To change, or not to change, that is the paramount question facing the Grand Old Party. As the November 6th election recedes further into the past, however, the chances that the GOP will make substantive changes to their party platform appear to be receding as well. Some members of the Republican Party have decided to face the results of the November 6th election with humility and a reconsideration of policy positions.

As Congress faces negotiations about averting the “fiscal cliff,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) told WMAZ-TV that he’s not willing to be bound by the anti-tax pledge he once signed.

Said Chambliss: “I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge.”

However, a vocal crowd of GOP’ers have actually dug in their heels and turned their fingers away from themselves, towards a host of external factors. One argument apparently gaining traction is the “Romney wasn’t an effective spokesman” argument. According to this line of thought, the conservative policy platform is sound; Mitt Romney just couldn’t sell it to the American people properly.

There is also the “minorities argument,” that enormously feared sector of the American population for many conservatives. If only those darn minorities had stayed at home instead of voting, they implicitly argue, the election results would have been completely different. The thought process here boggles the mind! If only we could have disenfranchised a sizable portion of the American electorate, we could put the country back on the right track!

Some commentators in the Democratic camp, however, have rejoiced over the possibility of a recalcitrant tea party. The assumptions here seem to be that if the tea party members of Congress continue their radical and obstructionist ways, the ‘liberal agenda’ will not only strengthen by the sheer contrast of what is being offered from “the other side,” but tea party representatives will lose out in a big way during the next election cycle. However, none of this is necessarily true.

But regardless of whether the GOP decides to move away from Crazy Avenue to Sane Rd. the move won’t happen overnight. It might not even happen over the next two years. But America needs effective change to happen now.

Our political representatives must, at a minimum, invest in critical infrastructure and job creating programs. Budget gimmicks and “priming the pump” are no longer adequate, and have not been for some time. Where the tea partiers are wrong is blindly denying the efficacy of government to save the economy from disaster is cases such as the 2008/2009 economic collapse. But the Democratic Party does the country few favors by seeking short-term solutions/acquiescing to the half-measures promoted by the Republican Party.

Leaders in the Democratic Party, and above all President Obama, must make the case for economic solutions that will lead to long term economic growth. If the so-called “fiscal-cliff” is avoided by focusing on short term solutions like budgetary cuts to federal agencies, a Democratic victory now will be far outweighed by an economic decline in the future that will be used as ammunition by conservatives to turn the U.S. into a free-market haven that only insane ideologues like Ayn Rand would feel comfortable living in. The only solution, again, is to focus on creating jobs, through government help, in the short term and in the long term.

That is where real growth will occur, that is where our country will finally find its ‘mojo’ again.

Why is right wing crackpot Ken Cuccinelli running for Virginia governor?  Well of course because he is the spiritual descendant of Thomas Jefferson:

I am running for Governor of our Commonwealth to advance the same First Principles […] best articulated by Thomas Jefferson in that most famous sentence of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

No, that wasn’t another Virginia earthquake you just heard — that was old Tom doing flips in his grave. Because it is hard to think of a politician in this country who so thoroughly repudiates the democratic, egalitarian, academic, rational spirit with which Jefferson endowed the American republic — on all the issues that matter, including:

– “All men are created equal”:  Our Ayatollah General actually has the cojones to quote Martin Luther King in calling Jefferson’s famous line above “our national creed.”  Well of course it is, but to what was King referring?  To the inalienable right of coal company owners to avoid environmental and safety regulations if they give you big enough campaign contributions?  Hardly.

Few Americans know that the foundation for the US Bill of Rights came from George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, which still serves as the core of our state’s constitution.  Yet Cuccinelli was among those who actually perverted that document to DENY people’s rights by enshrining discrimination against gays within it, through the Marshall-Newman amendment.  He has also bullied the state’s colleges and universities to end policies that prohibit LGBT discrimination.

Cuccinelli has been a leader in pushing policies to eliminate the right of women to equal healthcare, treating their uteruses as property of the state, as through his ugly bullying of the state Board of Health to essentially force Virginia abortion clinics out of existence.

Yes, we are all created equal, but in Cuccinelli’s Virginia, the most vulnerable groups would be denied equal protection by the very government established by Jefferson and the other founders.  

– “This institution of my native state, the hobby of my old age, will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind, to explore and to expose every subject susceptible of it’s contemplation.” — this quote from Jefferson is of course about the University of Virginia, the creation of which Jefferson was so proud, he had it chiseled on his gravestone (while not bothering to mention that he had been president).

U-VA was not just a school to Jefferson — it was an embodiment of the ideal of a well-educated populace governing itself.  And there is simply no question that, if alive today, Jefferson would agree that “every subject susceptible of its contemplation” should include the earth sciences.  

Yet the signature act of Cuccinelli’s tenure as AG was his assault on U-VA in a dictatorial attempt to silence climatologist Michael Mann, based on pathological climate change conspiracy theories.  This act — which cost the university over half a million dollars in legal fees before the State Supreme Court found that the AG’s case had absolutely no merit — was an attack on all that Jefferson cherished: not just intellectual freedom and U-VA, but science itself.  As any visitor to Monticello knows, Jefferson not only revered science, but contributed to it with his inventions, including to the fields of agriculture and archaeology.  Jefferson once said “Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight.”  

Luckily, Jefferson, unlike Professor Mann, was never harassed by a powerful government official demanding

the original and any copies of any written, printed, typed, electronic, or graphic matter of any kind or nature, however,  produced or reproduced, any book, pamphlet, brochure, periodical, newspaper, letter, correspondence, memoranda, notice, facsimile, e-mail, manual, press release, telegram, report, study, handwritten note, working paper, chart, paper, graph, index, tape, data sheet, data processing card, or any other written, recorded, transcribed, punched, taped, filmed or graphic matter now in your possession, custody or control.

Indeed, Cuccinelli’s real “First Principle” is to support powerful, entrenched interests against all whom they may deem as real or perceived threats.  Yes, he is a fighter for the “liberty” of those powers, but with blatant disregard for the liberties of anyone who may get in their way.  

While he may be entitled to devote his life to working as the tool of Big Coal, evangelical Christianity and corporate America, he is not entitled to mislead the public into believing that in so doing, he is following the philosophy of our third president.  To leave you with one more Jefferson quote,

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.

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In 2013, it is imperative that we choose the gubernatorial candidate of intellectual freedom and individual liberty, and not the proponent of bigotry and backwardness.