If you are as disgusted by the cynical nature of what passes for the "patriotic" rightwing these days, you must read this commentary from one of Andrew Sullivan's readers.
I glide around my world trying to understand what the current GOP and conservative movement's purpose is, and all I come up with is not a single productive suggestion about how to solve any of the current problems facing us and our world, but rather a singular focus on destroying Obama and taking down the country in the process.
Conservatives and their frenzied tea-bagger nihilism are Gollum-esque in their behavior. In their pursuit of their "precious" vision of the United States, they would rather see the country fail so miserably if it brings down the un-American, socialist-fascist-nazi-joker Muslim traitor in the White House than work with Obama to try to make this country better.
The country was on a precipice of unimaginable collapse a year ago and their response: let's not work with Obama to get us off the cliff, but rather let's just plow into Obama and take us all over the cliff all the while smiling contentedly on the descent into the burning hell of Mount Doom in the smug satisfaction of having recaptured their precious.
Well, I applaud the GOP for sticking to its guns over the last year. The people who are now begrudgingly returning their support to GOP politicians, by and large, want less government and less taxes (both at the same time). They see TARP, the stimulus, and the bailouts as mistakes which have served to prolong the economic retraction while greatly enriching the very people most responsible for it. They don't see mandated health care as being a constitutional role of the federal government (one of the reasons Mitt Romney was rejected by Republicans as a Presidential nominee). They are concerned about a government that seems to be charging forward on climate change legislation in the face of science and emerging news stories that question the very assumptions the legislation is built around. As such , these Republican politicians have no obligation to 'work with' the opposition to create these laws.
ReplyDeleteWhat Repbulican politicians are doing right now is what their constitutents wanted them to do during Bush's 8 years: fight government growth. They failed to do this for 8 years and the results were disastrous, both for the nation and for the Republican Party. They will almost certainly stop doing it if/when they regain political power, so at least for now some of can enjoy seeing our politicians doing what we want them to do for a change.
I have said for a long time that one of the worst things that has been happening to us politically is the constant splitting of the difference when it comes to enacting legislative policy. The Democrats 'worked with' Bush to pass Medicare Rx, No Child Left Behind, massive increases in food and farm subsidies, and TARP. Our country would be vastly better off right now if the Dems would have been as oppositional towards Bush as the Republicans currently are towards Obama. What America needs in order to move forward is not an averaging effect of two oppositional ideologies, but a wholesale victory of one over the other, a victory that requires the victors to take ownership for the results of their ideas. Insomuch as the Republicans were on the losing end of the last election, I think they are absolutely correct in their attempts to force the Democrats to fight for and take ownership of the solutions they are proposing.