The Republican base: who ARE these people?
With all the crises facing our country, the GOP-controlled Congress has announced without apology that it intends to fritter away the summer with re-runs of old legislative favorites like gay marriage and flag-burning, designed to excite their Republican base while positioning Democrats as unpatriotic wimps.
No sooner had the flag amendment lost by one vote in the Senate than the Republicans were angrily warning Democrats they would pay at election time—which was the whole purpose of this exercise in democracy. Then House Speaker Denny Hastert unveiled a GOP “values agenda” including measures on topics such as abortion, cloning and gun rights—issues that resonate with the “base”.
I’m not saying these tactics don’t work. They do. In 2004, the gay marriage issue sent millions of evangelicals to the polls and they swung the election for Bush despite his pathetic record. Now, with national magazines calling him the “worst President in our history” it is time to once again change the national conversation to gay marriage and flag burning.
During the Senate debate on the flag burning amendment, West Virginia’s Bob Byrd nailed it: “Burning the flag may be ugly and silly but it’s nonetheless a method of rebuking Washington politicians, especially those who start needless wars.”
The Republican base. Makes you wonder: Who ARE these people and aren’t they ashamed to be cited as the reason Congress is legislating political slogans rather than dealing with life-and-death issues? Don’t they know their own party sees them as petulant, spoiled children whose obsessions with tax cuts, regulatory baubles, patriotic symbols or religious moralizing must constantly be catered to or they’ll simply stay home on election day? I can understand how these emotional appeals work with the gun nuts and evangelicals, but what about the filthy rich who put up the millions to fund these divisive wedge campaigns? Don’t they include some fiscal conservatives who have a lot at stake if our country goes the way of Argentina?
Can the Republican base (TRB) really be as dumb as Bill Frist and Karl Rove considers them to be? Do TRBers consider themselves simply immune from critical world problems that can destroy us all?
Here are some things the rich, hard-headed, unemotional TRBers might want to think about:
While the super-wealthy enjoy many shelters ordinary folks do not, you share a planet where glaciers are melting and if nothing is done to stop the warming New York City will be under a foot of water. At least the evangelicals can pray.
Fiscal conservatives didn’t get to be corporate fat-cats by tolerating waste and inefficiencies, so why aren’t you demanding the ouster of Don Rumsfeld for his incompetence in conducting the Iraq war? After all, this was a war of our choosing, which meant Rumsfeld picked the time and place to fight it. So why is it, three years later, our troops still complain of lack of proper equipment, including body armor? Why is it that in 118 degree heat many of our soldiers complain about lack of water and de-hydration?
That’s criminal incompetence, and it continues domestically where not only was the Bush Administration response to Katrina botched and a great city destroyed but recovery efforts have resulted in a wondrous $2 billion boondoggle for the scam artists. TRBers would never run a successful company that way. With the deficit near $9 trillion don’t you feel it’s time to take the check book away from these guys and do something about restoring our nation’s fiscal health?
With the gap between rich and poor wider than it has ever been, don’t the actions of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet embarrass you just a little bit? Juxtapose the selfish way Republicans millionaires in Congress — in your name — feverishly pursue elimination of the estate tax, with Gates and Buffett giving their billions to fight disease and attack root causes of world poverty. Not pretty.
Perhaps Rove’s machinations will succeed in energizing both the Republican and Democratic bases this midterm. Now that I would like to see.
No sooner had the flag amendment lost by one vote in the Senate than the Republicans were angrily warning Democrats they would pay at election time—which was the whole purpose of this exercise in democracy. Then House Speaker Denny Hastert unveiled a GOP “values agenda” including measures on topics such as abortion, cloning and gun rights—issues that resonate with the “base”.
I’m not saying these tactics don’t work. They do. In 2004, the gay marriage issue sent millions of evangelicals to the polls and they swung the election for Bush despite his pathetic record. Now, with national magazines calling him the “worst President in our history” it is time to once again change the national conversation to gay marriage and flag burning.
During the Senate debate on the flag burning amendment, West Virginia’s Bob Byrd nailed it: “Burning the flag may be ugly and silly but it’s nonetheless a method of rebuking Washington politicians, especially those who start needless wars.”
The Republican base. Makes you wonder: Who ARE these people and aren’t they ashamed to be cited as the reason Congress is legislating political slogans rather than dealing with life-and-death issues? Don’t they know their own party sees them as petulant, spoiled children whose obsessions with tax cuts, regulatory baubles, patriotic symbols or religious moralizing must constantly be catered to or they’ll simply stay home on election day? I can understand how these emotional appeals work with the gun nuts and evangelicals, but what about the filthy rich who put up the millions to fund these divisive wedge campaigns? Don’t they include some fiscal conservatives who have a lot at stake if our country goes the way of Argentina?
Can the Republican base (TRB) really be as dumb as Bill Frist and Karl Rove considers them to be? Do TRBers consider themselves simply immune from critical world problems that can destroy us all?
Here are some things the rich, hard-headed, unemotional TRBers might want to think about:
While the super-wealthy enjoy many shelters ordinary folks do not, you share a planet where glaciers are melting and if nothing is done to stop the warming New York City will be under a foot of water. At least the evangelicals can pray.
Fiscal conservatives didn’t get to be corporate fat-cats by tolerating waste and inefficiencies, so why aren’t you demanding the ouster of Don Rumsfeld for his incompetence in conducting the Iraq war? After all, this was a war of our choosing, which meant Rumsfeld picked the time and place to fight it. So why is it, three years later, our troops still complain of lack of proper equipment, including body armor? Why is it that in 118 degree heat many of our soldiers complain about lack of water and de-hydration?
That’s criminal incompetence, and it continues domestically where not only was the Bush Administration response to Katrina botched and a great city destroyed but recovery efforts have resulted in a wondrous $2 billion boondoggle for the scam artists. TRBers would never run a successful company that way. With the deficit near $9 trillion don’t you feel it’s time to take the check book away from these guys and do something about restoring our nation’s fiscal health?
With the gap between rich and poor wider than it has ever been, don’t the actions of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet embarrass you just a little bit? Juxtapose the selfish way Republicans millionaires in Congress — in your name — feverishly pursue elimination of the estate tax, with Gates and Buffett giving their billions to fight disease and attack root causes of world poverty. Not pretty.
Perhaps Rove’s machinations will succeed in energizing both the Republican and Democratic bases this midterm. Now that I would like to see.
posted by Victor Kamber | 12:05 PM
1 Comments:
Wow. Yes. To all of it. Well said.
Post a Comment
<< Home