The GOP's Real Agenda (Rolling Stone)

[kentuck]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gops-real-agenda-20130313

<snip>
After watching voters punish the GOP in the 2012 elections, Republican elites have been talking a brave game about reforms that would make the party less repulsive to Latinos, women and gay-friendly millennials. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the GOP's hip-hop-quoting young standard-bearer, is pressing conservatives to back an amnesty for undocumented immigrants. Dozens of party stalwarts, headlined by former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, renounced their opposition to gay marriage in a Supreme Court brief. GOP bigwigs have even launched New Republican – a group modeled after Bill Clinton's centrist Democratic Leadership Council – which seeks to rebrand the party as "colorblind," "not anti-government" and dedicated to "ending corporate welfare."

How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich

Don't be fooled. On the ground, a very different reality is unfolding: In the Republican-led Congress, GOP-dominated statehouses and even before the nation's highest court, the reactionary impulses of the Republican Party appear unbowed. Across the nation, the GOP's severely conservative agenda – which seeks to impose job-killing austerity, to roll back voting and reproductive rights, to deprive the working poor of health care, and to destroy agencies that protect the environment from industry and consumers from predatory banks – is moving forward under full steam.

<snip>
In the Tea Party narrative, president Obama is a reckless socialist spending America into oblivion. In reality, the president has governed like an old-school Republican. Despite having taken heroic measures to rescue the economy in 2009, Obama has presided over the slowest expansion of federal spending since Eisenhower – and repeatedly offered to help Republicans slash the social safety net as part of a "grand bargain" that would restore the nation to fiscal balance.

Thanks to a rebounding tax base and the nearly $1 trillion in budget cuts that both parties agreed to in the first phase of the debt-ceiling deal, the deficit, entering 2013, was shrinking at a faster clip than at any time since the peace dividend after WWII. Federal outlays on both guns and butter were on a path to hit postwar lows as a percentage of gross domestic product by the end of Obama's second term.

...more

[Tigress DEM]

1. "I got money and you don't, and that's the way I like it." (What Fiscal Conservatives .....

"I got money and you don't, and that's the way I like it." (What Fiscal Conservatives really think and what motivates them to pull full out crazy financial crap and expect the rest of us to buy it.)

I say we elect all DEMs and get run off voting set up wherever possible. Then if they don't get the job done, we start putting Greens as the first choice and DEMs as second.

[wandy]

2. Good to see that others see the truth behind the great republican"Image" change.........

Don't be fooled. On the ground, a very different reality is unfolding: In the Republican-led Congress, GOP-dominated statehouses and even before the nation's highest court, the reactionary impulses of the Republican Party appear unbowed. Across the nation, the GOP's severely conservative agenda – which seeks to impose job-killing austerity, to roll back voting and reproductive rights, to deprive the working poor of health care, and to destroy agencies that protect the environment from industry and consumers from predatory banks – is moving forward under full steam.

This also is something to consider.

As it works to lock in as many retrograde policies as possible before it finally chooses to either modernize or die, the Republican Party is like a wounded beast: Rarely has it been more dangerous.

[RobertEarl]

3. Looks like the Republicans are winning?

They are getting their way with all the government stuff, and wars, and helping the rich be richer.

Now they are gonna get their war on: Iran, or N Korea? It's up in the air as to which group of innocents on the ground feel the republicans wrath.

What is it Bush used to say?
Better to fight them over there rather than here.?

[FreeBC]

7. Seems like it

They have old school republicans throughout government - they are now called democrats.

Interesting strategy...

[RobertEarl]

13. Strategy

Can't beat them, join them.

Crooks and Liars have their ways. Like Bush said: They will never stop trying to destroy America.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

4. Republicans PANIC whenever a Democrat is in office....

They feel it's job #1 to stop "welfare" because they want desperate people willing to work low paying jobs for their corporate masters.

They long for the days prior to the New Deal when people worked from child labor until the day they died.

[abelenkpe]

5. This:

"...a group modeled after Bill Clinton's centrist Democratic Leadership Council – which seeks to rebrand the party as "colorblind," "not anti-government" and dedicated to "ending corporate welfare."

Could actually work.

[AgingAmerican]

24. It wont work because their failed ideology always wins

Try as they might, their bigoted base is stuck in the RW information bubble and get stupider and stupider every generation. The information bubble they live in is killing their party and the country along with it.

[MillennialDem]

6. Huh? This isn't an agenda - more just a review of what's happening

The article makes it sound like the GOP has some secret agenda we don't know about. Instead this just says what we already know - conservatives are doing stuff in many state houses we don't like. It makes it sound like Obama has accomplished nothing other than shrinking the deficit though. Obama and DC dems have accomplished things. Repeal of DADT. Affordable Care Act. Restoration of the top Clinton tax bracket. ETC

Would I like Obama and the dems to accomplish more? Do I wish Republicans in state government were soundly eliminated? Yes of course. But again the article is just a review of everything we already know and it makes it look like the repukes are winning big time and Obama and the dems are soundly getting beaten - which IMHO is NOT the case!

[FreeBC]

8. well, we may know it, but...

It's important to keep repeating these things so people outside of the DU forums know it too.

[iemitsu]

30. Working people, are being soundly beaten and its the fault of

Democrats who have been and are all too willing to throw us under the bus to feather the nests of the uber-rich who finance their campaigns.
Even though Democrats were the victors in the last election we are not the ones getting the spoils.
This situation started under Clinton and has been accelerating ever since, and will no doubt get worse when the Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement is ratified.
These agreements, more than anything else, take away our sovereignty as a nation. They give supremacy to unelected, international, corporate decision making bodies and weaken our governments ability to function for our benefit.
Clearly a neo-liberal (neo-conservatiive) triumph.
With Democrats as our champions, working Americans are not even holding the line in the battle for our economic and social welfare and dignity.

[judesedit]

9. 2014 2014 2014 2014 2014 2014 2014 2014 2014 2014 VOTE!

VOTE!

[mountain grammy]

11. Yes, midterms.. turnout is everything. 2014!

[Cosmocat]

17. Absolutely

For ONCE the Ds can't go into hibernation until the next Presidential ...

[Faygo Kid]

19. Rove et al won't let that mistake happen again

Putting aside the fact that the 2012 election changed nothing for them, the GOP will double down on whatever it takes in 2014 to rig the election. Rove thought he had it rigged in Ohio; his meltdown on Fox News made that clear. The Kochs rule this nation, and use the ignorant tea partiers to do their bidding.

[olegramps]

20. This should be the Democrats primary goal. Take over the House and increase % of Senate.

I firmly believe that the very future of the nation is dependent on Democrats taking over the congress. The Republicans are determined to destroy the Middle Class and relegate the working class to a life of abject poverty. I can honestly say that I have grown to absolutely despise the Republican Party. As a former Independent and now a registered Democrat, I now would not vote for any Republican for any office.

[walkerbait41]

28. +1

[underpants]

10. .

marking for a later read

[Th1onein]

12. The Rethugs are Governing just like they campaigned: by LYING

They're just liars, that's all. They think that the American electorate are idiots and they can bullshit us into electing them again.

I hope that Democrats have gotten the message: VOTE IN THE MIDTERMS!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

14. The article is a good read and good analysis. K&R. nt

[rhett o rick]

15. The new-school republicans only want to loot and burn, or as Rmoney put it, "harvest" the middle cla

class.

[Skittles]

16. "....president has governed like an old-school Republican"

THANK YOU; nice to know others see things as they really are

[GoneFishin]

18. Ditto.

Ditto.

[ewagner]

21. Thanks for the link Kentuck

I live in Wisconsin and we are seeing absolutely no sign whatsoever of moderation of the Republican/Tea Party Agenda...in fact the Tea Party's newest strategy is to take control of school boards and local city councils ....and they're using the same tactic...money, money, money into the campaigns of their extremist candidates against common, ordinary citizens...

[Dustlawyer]

22. Vote Democratic all you want. You will win on social issues, but they will still sell us out to the

1%!!! They are all beholden to the $$$! Until we have real campaign finance reform we will be sold out every time! Why be surprised that Obama wants to sign another "free trade" agreement that screws us and benefits the corporations? Why do we lament the lack of "backbone" in our Dems? It is not backbone they lack, it is evidentially money they lack. We have legalized bribery of our elected officials and are surprised when they vote against our interests! Do you have any concept of the amount of money that is against us and what effect it can have? We need a fundamental change in how we elect our Representatives. "When you do what you have always done, you will get what you always got!" We got sell out, crooked politicians who represent the monied interests overtly and covertly. When the next protest happen, I hope that the only issue is campaign finance reform!

[They_Live]

23. Yes. We may have "2 parties"

but they money seem to be on that winning money team.

[glinda]

25. Me thinks their bottom bottom line is that they want Jesus to return so are killing everything

as fast as they can and trying to make everything "pure" in their eyes. Seriously. Why else would they be so incredibly ignorant and irrational and blind to what is going on? Either that or they are totally insane. I am cutting to the main point. All this focus on other stuff at this point does not matter to me when we are going to suffocate, burn and starve.

[The Wizard]

26. Lords and serfs (NT)

[Johonny]

29. I agree- the GOP as not the party of the rich but the party of self-anointed aristocracy

the true money in the GOP cares little about "the rich". They care about the little people treating them as a privileged class. Just look at how Bush, McCain and Romney ran as if they deserved the presidency. Not that they were privilege to be our president but that we should feel privileged to be ruled by them.

[Freddie]

27. No matter how pissed off folks may get at Obama

...for whatever reason...WE MUST VOTE IN 2014!!!! We must take back Congress and, most important, state legislation and governors mansions!!! The real damage is being done at the statewide level and if we Dems sit on our hands because the President isn't "progressive" enough...2010 all over again.