End allegiance to political parties

John Tobin, Las Vegas

Monday, Dec. 5, 2011 | 2 a.m.

With another edition of the never-ending pathetic failures in Washington, this “deficit supercommittee” aberration, is it not time to honestly analyze the cause of our dysfunctional government? With one of the more important elections in our nation’s history less than a year away, and our republic’s very survival at stake, isn’t it time to determine fault for these inept antics? The dismal failure of the supercommittee confirms a major flaw.

Representatives using the power to represent their constituents by turning that power over to another group of representatives representing our representatives? Profoundly absurd, even by Washington standards.

Although great comic theater, this is a portrayal one would expect from a troupe of fools following the script of an idiot. But this is not comedy; it’s deadly serious. So what happened?

The failed state of our political leadership was exposed when Republicans claimed the failure was the fault of Democrats while Democrats assured us this was only the fault of Republicans. While this was predictable on the question of fault, the many repeated failures by our government change the cause of these failures from what was elusive to what is now conclusive.

As we have allowed massive power to exclusively reside in the leadership of our two parties, we ushered in a national leadership of cunning, unprincipled people who unscrupulously serve only their parties’ purposes. The political parties are at fault. Our misplaced allegiance to political parties must cease, and we must stop voting for all these party politicians, replacing Republicans and Democrats with real Americans.