Here's a brilliant post by blogger Gerard Van der Leun on the "Degeneration of the Democratic Party." I have never considered myself either a Republican or Democrat, but I can certainly identify with many of his sentiments:

The facts of my own political history are this: I have never since I began to vote in 1967 voted for a Republican candidate except once in New York City when I broke down and voted for Rudy Giuliani's second term. Other than that one 'slip' I have been voting Democrat my entire life. Until now ....

Now I have come to the place where the whole sorry spectacle and circus of the Democrats over the last year has finally angered me. The party whose ideals once excited me has become a parody of itself, a dangerous parody. Instead of inspiration it delivers either numbing boredom or sheer despair at its intellectual and spiritual poverty .... we see these snide and creepy slips beginning to erupt from deep beneath the surface of the party in incidents where the deaths of Americans are celebrated and decent public servants are denigrated through racial slurs ....

Life and politics though don't run backwards. One the hardest things to learn in life is when to leave, that's why we're always leaving late. It's not that the Republicans are running the most decent game in town. It is only that lately they seem to be the only game in town, at least the only one that puts America first. That's why I'm getting on their train. At least to the next stop.

  ¶ 3:25 PM