Remember when being a conservative meant being fiscally prudent? When it meant not intruding on the private lives of citizens? When it meant maintaining the diplomatic status quo, or only moving forward in slow, sure steps? When it meant conserving our natural resources for future generations?

Has the Republican party left all that behind and become the Radical Theocracy-War Monger-Get Rich Now Party? How can conservatives stand to be a part of an organiztion that does exactly the opposite of all the things listed above? We have record debt and deficits from the slash and spend crowd, we have a pervert for a president with his unhealthy interest in other people's sex lives, we have a war monger crowd who changed 250 years of American foreign policy by attacking a country that hadn't attacked us, and we have corporate executives writing energy and conservation policy that, not surprisingly, involve them lining their pockets by destroying the last bits of untrammeled wild environment. And they dare call other people eco-terrorists!

Are all the real conservatives really able to vote for all these radical (as in not conservative) politicians just because they are "Republicans"?

John Peekstok