"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (apocryphal)

Poll after poll shows that the American people are angry at their governmental representatives *regardless* of their political stripe. This next election cycle will be a wake-up call to all those who played politics while America burned because what most Washington Insiders have failed to realize is that what party they’re affiliated with matters far less to the ‘average’ American than they anticipated, and the content of their character matters far, far more. Make no mistake about it: those who have gone to Washington to ‘play politics’ instead of ‘serve the people’ are being exposed for who they really are, and for them the things they’ll be trying to do to repair their reputations in the eyes of their constituents during the next year will matter far less than what they’ve done in the past to cement those reputations. The American people are not stupid- a few months of transforming yourselves into ‘the people’s advocate’ cannot erase the years and years of abuse of power that some (Many? Most?) Washington Insiders have participated in.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.”
Matthew 23:25

I have spent much of my life as a participant in the Boy Scouts of America and my suggestion is to fall back on the simple principles of the Scout Law when evaluating candidates during an election. Are they: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent? If our elected officials- democrat, republican, libertarian, or any other party- cannot live up to this ‘simple’ set of criteria that millions of boys the world over have been held to for generations, then they are quite simply not worthy to represent us. Our nation needs nothing less than people who are willing to stand in the gap and *live* by principles such as those found in the Scout Law. If we can call children to live by such universal principles, how much more should we be able to expect our elected officials to do so?