The Fundraising Message That Ate America

[WilliamPitt]

House Speaker John Boehner after a vote for a spending bill at the Capitol Building in Washington, September 30, 2013.
As House Republicans hope to triumph in their push to repeal, or at least delay, the Affordable Care Act, the distance
between the House and the White House has never seemed greater. (Photo: Doug Mills / The New York Times).

The Fundraising Message That Ate America
By William Rivers Pitt
Tuesday 01 October 2013

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

- Benjamin Franklin

On Monday afternoon, with a government shutdown looming, more than 200 disabled Americans swarmed the Longworth House Office Building in Washington DC and demanded that Speaker Boehner abandon his party's ongoing attempts to screw them over by defunding the Affordable Care Act.

He ignored them, of course.

And the government shut down at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday.

At exactly, precisely the same time as the Affordable Care Act activated itself.

Because Republicans.

GOP Rep. Peter King of New York, who generally spends all 365 days of the calendar year inventing new and interesting ways to sound like a crazy person, spent Monday imploring his fellow crazy people not to shut down the government over a law they had no chance of thwarting. There was a breath of hope in the hours before the shutdown hit that King and others might band together to pull their party back from the brink, but when push came to shove, their little insurrection managed to gather exactly six votes.

When Peter King is the voice of reason in your party, you have traveled to a strange and scary sector of deep, dark, cold space.

(snip)

As I am not beloved by the denizens of the far right, I am not on any of their fundraising email lists...but I am going to assume that Republicans all across the country have spent the last 48 hours watching their in-boxes fill up with JESUS IS LORD COMMUNISTS AND SOCIALISTS WANT TO TAKE YOUR GUNS AND FETUSES OBAMACARE IS A TROJAN HORSE FOR SHARIA LAW KENYA BIRTH CERTIFICATE HILLARY CLINTON GIVE US MONEY OR GOD WILL MAKE YOU GAY WHAAAAARGARBLE messages.

Because money. Period, end of file, turn off the lights when you leave...oh, wait, they're already off.

That's why I think this happened, and it started a while ago. Certain influential Republicans in the House and Senate, along with the outside groups that sustain them, figured out that slapping "Repeal Obamacare!" into a direct-mail fundraising message was better than winning the lottery, so they kept at it, and kept at it, and kept at it, and O my Lord, how the money rolled in...until the monster they created stomped out of the laboratory and began tearing up the joint.

And so here we are, smack dab in the middle of the most irrational, damaging, stupid, reckless, feckless fundraising drive in the history of currency.

The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19158-the-fundraising-message-that-ate-america

[progressoid]

1. They lost on Gay rights.

Immigration reform ain't working out too well for them. Their "traditional family values" schtick keeps backfiring.

They are running out of hot button issues to fire up the base.

This is all they have left and it's not really working out so well either.

[RGinNJ]

2. I like the article says do not belong to any right wing email lists, but

my in box sure has been flooded with just about nothing but requests for money over the last few days from just about every progressive site I can name.

[WilliamPitt]

3. The deadline for groups/parties to report how much they've raised was yesterday.

Nifty timing, that.

[Arkansas Granny]

4. I must have deleted a couple dozen over the last few says.

[RGinNJ]

6. Hell I got one form the Arts as I was typing my reply.

[KittyWampus]

5. Such good writing. Following politics has become an extreme sport. Adrenaline rush roller coaster

One disaster after another followed by bizarrely framed bits of good news. See- Syria.

It's like we've all become a reality show. We are all stuck in a verisimilitude rather than actual reality.

[dmr]

7. Verisimilitude & the US Congress shouldn't go together, but

sadly it's an accurate descriptor.

"We are all stuck in a verisimilitude rather than actual reality."

[spanone]

8. k&r...

[WilliamPitt]

9. A little bit of

Up.

[WillyT]

10. K & R !!!

[WilliamPitt]

11. One last

up.