Dear Congressional Republicans:

OK, we know your feelings were hurt in the last election when America soundly rejected your tax-cuts-for-billionaires, trickle-down economic policy. --- We didn't mean to make you feel bad. It's just that, with the collapse of the Bush economy and all, we decided that your strategy of starting expensive wars and awarding lavish defense contracts to unaccountable private security corporations was a betrayal of the dying U.S. troops and maimed American veterans whose needs you laughingly ignored.

Also, your expectation that working- and middle-class Americans, small businesses and future generations should be required to pay for all these get-rich-quick schemes benefiting corporations and their wealthy shills seemed a bit, shall we say, inequitable. So, when we wondered why we shouldn't ourselves get something out of the deal -- say, a base level of affordable health care, or help in growing our optimistic little small businesses -- you demonized us as "socialists" and fought against us every step of the way.

Now, you mock President Obama because, in a year and a half, he hasn't yet managed to fix all the problems that were brought about by eight years of complete Republican rule following a decades-long period of growing GOP intransigence. You censure federal bailouts, even though it was your own President Bush who started the whole bailout program on the eve of his ouster. You love deficit spending when you control the purse-strings, but you pretend to be deficit hawks when you're in the minority.

You think the American public doesn't remember, because you are so skillful at distracting us by manipulating our fears of Muslims, Mexicans and homosexuals.

All the while, you refuse to address the real issues of growing unemployment and an economic situation that has become truly scary. Instead, you spend all your time trying to make the Democratic president look bad, and energizing the radical fringe of your increasingly fragmented party.

You overestimate your own accomplishments; you claim that moderately attractive women such as Sarah Palin are actually "hot" and that overly emotional yet fairly intelligent men such as Glenn Beck are "inspiring," while you denigrate intellectuals, scientists, authors and historians as "elitists."

Face it: You just hate being in the minority, and are willing to sacrifice any vestiges of integrity to reclaim a weak political majority, which you believe is yours by right.

We understand. It's tough giving up control when you've had it for so long. But you can't expect this behavior to be rewarded by some kind of political landslide in the polls in November.

I don't own a crystal ball, but despite Americans' frustration with the economy, I'm getting the feeling that a massive upswelling of Republican support is not in the cards this year.

That is, unless you quit your indignant partisan bickering and start acting as though you really care about solving the very real and frightening problems we ordinary folks are facing on a day-to-day basis -- even if you have to do so at the risk of making a Democratic president look good.

Please, do the right thing for once. We need help.

Sincerely,

Brandon's Big Gay Blog