Carla Aaron-Lopez

What happens when you grind together scandal, cronyism, incompetence and a war that seems to drag on endlessly?

You end up with the incredibly shrinking Republican party.

Just two years ago, the Republi-cans were wallowing in their control of the White House and the Congress.

The Iraqi war was starting and many in the country were fully behind President Bush.

Starry-eyed men and women were proud of their president, and his approval rating was at an all-time high.

But today it’s clear that Bush and his grand old party, the GOP, are having some technical difficulties.

Irv Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, and Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief strategist, are both suspected of revealing the name of an undercover CIA operative.

It seems they may have been unhappy with the agent’s husband, a critic of the information used to promote the existence of weapons of mass destructionin Iraq.

A bumbling government response to Hurricane Katrina revealed both incompetence and cronyism.

No one cared if the president looked forward to sitting on Trent Lott’s new porch.

And it turned out that Michael Brown, the head of the FEMA, had more horse judging experience than emergency management experience.

He was just well connected politically to a Bush supporter.

The war, billed as a shock and awe strike against tyranny, has become floundered into a nightmarish cartoon of exploding bodies and endless excuses.

Now Bush’s support has crashed to 42 percent — his lowest ever.

Now the Republican party is showing signs of dissonance and desertion.

Some Republicans, facing defeat in the 2006 mid-term elections, are deciding not to run for Congress.

Others are deciding to retire rather than face re-election.

It’s now clearer than ever that we’ve been manipulated, chasing a PR campaign run amok.

The shrinking GOP will become less of an issue as people wake up and bring the age of conservatism to a close.

I definitely can’t wait to see the next Republican debacle as they continue to splinter into 2008.

It’s like watching a day-time soap opera — vindictive, back-stabbing and utterly sinful.

The big question now is this:

Are the Democrats going to quit being sketchy, yellow-bellied eunuchs and seize the opportunity to regain control of Congress again?

It was prayer and patriotism that brought Bush to power. It appears that God and greed will now be his downfall.