I have been silent for a while on politics, but cannot be silent any longer. Know that, I absolutely mean no harm, love nor respect anyone less, but am bewildered that we can easily divorce ourselves from our core beliefs and principles.

I wrote many posts during our last US Presidential election season, and as those who have been following me know, I have been very passionate. I also know that as a Christian, I am charged to pray for our leaders, and I do.

But here is where I am.  To me it doesn’t matter what letter you carry behind your name, R or D, what matters is whether what the person stands for, promotes what is in line with my core beliefs and principles.

I wrote in Almost Became A Republican that former President Obama had me in a quandary when he flipped his position on same-sex marriage, after having been a stalwart for marriage being between one man and one woman. I supported President Obama. I loved, and was proud of President Obama. I even bought the T-shirt,  but my enamorment did not cloud my vision.  I could see, recognize that his new position did not align with my core beliefs. He left me conflicted.

So now I’m left wondering how so many republicans can seemingly lay down their core principles and beliefs to support one who can be seen in obvious lies. With the power of the camera and recordings, we can now easily see what might have been proffered before, and what is being proffered now. The two are not the same, and the sad thing about this is, it’s not just one, it’s oh so many.

Then we have the people who represent the President, trying to re-frame or massage what we saw with our eyes and heard with our ears into something else, and/or call it “fake news” or a joke. There appears to be a total disregard for truth. Tell the truth. I can handle the truth, though sometimes it may be difficult.

I know that we all have our biases, and those biases sometimes tend to paint how we see things. That’s where our core beliefs and principles should kick in. What do we measure what we see and hear against, if not our core beliefs and principles? Does truth matter, or can it be silenced with the letter (“R” or “D”) behind the name?  I’m just suggesting that we take our Republican & Democrat glasses off.

A week or so ago, I was really proud of, and so appreciated Senator John McCain’s speech. His speech was a call to return to “regular order”, when both sides would work together to get things done for the people. Some saw it as a contradiction because he voted to proceed with the debate on health care; although, he made it clear that he would not vote for the present bill, and he did not.

Washington Post’s, The Daily 202: did a write-up on Republican Senator Jeff Flake’s bold rebuttal against the president in his recently published  book – Conscience of a Conservative. Below are a couple of excerpts from his book cited in the article:

“…We stopped speaking the language of freedom and started speaking the language of power. … Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior was excused and countenanced as ‘telling it like it is,’ when it was actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified.”

“Rather than fighting the populist wave that threatened to engulf us, rather than defending the enduring principles that were consonant with everything that we knew and had believed in, we pretended that the emperor wasn’t naked,” he adds. “Even worse: We checked our critical faculties at the door and pretended that the emperor was making sense.”

I know that no one is perfect, but don’t we still expect those who represent us to be smarter, wiser, honest, trustworthy, skilled, knowledgeable and qualified for the positions they hold?  What is it that we value? What are our core beliefs and principles, and do they still matter?  Does our  love of party supersede our love of country?

I’m not suggesting anyone is knowingly laying down their principles. I’m suggesting that it could happen. We all have to be careful.