FAMILY VALUE PARTY

Most people identify the Republican Party as the party of family values. They just don't realize that the family the party represents is that of the office holders and power brokers that they will protect to the fullest to the detriment of everyone and everything else.

Take the unfolding bombshell story of how the House Republican leadership covered up Rep. Mark Foley's potentially predatory sexual behavior against male teenage House pages in order to retain his seat in Congress. It is dispicable but completely in keeping with the Republican obsession with power over the public good - in this case the welfare of children serving in the House.

As bad as this example is, it pales in comparison to the protection Republicans provide their family members comprising the Bush administration war cabinet of President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Every Republican in the country knows the Iraq War was made up, unnecessary and utterly un-winnable. Yet they allow one hundred military casualties, including fifteen killed, to pile up every week in their senseless war because they refuse to acknowledge the crimes of their leadership.

This November we need to elect Senators and Congressmen who will serve a much broader family than the dysfunctional Republican political family of war criminals and possible pedophiles. Its called the family of man.

Originally published in Chicago Sun-Times, October 7, 2006