I have whinned long enough like a sore loser (which I am) that the Democrats won the Congress. Now it is time to see what the hell else has gone horribly wrong. To steal a Democratic talking point, the Democrats won the Congress, but not with a mandate. Nationwide statistics are showing the Republicans simply did not show up. Why? Because the candidate pool sucked for one. The other reason was that the Republicans are losing their political identity.

Scandals run rampant all over Congress. Unfortunately, the ones the American public care about are the ones that involve politicans getting caught with either “a dead girl, or a live boy” to quote my friend Rick Garcia. Sadly, the Republicans seems to be the ones getting caught. The Republican Party is morally bankrupt. What is their first move to regain their soul? Make career politican Mel Martinez the new RNC chief. What is one of the main reasons for this choice? Because Martinez will open the Republican Party up to the rapidly growing Hispanic population.

Martinez isn’t a bad guy or a terrible politican. He is just another career politican who is out of touch with the common man. Both parties suffer from this problem, but it’s the Republicans’ time now to change it. If these corporate whores continue on this greedy, elitest path, watch the numbers continue to drop until the party is a shell of it’s former self.

Back in 1994 the Republicans signed an agreement called the ‘Contract With America‘ you can read the contract HERE. The Republicans promised to enact the following within the first 100 days of the new Congress:

* require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply to Congress;
* select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress
for waste, fraud or abuse;
* cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
* limit the terms of all committee chairs;
* ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;
* require committee meetings to be open to the public;
* require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
* and implement a zero base-line budgeting process for the annual Federal Budget.

Over the past 12 years, the Republicans that vowed to change Washington had Washington change them. They, just like the Democrats, became the pawns for the special interest groups that showered them with trips, money and gave them influence. Unfortunately, the people who elected them were the one group that they didn’t care about. Look at Katherine Harris (R) of Sarasota. She wonders why she wasn’t elected to the Senate. Well, it is obvious. She is embroiled in an investigation to see if she accepted a defense contractor’s monetary gifts and expensive dinners in order to help him secure contracts when she was on the Homeland Defense Committee when she was in the House of Representatives.

Back to Martinez. He has been at the center of a few controversies, including the memo that was leaked during the Terri Schaivo case that stated the Republican Party could use the case as a “great political issue” that would excite the pro-life base. When news of the memo broke, Martinez, then a Senator, insisted that the memo was written by senior staffer Brian Darling without his consent or approval and Darling was summarily dismissed. Anyone who follows Florida politics knows that Martinez is notorious for blaming his aides for everything.

Earlier that same year, during the primary elections of 2004, a letter from Martinez was mailed out to voters stating that his Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum, was “the new darling of the homosexual extremists,” a reference to McCollum’s support for federal hate-crime legislation. After Martinez won the primary, he apologized to McCollum for the smear, blaming it on “a couple of young turks” in his campaign.

He also claimed staffers were responsible for the attack during the general elections that year when Martinez was running against Betty Castor (D). Martinez’s campaign attacked former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, who was campaigning for Castor, claiming that Reno’s Justice Department had used “armed thugs” to seize Cuban refugee Elián González and send him back to Cuba, thereby “‘allowing Fidel Castro to have his way.” Martinez apologized again after it was noted that he had previously featured one of the federal agents involved in the Gonzalez raid in a campaign ad attacking Castor as “soft” on terrorism. He blamed that one on his staffers too.

As has been shown, Martinez has a pattern of shirking his responsiblilties when they generate any controversy. Is that what the GOP needs to re-tool it’s image? Guys like Martinez who have no real backbone to stand by their own word? It disgusts me that the RNC cannot get their act together and understand that people are tired of politics as usual. This one thing I can promise is that me, my familiy and the Tampa Pirate will not cut the Republican party any slack. We will hold Martinez and any other Republicans accountable for their behavior. We will not allow the values of the party to be sold to corporations like Bush, Cheney and so many others have done. Stand up and be heard Republicans. Get militant and let’s take back our party, even if it means voting every single Republican in state and federal seats out and starting with a fresh candidate pool.