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sheshe2

(83,773 posts)
Thu Oct 10, 2013, 09:24 PM Oct 2013

Party of Pain

Fans of representative democracy know that there are ways to advocate one's beliefs short of threatening and delivering harm to the larger society. It used to be that one could blame the parade of manufactured crises not on the whole Republican Party but on its unruly tea party faction. That's becoming less and less so as what remains of the pragmatic leadership caves in to the extremists' demands.

The GOP's perspective on governing seems to have moved from enlightenment to medieval. It's become the party of pain.

Snip

For all their patriotic posturing, the tea party bomb throwers don't like America very much. Worse, they don't understand how democratic governments or economies work. Some of their political leaders do know but don't care, using their electorate's confusion to enrich themselves off their bankroller billionaires and right-wing media.

There's nothing to do about these voters. They won't squawk until their own checks -- for Medicare, Social Security, farm subsidies, roadwork -- stop arriving. Tea party congressional districts tend to be poor, old, rural and on the receiving end. If anyone is a burden to productive America, they are. And irony of ironies, by holding the federal budget ransom, they are making it hard for productive America to support them.

And so Obama had to cancel a trip to Asia to baby-sit Republican tantrums in Washington. The financial and psychological damage of this shutdown keeps rising.



Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/10/10/party_of_pain_120276.html#ixzz2hN86MA3P
Follow us: @RCP_Articles on Twitter

Fools and Tools, will they ever learn.



3 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Party of Pain (Original Post) sheshe2 Oct 2013 OP
Donna eis requiem (grant them rest) Xipe Totec Oct 2013 #1
How fitting! ffr Oct 2013 #3
GOP. The party of pain. (bumper sticker?) ffr Oct 2013 #2

ffr

(22,670 posts)
2. GOP. The party of pain. (bumper sticker?)
Thu Oct 10, 2013, 11:43 PM
Oct 2013

"...they are making it hard for productive America to support them."

When you don't have a plan, this may be the only plan a desperate political party can adopt.

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