Mike Lofgren retired on June 17 after 28 years as a Congressional staffer. He served 16 years as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees. After watching the politics of the past few years play out, he decided to resign and like Kai Nagata, he wrote a barn burner of an essay when he left.

While some of the points are a bit stretched, they paint a very dismal picture of the Republican party. He believes that beyond the window dressing, the party only has three main tenets:

1. Caring solely and exclusively about its rich contributors
2. Maintaining a high level of militarism
3. Pandering to fundamentalist Christianity

Here is an excerpt from his essay; however, I recommend reading it in its entirety:

Undermining Americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime GOP electoral strategy. But if this technique falls short of producing Karl Rove's dream of 30 years of unchallengeable one-party rule (as all such techniques always fall short of achieving the angry and embittered true believer's New Jerusalem), there are other even less savory techniques upon which to fall back. Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies); by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students.

This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle East was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don't want those people voting.

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult - Mike Lofgren