The upcoming elections for the Congress, the governorships and state Legislatures are all about whether you stand with or against a rubberstamp Republican Party which has stood behind every misstep, every lie and every cover-up that the Bush Administration and the Republican congress have foisted upon the American public.

Republican leadership has rubberstamped Bush policies across-the-board, favoring the wealthy and the corporations while destroying the middle class.  Republicans have given tax breaks to corporations that outsource millions of jobs overseas while destroying entire industries here at home.  Republicans have given tax breaks to corporations that off-shore their headquarters overseas so that they don’t have to pay corporate taxes, putting even more tax burden on the middle class.

Republicans have given a free pass for a failed policy to Bush and Rumsfeld to continue a war in Iraq with no strategy.  Republicans have allowed the complete lack of accounting for the out of control spending in Iraq which gives Bush loyalists huge profits for “services” provided:

• From construction projects which supposedly rebuilt Iraqi schools for millions of dollars but in the end only provided tens of thousands of dollars for the actual construction after middlemen shaved off their profits;
• to “support” infrastructures which were supposed to replace military specialists, at a huge increase in costs, but ended up in disastrous shortages of water, munitions and replacement parts for vital equipment for our fighting men and women on the front lines;
• to the “cost cutting measures” which cut pay for our front line combat military in order to pay for defective body armor (which Rep. James Sensenbrenner supported by claiming that our military could get one or the other but not both);
• to giving Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown and Root hundreds of millions of dollars in overpayments to provide not meals for our troops, but only “the capacity to provide the meals” that they didn’t provide, and rotten meat and unsafe, contaminated, and unfiltered water to our troops when they did provide it.

The Republican Congress has denied increasing the minimum wage for nine years, while approving wage increases for themselves over that same period.  It has repeatedly denied affordable healthcare for all Americans while receiving the best healthcare available, at no cost to them, but paid for by taxpayers.  Republicans have cut education assistance programs across the board, denying college to hundreds of thousands of students who have shown academic ability, but weren’t fortunate enough to have been born into wealth.

Republicans have talked about their conservative values and morals and wooed the conservative right wing Christians for their votes while ridiculing them privately.

Republicans have talked about how they have pushed for legislation that puts sexual predators in jail, yet put Mark Foley into a position where he was actually their lead man as Chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, even as Republican leaders knew about Foley’s sexual advances towards underage male congressional pages for at least three years. The Washington Post reports that Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe knew about the emails six years ago.  Republicans leaders did nothing about it except to cover it up.  Rep. Sensenbrenner has refused to respond to requests to divulge what he knew about Foley’s behavior and when he knew it.

In typical Sensenbrenner fashion, when asked to comment on the Foley scandal, Sensenbrenner blamed the page system rather than Foley.  Whatever happened to individual and adult responsibility?  Ironically, the sex crime legislation that Foley pushed through makes internet solicitation for sex a felony. 

President Bush actually waived legal sanctions against Saudi Arabia under the sex trade legislation that Rep. Sensenbrenner touts.  In September 2005, Reuters reported that President Bush issued a Presidential Determination as a memorandum to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice waiving sanctions against Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Ecuador – countries that the United States had earlier criticized as among the world’s worst offenders in human trafficking.

Representative Sensenbrenner’s positions on promoting punitive legislation against illegal immigrants are hinged on actions against minorities. The fence that is supposed to protect us against terrorists is scheduled to be built on the border with Mexico, even though the 9/11 terrorists who entered this country came in through Canada.

And while he takes a public punitive position against the minority immigrants and their “21st century slave master employers” as he calls them, he benefits financially from his investments in the very companies that employ illegal aliens for their cheap labor, particularly Halliburton which enjoys no bid defense contracts and Darden, which owns the Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants.  In wholly disgraceful practice, Halliburton employed hundreds of illegal aliens as part of their contract to rebuild New Orleans.

And where has the Republican leadership been in insuring that the Bush White House is following the law?  During the Clinton Administration, there were over 200 investigations by Republican congressional leadership into White House policies. During the Bush Administration, there have been exactly ZERO.

And even if a Republican politician might have the backbone to privately disagree with Bush’s policies, they are strongarmed in the back rooms to vote for them, or are denied financial backing for future campaigns.  The stench of Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay’s illegal campaign contributions funneled from what were supposedly children’s charities, blanket the Republican Party across the board.

• Randy “Duke” Cunningham accepted $2.4 million in bribes from Defense Contractors and then used his influence while serving on the powerful defense appropriations subcommittee that approves Defense Department contracts to manipulate those Defense Department contracts on behalf of his “donors”.
• In Ohio, evidence of voter disenfranchisement and thefts of public money going to Republican loyalists is still being uncovered.
• Republican Bob Ney, who was convicted on October 13, 2006 on corruption charges related to the Jack Abramoff influence peddling scandals has yet to resign from office, in spite of his attorney’s statement that Ney was “going to resign from office in the coming weeks” several weeks ago when Ney pled guilty.  The Republican leadership has sworn to remove Ney from office immediately … That is, once they reconvene in November, AFTER the elections.  In the meantime, Ney continues to collect on his $165,100 salary and will be eligible to collect 20% of his salary as a pension when he turns 62.

(Ney is the eighth person convicted in the Abramoff influence peddling scandals, including a former Ney staffer, Neil Volz, whom Ney admitted encouraging to violate the one year ban against lobbying by former staffers. Ney accepted a stream of valuable things from Abramoff and the lobbyists he hired from Capitol Hill, among them Volz.  The gifts included luxury vacations that prosecutors valued at more than $170,000. Ney, for his part, sought to insert four amendments into a 2002 election overhaul bill to benefit Abramoff's clients.  He also admitted helping another client win a multimillion-dollar contract to provide wireless communication services to the U.S. Capitol.  The congressman admitted that he twice inserted comments in the Congressional Record aimed at bolstering a bid by Abramoff to buy a casino cruise line in Florida in 2000. Earlier this year, Ney's committee passed ethics legislation to strip convicted lawmakers of their pensions, but the bill died in the Republican controlled House.  Ney championed the provision, saying it was designed to hold "members of Congress and those they work with to the highest standards in order to ensure that those who abuse the public trust will be dealt with accordingly." While Ney faces up to 10 years in prison, the government has recommended only 27 months in prison.)

• Diebold (the company which makes a large portion of the voting machines that our votes are "counted" on) CEO Wally O’Dell — who promised that his voting machines would deliver Ohio to President Bush in the 2004 elections — died before he could be investigated and convicted, just as Kenneth “Kenny Boy” Lay, who was the top fund raiser for President Bush and the founder of Enron, also a key player in the secret Cheney Energy Policy meetings, died before he could be tried for his crimes in defrauding workers and investors in Enron.  Jeffrey Skilling, Enron's CEO, recently received a 24-year sentence.

So where is the righteous indignation from rank and file Republicans against all of these immoral crimes by their Republican leadership?  Why do they still support Bush and other politicians who allow Bush’s policies to continue to drag the county down?

Perhaps it is because they benefit financially by his policies.  Perhaps it is because they are so totally disconnected from reality that they have no idea that all of these things are going on.  Perhaps it is because they truly believe that their own representatives couldn’t be responsible for all the nation’s problems, while all the other guys are.

Whatever their excuses, the reality is that the Republican Party has been taken over by extremists who have no need for and no interest in ideas or policies other than their own, in spite of repeated failures.  The “representation” that you vote for when voting for Republicans is nothing more than a rubberstamp for Bush’s failed policies.

John Gard is attempting to take over the 8th Congressional seat that Mark Green is leaving in his bid for governor, and both of them have received substantial campaign contributions and appearances from Bush or Cheney for fundraisers. But even those who try to distance themselves from Bush’s policies today while on the campaign trail, have long been supportive of those policies and will continue to be so if they are re-elected.  If Green is elected, you can say goodbye to fair elections in Wisconsin. 

And Rep. Sensenbrenner, who claimed that President Bush “just doesn’t get it” when referring to Bush’s stance on immigration policy, and claims that he is at odds with President Bush on a number of issues, nonetheless repeatedly takes opportunities to stand behind President Bush during signing ceremonies.

Some professional conservative pundits would have you belive that Republicans like Sensenbrenner are merely being “conservative" and that their actions are somehow being misconstrued, while conservative backers “know the real Sensenbrenner.”  But that is precisely the point. Republican politicians are just being conservatives.  No compassion about them.  They consider themselves above the law and even above reproach. And that is why they need to be removed from office.

So before you vote November 7th, ask yourself, “What are my values and are they in line with Bush’s?”  If they are not, why continue to vote for another rubberstamp for Bush?