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We Must Take Back Our Country

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by RB

There was evidently considerable voting fraud in the election, and those electronic voting machines have to be replaced with paper trail which can be verified. But the fact is that Repugs have made big gains across the country in the past twelve years. The political battle is being lost at the local grassroots level. They did not steal the election in all of those red states. They consist of too many rednecks, Christian Right, Evangelicals, and ignorant brainwashed individuals. New York State had the lowest voter turnout of any blue state. Here in Texas, Republicans have taken over the past 12 years by devious methods and abuse of power, promising the moon and delivering fraud, corruption, pollution and deficits. The creed of greed has spread like a disease.

The 1994 Texas governor's race lived up to its billing as one of the most important in the state's history. The matchup between the nationally popular incumbent, Ann Richards, and the son of a former president, George W. Bush, produced total Republican dominance of the state for a decade and beyond. No Democrat has won a statewide election since that year.

At the time, I chalked the Bush victory up to the fact that he had promised the NRA a concealed gun law and the huge sums of money poured into his campaign. Also, because of the Bush name. The bottom line is that the state was shifting to a Republican majority. This was because Ann Richards had sown the seeds for her own defeat. She had aggressively worked on bringing all those jobs to Texas -- Southwestern Bell in San Antonio, big telecon companies in North Texas, all the growth in Central Texas. The growth in suburban areas around Houston and Dallas and Forth Worth between 1990 and 1994 was phenomenal. Those people voted Republican. Even Ann Richards confided that it was next to impossible to defeat Bush. She received around 100,000 more votes than in 1990, and still received only 47 percent of the vote.

The dirty politics and propaganda and empty promises and lies promised by Repugs have played on the greed of the average American. Those who are interested in material gain, or succumb to the moral issues of the Christian Right. We know there was election fraud, there always has been and always will be election fraud.

We must fight to regain what has been lost to the Republican Party over the past decade. It is a disease and must be destroyed for the benefit of every citizen. It must be destroyed to save this country from imploding into a continual de facto dictatorship, which only a revolution can bring down.

Our main concern now should be restoring the Democratic Party to its proper place as the majority party. That will take real effort at the local level. We must also demand voting machines with a proper paper trail, including individual receipts, and individual voting rights. We must regain the support Democrats have always had, and deserve. It will be difficult, because issues like Social Security and Medicare are now considered liabilities to younger generations which believe they won't be there for them -- and they likely won't, mainly because of the Bush administration.

RB

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION