After years of trying to give the Republican Party the benefit of the doubt, hoping that it could re-embrace its Lincoln era civil rights platform, and lending professional services to Republicans that I felt broke from the party mold; I am resigned to the sad realization that the Grand Old Party is infested with hate. Watching the Republican presidential candidates spar on television has been a painful exercise, and a real awakening to the depths to which the party has been captured by extremists that seek to embed permanent inequities in the nation’s social and economic structure. Even for someone who is accustomed to the worse that politics can offer, living in a state where the federal penitentiary has become the fourth branch of government, witnessing the Republican Party’s descent into hell has been a jaw dropping experience.

The Republican Party has succumbed to the most extreme and vile elements in our society; declaring warfare on the poor, people of color, immigrants, women and workers. Hate is no longer a byproduct of misunderstandings or ignorance within the Republican Party, but the strategic choice of a party that is intent on constructing a society strictly for the benefit of whites, mostly males and the wealthy. Whether it is a Republican House Majority and Senate Minority, or a field of presidential candidates that are hell bent on demonizing the poor and people of color, the GOP has made a conscious embrace of the politics of hate to grab power for the benefit of a privileged few; including members of their political class.

The hatred toward the President is obvious, and perhaps unprecedented in our nation’s history. I can imagine that the Confederacy despised Lincoln, but the hatred and disrespect exhibited toward President Obama is shameful and alarming. You know the party has hit rock bottom when a member of Congress comments on the First Lady’s derriere. Republican politicians, and their sympathizers on the Fox News Channel and other right-leaning media, have engaged in a vile, racist and purposefully deceitful campaign to discredit the nation’s first Black President. Using both racially coded language and outright racist rhetoric, the GOP has now openly declared its contempt of African-Americans through the race-baiting of the President. Yes, that includes the now disposed Herman Cain. No matter his outward appearance, Cain and like-minded Black conservatives, have embraced and enjoined fully the Republican Party’s assault on Black America.

We see the spectacle of the Darth Vader of conservatism, Newt Gingrich, declaring that poor kids (read Black) should be put to work cleaning schools and toilets because there is no other way to offer them what their white peers assume is a benefit and right of American citizenship: opportunity. Michele Bachmann makes up history as she goes along and then suggests the rest of us are crazy or in denial. Ron Paul, the GOP gadfly, can’t shake his past endorsement of racist dogma. The latest Republican prince of doom, Rick Santorum, does his best Ronald Reagan imitation and evokes the false imagery of the “Welfare Queen” by suggesting Blacks are living off of “other people’s money.” Rick Perry is forever tied to the hateful name associated with a family ranch. In Congress, House Speaker John Boehner exhibits no control over his Caucus, as public approval of federal lawmakers hits an all-time low as most Americans grow tired of the majority’s protection of the very interests that have decimated our nation. As Americans lose homes and jobs, children go hungry and young people are unable to afford a college education, Republicans in Congress work on behalf of the 1 percent that uses the 99 percent to maintain its privileged status. Meanwhile, slithering through the halls of Congress, a Republican activist, Grover Norquist, does the bidding of the underbelly of America; making certain that the federal government only serves the interests of the rich and corruptly powerful. The hate is so thick within the party that Mitt Romney, the most benign of all the GOP presidential hopefuls, even faces attacks from his Republican colleagues over his faith. Satan himself could not have picked a better team.

We are in a season of hate, and the Republican Party is the source of the divisiveness we are witnessing in our country. The Democrat Party is not guilt free but I have yet to see a similar systemic embrace of race and class hatred among Democrats that Republicans now openly promote. Is it any wonder that an Asian soldier in the United States Army commits suicide after daily being taunted by his fellow soldiers in an act of hate, or Muslim mosques are firebombed and synagogues are defaced, Mexican immigrants are despised despite their contributions to our country, and Blacks remain a suspect class? Republicans don’t light the match; they simply pour the gasoline, and then bask in the warmth of the flames. I suspect that many of today’s GOP leadership class have a standing reservation in hell, and their earthly existence serves to remind us that good and evil do exist as polar opposites.