The Party or the People?

Something that really rang true to me recently, as I tried to be objective over the impeachment proceedings, was the concept of loyalty to ones business.  I have always been extremely loyal to whomever employs me.  I will stand up for them.  I won't disparage them.  If I reach a point where my opinions change, I quit, rather than remain as part of an organization. I thought about this in the context of what's going on right now.  Aren't the Republican Senators just being loyal to their business entity?

Is the Republican party just another business?  For that matter, isn't the Democratic party just another business?  Do the Republican Senators view loyalty to the party over loyalty to the people? I could ask the same about the Democrats, and perhaps that really should be the take home message from how things are today.  It's not that the age of impeachment should be ending, it's that the age of loyalty to the party should be ending.  We elect congressmen and senators to represent us, we the people.

Unfortunately, political parties are just businesses today.  It's not altogether different from how unions have become businesses.  Unions are supposed to represent the workers, but often end up focused more on maintaining the union executives power.  Maybe we shouldn't be surprised.  This is how corporate America runs.  Why shouldn't our political parties and unions run the same way?  I'm endeavoring not to be naive about all of this, but to be realistic and pragmatic.  What can we do?

Jeff Flake stood for his party while he was a Senator.  He clearly realized that his party was going in the wrong direction, and he chose to leave the senate.  He chose to leave the senate, rather than to stay and be disloyal to his party.  It's a fascinating view, and one that I actually understand, up to a point.  I have left jobs for similar reasons.  I've chosen to leave rather than to stay and fight.  I'm loyal until I can't be anymore, but then I just leave.  I must wonder, however, whether this same loyalty should apply to politics?  I personally don't think so.  We've truly lost something that we had from the founding of our country.  For all the talk of the Founding Fathers, and believing in the Constitution, most of today's politicians are choosing their party over the people.