(Newser) – Perhaps Karl Rove put it best when he described "creating our own reality": The GOP has a giant blind spot when it comes to the bigger picture, writes a former Republican and Justice department attorney in Salon. Jeremiah Goulka grew up Republican, and it wasn't until he turned 30—and witnessed the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina—that he began to recognize the limited scope of his views.

Goulka witnessed the odds that the poor, and particularly minorities, face as he worked to clean up in New Orleans. He'd thought that climbing the economic ladder "required about as much as it took to get yourself promoted from junior varsity to varsity. It turns out that it’s more like pulling yourself up from tee-ball to the World Series," he notes. And working in an Iraq war zone shifted Goulka's views about the inherent rightness of the US military. "My old Republican worldview was flawed because it was based upon a small and particularly rosy sliver of reality," Goulka writes. But it's not easy to changed entrenched opinions. Click for Goulka's full column. (Read more Republican Party stories.)

