape will not result in a pregnancy" or that "pregnancy resulting from a rape is god's will". Like I said, it will not be an easy road, but it is doable, it is also helped by your party's fiscal irresponsibility with little to nothing to show for all the spending it supports, sooner or later the youth of this country will wake up to the fact that they are being totally screwed by the current generation in power.

I totaly agree with you, I get upset when people treat the the waiter like dirt and are not present at dinner table the last day so they of the cruise so don't have to leave a tip

If you repeat a lie often enough, most of people, especially the more dim-witted ones (no offense intended), will believe it. I like the oft-repeated statement that "no one in Washington is proposing" (Sarge's quote)gun confiscation. Senator Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Rosa DeLauro have, as have New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Cuomo's argument is that once we ban the future sale of "assault weapons" and large-capacity magazines, we will obviously have to do something about the millions of those already in civilian hands. It may be called a "forced buy-back", but it is in fact confiscation. That could never happen here? Well, it already did in 2005 in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina when the National Guard went house to house and confiscated legally-owned firearms, leaving honest Americans at the mercy of marauding gangs. The Federal court eventually ruled that this was unconstitutional and ordered the guns returned, but the deed was done. To believe that this couldn't happen again is dreaming. The fact that there "is no practical way to do this" only makes it difficult, but no less of a goal by many.

Here's one for you conspiracy theorists. The current assault weapon ban frenzy was created by the horrible tragedy in Sandy Hook. Interesting, because an assault weapon was not used there. The mother had the weapon in question special-ordered from Bushmaster so it met Connecticut's tough ban on assault weapons. So by the government's own definition, it was not an assault weapon (this in itself demonstrates the fallacy of the proposed bans because they are based on form, not function). Why have we not seen a photograph of the actual weapon used in that massacre? We have seen generic Bushmaster 223's (the big, bad, mean looking ones) plaster all over the media, but the police have not yet released a photograph of the actual weapon used at Sandy Hook. Why not? Well, duh, it doesn't "look" like an assault weapon and thus wouldn't support the pro-ban arguments.If anyone can find a photo of this weapon please post it here.

Gun violence in this country (and the more pertinent question of violence in general - it doesn't really matter to the poor woman who was beaten to death by an abusive partner that he didn't use a gun)is a topic of legitimate debate in this country. Perpetuating lies,myths, made up or "cherry picked" statistics on either side of the issue is not the way we should go forward.

A fetus is not a child. It is a promise of a child to the parents. But the amount of abortions pales in comparison to the amount of life crime, disease, poverty and war takes. Where are the priorities?