Over the last 30-plus years Americans' apathy has allowed a party to manhandle the majority. Many claim that the major reasons for this are the corruption of politics by money and corporate personhood.

After all, is it not true that money can purchase an inordinate amount of false advertising to create a false reality? After all, if a corporation is given the rights of a person, does it not get free speech and all the protections of the Bill of Rights and in effect a vote? While both of these are true, ultimately it breaks down to an individual deciding to be learned or willfully ignorant.

In America each citizen still has one vote. In America each citizen still has free speech. In America each citizen still has the right to assemble and exchange ideas. When these are not exercised, it leaves a political vacuum. This vacuum could have been filled with political values intent on supporting policies and an environment in which the lives of all citizens are improved. Unfortunately this vacuum was used to promote an ideology that excludes, vilifies, impoverishes and divides.

This is not a sentiment that is only held by liberals or Democrats. This is a sentiment also voiced by many notables in the Republican Party as well. General Colin Powell in an NBC interview spoke about “a dark vein of intolerance” in his party. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson had similar comments.

Last December Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann wrote the Washington Post essay “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.” Last April President Ronald Reagan’s former budget director David Stockman, in a recent interview, said, "I think the Republican Party is not really a party. It doesn’t stand for anything except reelecting itself. It’s a coalition of gangs …"

There are scores of Republicans coming out ever so slowly in an attempt to take back their party. Bruce Bartlett, former senior policy analyst in the Reagan White House and former deputy assistant secretary for economic policy in the George HW Bush White House, and Michael Lofgren, former staff member of the House and Senate Budget Committee for 28 years and author of The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went CRAZY, Democrats Became USELESS, and the Middle Class Got SHAFTED appeared on All In w/Chris Hayes. They provided the most shocking excoriation of what the Republican Party has become.

Continue below the fold for the full story.