" A couple of years ago, a Republican
committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to
all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing
the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic
favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of
an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against
government would come out the relative winner. A deeply cynical tactic, to be
sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of
the voting public and the news media.”
Mr. Lofgren
includes in his article a quote from John P. Judis, an editor at the New
Republic, “Over the last four decades,
the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an
insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and
threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and
Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment
trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today's Republican
Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened
to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later
led the fight to secede from the union over slavery."
It seems to me
that anyone with even a shred of objectivity left cannot but be dismayed
watching the cast of characters who currently pose as actual or potential
leaders in the GOP, including most especially the people acting as candidates
for the highest office in the Land. It
seems equally clear that republicans in general now are more than simply
opposed to Obama policies and program proposals. They oppose almost as a
religious experience. They oppose as the
Islamic extremist with dynamite strapped to his middle opposes as he detonates
himself in a marketplace of innocent people. They seem no longer to care what
results from their opposition. And that
makes them truly dangerous to the future of our republic.
When I observed
that New Yorkers, seeking to replace the idiotic Anthony Weiner as their Congressman, voted for a
conservative republican instead of his democratic challenger, I gasped. What
could they be thinking, I wondered? You are voting to install yet another
person to oppose any ideas of our president to minimize the economic damage
done to our country by, guess who, conservative republicans? Really . . . you
really imagine that you are sending a smart message to our president? A message
to be sure, but the message is, “well we’re just a bunch of ignorant,
low-information voters who are unhappy, so we’re installing another of the idiots
who got us into this mess . . . as a way of telling you we want someone to get
us out of this mess . . . that we’re helping to keep us in . . .” Yeah, that’ll
surely work to invigorate the president.
Nothing like making his work harder as a way of hoping he can work
smarter.
So this coming
election in 2012 may well settle both our economic future, and our future as a
democratic society. It is hard to be
hopeful, when visions of America as Iran keep appearing in the rear view mirror.
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