GOP — Gone to the Dogs
. . . or From the Dogs?

By Rense Johnson, Chairman
Citizens for Term Limits

Paul Weyrich, president of Free Congress Foundation, recently warned that the Republican Party is threatened with extinction.

Mr. Weyrich is behind the curve. We will try to illustrate with a fable. Let us pretend that instead of elephants Republicans are symbolized by dogs. Dogs? Yes dogs. After all they are man's best friend (and woman's too). There are more folks who love dogs than there are who love elephants. And this is all pretend anyway. Sort of.

For many years the GOP consisted of nothing but good, solid, conservative dogs. And when conservative folks needed conservatives to hold the line in Congress, they knew that the good old dogs would be there for them. When a dog retired to become a lobbyist, or (sadly) died, and then was replaced by a (gasp) donkey, that mulish one would immediately be thrown out — cast into darkness, one might say.

But then something strange began to happen. Now and then a coyote would creep in. Now coyotes are not dogs. But they sort of look like them, and they would vote with the dogs to organize whichever house of Congress they were elected to. And the stronger and more disciplined the donkeys got, the more the coyotes were needed to help the dogs organize Congress. The problem with coyotes was beyond that you couldn't count on them to vote conservative. They voted every which way.

But sadly, every year for many elections, coyote representation increased. It became an expected phenomenon. But Republicans didn't get too worried. After all, remember that coyotes sort of looked like dogs, even though they weren't dogs, and the GOP kind of blurred the difference in their minds. But dog-gone it, the dog population kept dwindling down… to a precious few. They had in fact become an endangered species, there were so few of them.

Then one day a jackal got in. Everyone looked at him kind of funny, but jackals look sort of like coyotes, if less like dogs. Then a few more jackals got in, but nobody got too excited, especially in the Senate, where everything is so collegial (collegiality over all). Then one day a jackal left the party and became an independent (shudder), voting to help the donkeys organize the Senate.

WOW!… It sure raised hell with the President's program. But now we read that the errant jackal and Minority Leader of the dogs have made up (collegiality again), so everything is now back to normal… It is?

This leads us to the question: Which is threatened with extinction, Republicans, Conservatives or dogs? Or all of the above?

What will be the effect on our country?

On our institutions?

On our heritage?

On our children?

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