An Open Letter to the GOP "Elite"

Dear Ruling Class,

Many of you are wondering what's happened in the primaries. You're wondering why Mitt Romney is gone. I can't give you all the answers, but I can tell you why I didn't support him -- and a lot of it is your fault.

For over 20 years now (ever since the Reagan election, though maybe even before that), the GOP has pandered to evangelical Christians. Every election, you've paraded yourselves in front of us, you've kissed up to our leaders, you've spoken at our functions. And you've gotten our votes, because quite frankly you were the best option. Then, after the election, you forgot about us.

You've been treating the evangelical voter like the ugly rich nerd at school -- you flirt with us, make us think you like us, get us to spend some money on you, help you with your homework -- and then you go to homecoming with the quarterback. And, like that nerd, we've dealt with the situation, because we liked having someone pay attention to us every few years.

This year, we got tired of it. We didn't act like we were expected to. We didn't lick your boots. We didn't blindly support who you told us to. The evangelical block fragmented, but it wasn't because of infighting among evangelicals. It was because many of us stopped caring what you thought of us. You got on your radio shows screaming about how Huckabee and McCain were going to destroy the GOP. And you expected us to care.

Care about what? A political party that uses us, and then tosses us aside after the election? A party that mocks us, that mocks our beliefs, that considers us the easily led backwards morons of the family? As if. Some of us are pretty easily led, and some of us might be morons. But the majority of us are educated people, and we're tired of the way the GOP thinks of us, and treats us.

So we supported one of our own. And we didn't support who you chose for us -- not because he's Mormon, but because he wasn't who we wanted. He hasn't proven himself to us, and we wouldn't back him.

We support Huckabee (those of us who do -- we don't march lockstep, no matter what people may want to think about us) because he's one of us. He's one of the people you like to ignore for a couple years after elections. We figure that if he's in power, we won't be ignored anymore. After years of being an afterthought, we'll actually have someone who will listen to our concerns.

But you can go on your talk shows tomorrow and tell everyone that we've ruined the GOP. And maybe we have. But maybe it needed to be ruined. Maybe it needed a jolt to wake it up. I just hope that this jolt is enough, or in November, we'll get another one.