GOP veers from its founding principles

[sybylla]

http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/index.php?ntid=9214&ntpid=1
The Capital Times

When delegates to the Republican National Convention meet in New York City this week, they will pass a platform that is radically out of sync with the principles upon which the party was founded, and they will nominate a presidential and vice presidential ticket made up of two men who once would have been booed off the convention stage of a gathering of the Grand Old Party.

Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that any of the men and women who gathered in the central Wisconsin community of Ripon 150 years ago to form the Republican Party would be comfortable with what it has become.

Those who started the party were socialists committed to the teachings of the French philosopher Charles Fourier, radical reformers and anti-slavery firebrands. They were determined to upset the power structures and the financial arrangements that had maintained the sin of human bondage on American soil.

To accomplish the goal of freeing all the slaves, they sought to wrest control of the U.S. House and Senate, not to mention the presidency, from the hands of do-nothing Whigs and Democrats. And if that pursuit of justice meant that the United States would be plunged into open warfare with itself, then so be it.
<snip>