Frankly, I’m astounded that Pelosi and “Dingy” Harry have the gaul to open their mouths at all while they’re under the microscope.

I was active in the Republican Party from the time I was in high school — holding local, state and national offices — until a few years ago when I no longer felt welcome in the shrinking GOP tent. With all that experience, I know what the Republican Party has been all about. And I am today more and more at a loss to find anything the president is doing to uphold traditional Republican principles.

The problem is that we’re playing a straight hand in a crooked game. Democrats don’t play by the same rules. They will continue to cover for their own, and disown any responsibility.

While essays of self-examination like this serve as a healthy cathartic exercises (as it should be), our opponents see it only as an opportunity to point fingers — and for Reid and Pelosi to bolster their “Culture of Corruption” mantra. That’s what hurts.

In part, it seems from the arrogance of power. After 4 or 6-years of the insulating cocoon of their staffs, the lobbyists’ entourages, and the flunkies they start to forget the real world. They stop going to the market for themselves, or even carry cash or credit cards. Why bother? Their House or Senate ID-card is a bottomless ATM-card for lunches, junkets and the invisible things like, “let me take care of that, Sir” from all-quarters. Soon they get an other-worldy view of the Universe that we commonly associate with the pampered and braindead Hollywood elites who never pay their bills personally, leave $1.00 as a restaurant-tip, and travel by limo to the drug-store.

Would it surprise me if there were another 5 or 10 members of either House of both parties who are equally as guilty? Who have sold their office on the market-square to the highest or most ambitious bidder. Unfortunately for the Republic, no.

Republicans need to call out the fact, as I blogged yesterday, that liberals and Democrats are making deliberate alliances with Saddam supporters and Stalinists to pump up numbers and get more media attention at their antiwar and anti-Bush rallies. They need to point out that DNC-supported media hogs like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan are running around calling al-Qaeda “freedom fighters”. Most of all, they need to get the split-screen ads on the air that I’ve talked about, in which Teddy Kennedy is shown whining about torture at Abu Ghirab while a video of Saddam’s torturers plays beside it, or the videos of deliberate mutilation of those who displeased Saddam playing beside Howard Dean’s screeching of how the war was “unnecessary and unjustified”.

Then, once that’s done and the Democrats are pinned in the corner, the Republicans need to govern. Start asking questions about spending, regardless of whose pork it is. Fund worthwhile social programs (public education accountability and improvements, realistic immigration policy and practice) and cut the knees out of programs like welfare that do nothing but buy votes for Democrats while perpetuating the very problems they were created to remove. Put in place strategies to encourage business investment here while providing incentives for innovation in process, product, and human capital.