Obit.
Topic: Satire
A popular political party that rose to tremendous power in the 20th century, the Republican party redefined the nation's political agenda and dramatically reshaped the role of government in the private lives of its citizens.

The resilience of the party was observed throughout such morally testing times as the Nixon resignation and the Iran-Contra affair hearings. The party was symbolized by an elephant and possessed the animal-like quality of stubbornness that was often imitated but never duplicated.

Placing an inordinate amount of "political capital" in an oft repeated but rarely defined term known as "values," the contradiction between the party's actions and its rhetoric on the subject ultimately lead to its demise. The beginning of the end started on November 7th, 2000 with a great revolutionary crisis that eventually caused the party to wind up on the ash heap of history.

The party is survived by 62,040,610 bewildered citizens. Eventually those that supported the party came to learn of its great hypocrisy and strict adherence to its single tenet of profit and power before country.

The beginnings of the schism which ultimately lead to an unrepairable fracture of the party was fostered by the group's recruitment of corporations and the religious right, who's competing interests and dogmas were too diametrically opposed for a public ultimately concerned with political pragmatism. The final shot to the great political beast was administered by the ideologue and capitalist President George W. Bush, who embodied what the party had morphed into, from a pragmatic and benevolent organization into the world's biggest corporate and religious special interest group.

Bush, while leading the party towards the "ash heap," never came to realize that his wanton lust for power and profit would never allow his moral motivations to be ratified. Some claim that this internal tug-of-war was created by Bush's political master, Karl Rove, conclusions cannot be easily drawn except to say that Rove's obvious Machiavellian machinations lead a majority of the public to question the validity of their initial judgement that the party and its leaders were trustworthy. In fact, while many of the religious right claimed that there did indeed exist a morally unambiguous truth, their observations of the Bush administration and the Republican party lead them to believe that truth as the party observed it was malleable and justice would only be dished out to those who dare question the right of the ruler to rule.

At a time when the party held its greatest political power a small minority was calling for a return to the moderation that they believed the party once stood for. Unfortunately the voices of the reasonable were drowned out by those that claimed that the results of the elections were enough for the party to forsake respect for the truth.

The Democratic party issued the following statement,

"We offer our condolences to those unsuspecting souls that were blindsided by these events. You are in our thoughts and our prayers and we wish you the best.

The Republican party was a fierce political adversary and the competitor in all of us will miss their fighting spirit. In years past the Republican party has tried to keep us honest, sometimes more so than we tried to keep ourselves. For this we thank them for their shining example of what becomes of a party that fails to turn that discerning eye inward to introspectively correct faults and remain humble.

The example that has arisen out of the ashes could not be clearer. Whatever organizations come to represent the disparate groups affected by these events will be better off for it. Homage, no matter how bizarre, must be paid posthumously to the Republican party for allowing this much needed evolution and for this we again thank them."

Services will be held at the Lincoln Memorial at 900 Ohio Drive, S.W. Washington, DC 20024. Memorial donations may be made to Amnesty international, Children's Defense Fund, American Civil Liberties Union, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, NAACP, the United Nations, Sierra Club, Human Rights Watch, Greenpeace, Citizens for Tax Justice, and the Public Broadcasting Service.