Republicans Give No Choice In This Current "Time Of Choosing"

     Over this past Spring and Summer, Republicans and their mouth pieces in talk radio and elsewhere, were telling anyone who would listen how the mid-term election was going to result in a gain of seats in the House of Representatives for Republicans and control of the currently Democrat-controlled Senate of the United States. They not only said it was a possibility, but that it most probably was going to be an electoral "wave."
     If the latest polling data can be trusted, the Republican "wave" has turned into a gentle ebb with the loss of a majority of the GOP's momentum less than two months before the election. By election day I fully expect that the "Republican wave" will transmogrify into the Democrats holding their majority in the Senate and possibly gaining seats in the House. Although I am not sure that Democrats will have quite enough voter support to wrestle control of the House away from the Republican majority.
     So what happened? How did the Republicans squander a lead in the polls that could have comprised a wave of victory this November? The answer is simple; a complacent adherence to establishment party politics. The other more sublime reason is that the Republicans have virtually disappeared from the political scene in hopes that Democrats would implode from scandals and incompetence. The fact that Republicans have not learned from the 2012 presidential election that voters care little about positive results (Barack Obama being the only president in history to win re-election with an economy in worse shape than when he was inaugurated) is a sign that they are not only unskilled in politics, but obtuse in the face of overwhelming evidence.
     What has hurt Republicans in addition to not having a positive agenda to proffer is their wet rag response to illegal immigration. Agreeing with Democrats that the "system is broken" instead of just needing strong political leadership to actually enforce its laws. They have ignored the will of the people, rejected the right thing to do, and turned away from a winning political strategy, all rolled up into the neat little package of illegal immigration and have actually sided with Democrats, against the will of the people to do the wrong thing and shoot themselves in the political foot.
     There have been other issues where the Republicans, through their political complacency, have not distinguished themselves from Democrats. And as fed up with Democrats as American voters may be, they are not going to jump on board to creating a Republican wave without sufficient reason to do so given by a strongly articulated alternative by Republicans. It is what Ronald Reagan referred to in his epic speech from 1964, A Time For Choosing, where he outlined a way forward for the Republican Party as one of "bold colors" not "pale pastels." Apparently, and unfortunately, today's Republican Party has chosen to emulate the latter in a time when the country needs leadership with the political courage to embody the former.