<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><div style="RIGHT: auto"><SPAN style="RIGHT: auto">Republicans did pick up Mr. Hansen<VAR id=yui-ie-cursor></VAR> as a registered Republican. So it is nice to know it evened out with Mr. Stafford dropping his registration. </SPAN></div>
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<div style="RIGHT: auto"><SPAN style="RIGHT: auto">Donovan J. Arnold</SPAN></div>
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<DIV style="BORDER-BOTTOM: #ccc 1px solid; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LINE-HEIGHT: 0; MARGIN: 5px 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; HEIGHT: 0px; FONT-SIZE: 0px; BORDER-TOP: #ccc 1px solid; BORDER-RIGHT: #ccc 1px solid; PADDING-TOP: 0px" class=hr contentEditable=false readonly="true"></DIV><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">From:</SPAN></B> Tom Hansen <thansen@moscow.com><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">To:</SPAN></B> Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020@moscow.com> <BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sent:</SPAN></B> Wednesday, June 13, 2012 6:36 PM<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject:</SPAN></B> [Vision2020] Stafford: Why I gave up on being a Republican<BR></FONT></DIV><BR>
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<DIV><SPAN>Courtesy of New Jersey <SPAN id=misspell-0 class=mark>Online</SPAN> (Trenton, New Jersey) at:</SPAN></DIV>
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<DIV><SPAN></SPAN><A href="http://www.nj.com/hudson/voices/index.ssf/2012/06/stafford_why_i_gave_up_on_bein.html" rel=nofollow target=_blank></A><A href="http://www.nj.com/hudson/voices/index.ssf/2012/06/stafford_why_i_gave_up_on_bein.html" rel=nofollow target=_blank>http://www.nj.com/hudson/voices/index.ssf/2012/06/stafford_why_i_gave_up_on_bein.html</A></DIV>
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<H1 style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 5px; LINE-HEIGHT: 22px; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; FONT-SIZE: 18px; PADDING-TOP: 5px" class=yiv743343854entry-title>Stafford: Why I gave up on being a Republican</H1></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN>By Michael Stafford</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>I'm a life-long Republican. My political affiliation has been woven intrinsically into the very fabric of my being.</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>My first political act was passionately lobbying my fourth-grade classmates to vote for Reagan over Walter Mondale in a mock election in 1984. As an adult, I continued to be a rock-solid Republican- I helped run my law school's chapter of the Federalist Society and its Republican club. And after the election of President Obama in 2008, I served as an officer in my state Republican Party. For the next two years, I devoted substantial amounts of my time, my talent, and my treasure to supporting local candidates running for office and to building the Party organization.</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>Today, however, I am a registered Republican no longer.</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>I came to the decision to leave the GOP not with a heavy
heart, but with a broken one.</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>As a local GOP official after President <SPAN id=misspell-1 class=mark>Obama's</SPAN> election, I had a front-row seat as it became infected by a dangerous and virulent form of political rabies.</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>In the grip of this contagion, the Republican Party has come unhinged. Its fevered hallucinations involve threats from imaginary communists and socialists who, seemingly, lurk around every corner. Climate change- a reality recognized by every single significant scientific body and academy in the world- is a liberal conspiracy conjured up by Al Gore and other leftists who want to destroy America. Large numbers of Republicans- the notorious <SPAN id=misspell-2 class=mark>birthers</SPAN>- believe that the President was not born in the United States. Even worse, few figures in the GOP have the courage to confront them.</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>Republican economic
policies are also indefensible. The GOP constantly claims its opponents are engaged in "class warfare," but this is an exercise in projection. In Republican proposals, the wealthy win, and the rest of us lose- one only has to look at Rep. Paul Ryan's budget to see that.</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>As Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. <SPAN id=misspell-3 class=mark>Ornstein</SPAN> have written, "the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition." Its reckless behavior helps drive the political dysfunction crippling our nation.</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>In the end, it offers a <SPAN id=misspell-4 class=mark>dystopian</SPAN> vision of our future- a harsher, crueler and more merciless America starkly
divided between the riders, and the ridden.</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>From the moment the Tea Party emerged on the scene, I had a premonition that I would eventually have to leave the GOP. But my mind conjured innumerable reasons for delay- for putting off the day of reckoning in the desperate hope that some game-changing miracle would occur, such as a victory by Governor Jon Huntsman in the Republican presidential primary.</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>But no miracle happened. Among all the difficult truths I've had to face, perhaps none has been harder than the realization that I, and those dissidents like me, are unrepresentative outliers far removed from, and largely unable to influence, the main currents of opinion within the GOP.</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>Ultimately, leaving the GOP was necessary in order to maintain my own integrity. Leaving is also a public act of personal protest. I am under no illusions about its broader
significance- it will have no impact on the trajectory of the political narrative in this nation. But that does not make it futile. On the contrary, as the shadows lengthen, such minor individual acts of defiance and dissent are more critical now than ever before.</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>Perhaps, one day, a reformed and responsible Republican Party will reemerge.</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>But until then, the GOP and I have reached a parting of the ways. In the poignant words of "Kathleen <SPAN id=misspell-5 class=mark>Mavourneen</SPAN>," an old Irish ballad: "It may be for years, and it may be forever"</SPAN></DIV>
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<DIV><SPAN></SPAN>Michael Stafford</DIV>
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<DIV><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; COLOR: rgb(68,78,92); FONT-SIZE: 13px" class=yiv743343854Apple-style-span><IMG style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; DISPLAY: block; MAX-WIDTH: 155px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: bottom; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px" class=yiv743343854adv-photo alt=Michael_Stafford.jpg src="http://media.nj.com/hudson_voices_impact/photo/9767312-small.jpg" width=155 height=152></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=yiv743343854Apple-style-span color=#444e5c size=4 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 15px" class=yiv743343854Apple-style-span> <BR></SPAN></FONT><SPAN>-----------------------------------</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN><SPAN id=misspell-7 class=mark>Seeya</SPAN> round town, Moscow.</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>Tom Hansen</SPAN><BR><SPAN>Moscow, Idaho</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>"If not us, who?</SPAN><BR><SPAN>If not now, when?"</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN>- Unknown</SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR><SPAN></SPAN><BR></DIV></DIV>
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