First, this election is in fact, a case of the Republicans' getting their asses handed to them (silver platter optional. From my graphic, so apparently are Alaska and Hawaii). Here's how I see it: as a party, the GOP has a basic conflict. They raise funds like crazy by sucking up to ultra-conservative moneyed interests, who see the world a certain way. To quote an observation in yesterday's Denver Post, "Republicans have shrunk to becoming a regional party of older, Southern white male evangelicals, neither reflective nor representative of the nation as a whole." The conflict arises when they try to translate all this money into votes. The tactics that work to build war chests do not help them get votes. They marginalize themselves in the process.
A very logical, not to say absolutely essential, question arises in the wake of the thrashing. What will the GOP take away from 2012? A couple of Republican politicians, former members of the Colorado state Legislature, weighed in with a reaction of their own. Here is a pertinent quote (to save you the trouble of following the link:
It's time to bury the hatchet and forge bipartisan agreement on immigration reform. It's also time to approach cultural issues like gay marriage and abortion with humility, humanity, and common sense.So it's apparent that there are Reeps out there who can form a thought and express it. Does the GOP have the guts to risk changing its approach on basic issues that (they think) its rank and file feel strongly about?
Well, ol' Dubya screwed that pooch, maybe forever. His hands-off policy toward investment banking and mortgage-based securities trading plunged this country into a fuckin' mess that could have been completely avoided. Bush's botching of the economy - a once-in-a-lifetime fuckup for a President - actually bought Obama a lot of time and indulgence.
It'll be interesting to watch. I'll wait and I'll watch. It'll be a major miracle if the Republican Party can move from its stance on abortion, immigration, and gay rights. But that's what it'll have to do if it wants any chance at the White House.
I agree, dad, that for the republicans to legitimately contend they'll have to embrace gay rights and budge on immigration reform and women's rights over their own bodies. At least for them to have a chance with informed folks in my demographic.
ReplyDeleteNot me, necessarily, but they'll sure seem less racist and scary.
They really just need to do what the dems have done to the far left: marginalize them and move toward the center. Who else would the crazy racist and anti-women voters vote for, a Tea Party psychopath? That would split the vote and keep the presidency with dems. Can you imagine that campaign? A pussy democrat, a bland but sane republican, and a tea party psycho caricature? Dean vs Tsongas (or Bloomberg) vs Bachman?
Mayor Mike's probably the best chance...pro gay rights, anti-gun, anti-unhealthy surgery drinks, pro-making a billion dollars...
Sound republican financial theory, whatever that used to be before the eight years of Bush's disastrous blind-eye gold rush consolidation of wealth into fewer and fewer hands, is something that if I may not principally agree with, is at least a starting point for negotiations.
If I think the government may be better equipped to provide services for the needy rather than the free-hand of the market, that doesn't mean I won't listen to good ideas and can't be convinced of programs that aren't funded by said government.
I may think that the market's only need for the poor is their consumerist dollars, but that doesn't mean I can't be convinced that solutions are out their from private enterprise.
I just need to be convinced. Lately, massive tax breaks for the super wealthy have demonstrably NOT done what was proposed. Ever. And that seems to be all the current brand of republican has to offer. Tax breaks; attack labor unions; cut funding for programs at every single point. I never heard any solutions.
I think we can all agree that being poor sucks. Is the government better equipped to attend to them, or is private enterprise? That's a good conversation that needs to be had by sane politicians.
But, why are we arguing about legitimate rape? That doesn't sound like the brand of politicians these days are very sane.
I always figured, dad, that you wouldn't be down with Dubya. You're too smart for that pandering horseshit, and a humanist romantic to boot.
Thanks for the post. Times like this I wish I still regularly toked, so I could come visit and make a purchase in a store like it was back in Amsterdam.
(I deliberately left lower-case punctuation on the party's names. It's something I do to show disrespect.)
Disrespect was never more appropriate.
ReplyDeleteFrom a historical perspective, the government (the federal government at least) has proven over and over again that it cannot manage the programs that were designed to help the less-well-off. It all started with FDR, who brought in a ration of government programs, all as a reaction to the stock market crash and Depression. I'm sure some have argued that Americans were no better off in 1939 than they were in 1933, and maybe that's true. Government spending did nothing to cure the economic ills. It took WW II to do that, unfortunately.
Bush the Younger was (I hope) the last of the Reagan Republican presidents, just as Carter was the last of the FDR Democrats (I capitalize proper nouns, but ... how proper are they, really?). Bush's policies were the logical conclusion of Reep hands-off-let-the-capitalists-work-it-out kind of thinking, and that led to crash and depression again. So your point is a good one: it is not the government's function to help individuals get rich. Just under republicans.
People love to lay blame for bad times, but I've had a mantra for a long time that says, The President really doesn't have as much control over economic outcomes as people want to think (unless he's a royal fuckup like Dubya). Bill Clinton presided over some pretty great economic times, but I'd like to see the policies he enacted that caused them. It was coincidence.
So, I begin to think some hybrid programs might be in order. National health care seems like it's on the front burner (and about effing time). I think a tax that pays for a national program is legitimate and probably necessary. I'm not familiar enough with the program Obama has enacted, but some setup where public funds are placed under private or semi-private management might be our best hope of making something work. I'm no expert, like I say.
I am becoming expert, however, in how the reeps approach and rouse their faithful in Colorado, which is pretty conservative, or used to be, before the big Latino influx. They hit the "family values" shit pretty hard, especially in Colo. Springs, a hotbed of Bible-thumpers. They talk about "Stop Wasteful Gov't Spending," and making the government lean and small. Wait, I say. Just a minute. Aren't we in a big fuckin' hole because of TWO foreign wars started by the previous administration, not to mention bailing out the good ol' banking boys? Can't you lunkheads come out and say that that train has left the station for good?
That gripes me. Okay, get me the hell off this soapbox, my throat hurts.