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Fool’s Gold: The GOP’s Sprint Towards Irrelevance
Emphasis added.
We get the government we deserve in this country. It is at once the brilliance of our founding and the idiocy of our democracy (small d), for if people all voted generally – let alone in their best interests – we’d have a completely different government today than we do.
What we have is a government trapped and consumed by its own smallness. Oh, you hear this lament often. You hear the false equivalence of both sides are guilty of x y z. But let’s be clear, the GOP is the problem. Especially now. The Dems aren’t perfect but we’re not the GOP. We’re capable of governing; we’re capable of pushing this nation forward. But Washington, in the embodiment of the GOP, prevents that from happening. Examine for example reaction to the massive fiscal crisis: During the Bush Presidency and the Obama Presidency.
Bush and his conservative economic policies caused the worst recession since the Great Depression. Treasury Sec. Paulson came to congress and said that the world was coming to an end. He talked in stark terms about the Great Depression on steroids. He spoke to an opposition House and Senate. We controlled both. In the face of this massive fiscal crisis the Dems acted in the best interest of the country. We can debate the flaws in TARP the misguided or rather, failed addition of conditions, repayment, and concomitant spending on middle class issues. But the core of what happened was that the Executive Branch came to Dems and asked for help. And that Dems put aside the best interests of the Democratic Party for the best interests of the Nation as a whole.
Why can’t the GOP do the same? Why can’t the GOP act on any issue, in a way that benefits the nation first and their selfishness second?
SNIP:
And to me that is the problem. You’ll hear me talk about this resistance to all things Obama in a logical way, but what it comes down to is race. Why? Because the thing that dominates politics is self-preservation. Pols are the first realists. They resist self-deception, and those that are incapable of that sort of adult level introspection aren’t long for this world. They collapse under the weight of their own delusion or they flame out after the voters catch on to the Carney act they inevitably become. But this GOP, this modern iteration of the Grand Ole Party, can’t do that. They are handcuffed. Their base won’t allow it, their politics won’t allow it, and their ideology won’t allow it. The result is some of the worst political decisions of the modern era. The GOP has been cratering in terms of popularity, in terms of rationality, in terms of functionality. The GOP isn’t refusing to act on the Fiscal Cliff because they don’t want to act, at least not only because they don’t want to act; they are doing it because they can’t actually do anything. They are incapable of voting to support a legislation that works with let alone for the good of the nation while President Obama is in office.
I talk about these two iconic moments of 2009, the GOP booing when the President was announced as winning a Nobel Prize, and those same Republicans cheering when the Olympics went to Brazil instead of Chicago. Those two moments more than anything else are emblematic of the GOP. The GOP isn’t going to move until we break them. We will not break them on the Cliff. There will be no deal on the Cliff in 2012. There may be a deal in Jan on the tax cuts for the middle class but people have to understand how complex that is going to be with a new congress. Add to that the debt ceiling debacle that is coming down the pipe – it is clear to me, at this point, that the GOP has no intention of raising the debt ceiling. The constant attacks on women, the constant attacks on minorities, are madness. It is all shockingly bad politics of saying no to everything, especially those things they should have been saying yes to all along, i.e. ObamaCare, Stimulus, Education and Infrastructure, Immigration, DADT repeal.
What we have is a government trapped and consumed by its own smallness. Oh, you hear this lament often. You hear the false equivalence of both sides are guilty of x y z. But let’s be clear, the GOP is the problem. Especially now. The Dems aren’t perfect but we’re not the GOP. We’re capable of governing; we’re capable of pushing this nation forward. But Washington, in the embodiment of the GOP, prevents that from happening. Examine for example reaction to the massive fiscal crisis: During the Bush Presidency and the Obama Presidency.
Bush and his conservative economic policies caused the worst recession since the Great Depression. Treasury Sec. Paulson came to congress and said that the world was coming to an end. He talked in stark terms about the Great Depression on steroids. He spoke to an opposition House and Senate. We controlled both. In the face of this massive fiscal crisis the Dems acted in the best interest of the country. We can debate the flaws in TARP the misguided or rather, failed addition of conditions, repayment, and concomitant spending on middle class issues. But the core of what happened was that the Executive Branch came to Dems and asked for help. And that Dems put aside the best interests of the Democratic Party for the best interests of the Nation as a whole.
Why can’t the GOP do the same? Why can’t the GOP act on any issue, in a way that benefits the nation first and their selfishness second?
SNIP:
And to me that is the problem. You’ll hear me talk about this resistance to all things Obama in a logical way, but what it comes down to is race. Why? Because the thing that dominates politics is self-preservation. Pols are the first realists. They resist self-deception, and those that are incapable of that sort of adult level introspection aren’t long for this world. They collapse under the weight of their own delusion or they flame out after the voters catch on to the Carney act they inevitably become. But this GOP, this modern iteration of the Grand Ole Party, can’t do that. They are handcuffed. Their base won’t allow it, their politics won’t allow it, and their ideology won’t allow it. The result is some of the worst political decisions of the modern era. The GOP has been cratering in terms of popularity, in terms of rationality, in terms of functionality. The GOP isn’t refusing to act on the Fiscal Cliff because they don’t want to act, at least not only because they don’t want to act; they are doing it because they can’t actually do anything. They are incapable of voting to support a legislation that works with let alone for the good of the nation while President Obama is in office.
I talk about these two iconic moments of 2009, the GOP booing when the President was announced as winning a Nobel Prize, and those same Republicans cheering when the Olympics went to Brazil instead of Chicago. Those two moments more than anything else are emblematic of the GOP. The GOP isn’t going to move until we break them. We will not break them on the Cliff. There will be no deal on the Cliff in 2012. There may be a deal in Jan on the tax cuts for the middle class but people have to understand how complex that is going to be with a new congress. Add to that the debt ceiling debacle that is coming down the pipe – it is clear to me, at this point, that the GOP has no intention of raising the debt ceiling. The constant attacks on women, the constant attacks on minorities, are madness. It is all shockingly bad politics of saying no to everything, especially those things they should have been saying yes to all along, i.e. ObamaCare, Stimulus, Education and Infrastructure, Immigration, DADT repeal.
Read the whole Article here.
http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/2012/12/fool%e2%80%99s-gold-the-gop%e2%80%99s-sprint-towards-irrelevance/
