Why are senate Republicans committing economic treason?

[smoogatz]

Stabenow is right--it's a cold-blooded political calculation designed to improve their chances in November. Of course, if the Democrats have any sense (and any cojones) they'll hang this crass obstructionism around the Republicans' necks all summer long.

[elocs]

1. They will do anything they are allowed to get away with doing. n/t

[AnArmyVeteran]

2. All I hear is silence. But I hear the footsteps of cowards fleeing from republicans.

I can only list about five members of congress with 'cojones'. How do people who are incapable of leading get in leadership positions? I don't get it. With all of the ammunition the republicans have given to the democrats the democratic party should be picking up seats this fall. The level of ineptitude is unprecedented. I wish I was a member of the DNC. They seem to be totally asleep while Rome continues to burn...

[xxqqqzme]

3. because it is

ideology before common sense; party before country; and corporations before people.

Once you know that, it all becomes quite clear.

[smoogatz]

5. Treason.

They are treasonous bastards, to a man.

[mrcheerful]

6. Yep mainly it energizes their base to get out and vote so they can stop those lazy free loaders from

getting a government handout. In 1980 it was just lazy free loading welfare queens that were the problem, today the list for lazy free loaders has grown to include the elderly, the disabled and the worker who was tossed out of his job. Funny thing about the base though, when they find themselves in the same boat as the folks they bitch about, they start yelling that they need more government handouts and they are entitled to handouts because they paid all of the countries taxes.

[TheKentuckian]

4. Because they can get away with it, that's why.

[BeFree]

7. How?

Can you say: Computerized vote counters...?

They think they have nothing to fear. But some of us are on to the fix. We know elections are stolen, right?

[uponit7771]

12. You know who Tim Kaine is right? Because he's been absent with message not many liberals outside of

...DU and other poli forums do.

GOPers would be screaming to the mountain top if this was defense spending.

[TheKentuckian]

13. Well, I sure that reassures them greatly but mostly because the media will frame it

in their favor and too many people don't care and are in deficit cutting mode.

[kenny blankenship]

8. It's not treason if you view wage workers and the unemployed and the impoverished as The Enemy

First refresh your memory of the Parable of the Sower. In Republican philosophy, which is Locke refracted through Calvinist predestination, those three groups are the bad seeds in the social order, and in their envious opposition to the good seeds (rich people), they form a vector for the growth of bad morals, the importation of dangerous foreign ideas, and the propagation of a wasting disease and mounting weakness in our nation, as it confronts its enemies in the world.

If you're a Republican, you can never go wrong by knocking the workers, who taken together with the ex-workers are the seed that fell on stony ground, and those who, by being born into poverty, fell by capitalism's wayside. They are the least strong of our society, therefore they are always to be feared and loathed as though they were agents (biological or Satanic) spreading the disease of weakness.

People ask But how do they keep getting away with it? The answer is that their victims though poor are infected with Calvinist hatred for the poor as well. In most countries, certainly in a country as religion obsessed as ours, religious attitudes form a deep background to "secular" political philosophies. In our heartland we know that Life is meant to be hard, a vale of tears and sorrow - except for God's Elect, who have the best of everything, and who look 29, right up until the age of 74 when they die painlessly, on top of a 2,000 dollar an hour hooker. The vast majority of Mankind, as we know from Augustine and Calvin, is unalterably damned by God's will. (Try squaring that with the idea of majority rule! We agree to be ruled by the majority, but we hate them and God will send them to Hell.) We know our neighbors are no damn good. We know everyone but us is going through life with their hands out. We curse our lot, but we stare at the rich celebrity on our TV and think: that could still be me. Isn't that EXACTLY what the Republicans say is the reason why the common people back tax cuts for the rich? "They want to become rich themselves one day by their own hard work, and they don't want the gummint taking their dream money away from them and giving it to poor people" I could be rich and everyone else could eat dirt. And so, as a glib blog poster I read somewhere once admonished: never underestimate the seething contempt the average American has for the average American.

[agent46]

14. Bingo! n/t

[Winterblues]

9. I have been too busy fighting the North Vietnamese over here to pay attention.

Ever since we had to leave "over there" to keep them from fighting us "over here" I have been swamped in active combat. I expect it to be even worse when the Iraqis and the Afghans get here in full force.

[Zoeisright]

10. Because they hate democracy.

They want a theocracy, and they are doing everything they can to bring that about.

[agent46]

11. Republican Secret Evil Plan -- REVEALED!

They really seem disengaged from the rest of the country, don't they?

Here's what it seems like to me just from watching these guys in action: They apply any leverage available while often relying on the credulity of the public to get away with it - and in their minds it's all procedural. Their objective is to win and get their way. (High stakes, baby.) Nothing else exists outside that - not even the idea of America. This latest maneuver of trying to disrupt support to millions of unemployed Americans is like a parody of the right-wing mind.

This is unbelievable though. Either they've left earth as a group or this is a cynical do-or-die maneuver: A secret evil plan to see if the low-information viewing public buys it when they pin all the doo-doo we're in on the other corporatist party! After that (the plan reads) they "gets to take over and pig out" in privatized "permanent majority" nirvana. And oh yeah, the small people get to dumpster dive.

Weird how they think just like bad guys do on TV.:shrug:

Anyhow, imho, politics has become all too absurd and scripted to be anything but theater. The question is, will the country buy the storyline and thus consent to it. Again.

I think these days the most dangerous psychological position anyone can take in this total media environment is that of passive audience member. It's like being in a slight trance all the time - and marketing is the key to commerce and political power in the media age. Marketing precedes reality. Could be this dramatic move is "a cold-blooded political calculation designed to improve their chances in November" or it could be desperation. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.

At any rate, as long as we keep buying it, they'll keep selling it. And the band plays on...