Is The GOP on self-destruct?

These are interesting times. For me, in particular, the coming month is going to be filled with joy, laughter, long walks and hopefully a very cool boat ride that will include a stop at Wild Hose Island. It does mean that I may be too busy and too happy to blog, at least every day, while Olaf and Anneke are here. It also means that the world at large can do its worst, and probably will, considering the state of politics today, and I won't comment.

Yeah, like my mouth can stay shut.

Remember the bumper sticker I mentioned the other say? "The problems we face today cannot be solved by the minds that created them." I keep thinking about those words, and I look at the political animals that roam the Washington zoo unchecked, unvaccinated, and unrepentant. The fact is that Barack Obama is perhaps the only man in Washington who didn't have a hand in creating the mess he inherited. Among the choices available, he is the closest thing we have to a fresh approach.

He's not perfect. In the American climate of "I want it now," he has not righted the ship of state as quickly as we all want. He has spent much of the last four years trying to get the Republican members of Congress fall in line through compromise, and yet they did not play. In that way he wound up taking many of the best parts out of Obamacare, for example, and still the GOP opposed it, and still does. Obama's greatest weakness is that he tried to find the middle of the road in a town that has lost the concept of compromise.

I was sitting at the car shop today while my car was being readied for our upcoming trip to Yellowstone (incidentally, a Republican was at the helm when Yellowstone was made the first national park, for what that's worth). I read a Newsweek magazine article written by a lady GOP leader who complained, what the @*&@!! are the republican men thinking? She stated that the men in her party are actively alienating women by focusing on issues long ago settled -- they're not stupid, they're suicidal.

I only hope she's right. If it works out, I'm going boating with dear friends who happen to be Republican, as well as my Dutch family, and although I am dying to know how much the leaders of the GOP are embarrassing them, I plan not to talk about politics at all. No elephants or donkeys, just horses. Wild ones.