We should have known it right from the moment that the T-Publican leadership publically announced that their job number 1 was to “make Barack Obama a one term President”. We should have seen that the GOP was forsaking the concept of working with the Democrats to serve the interest of the American nation as a whole. We now know that the GOP and all its sub-sets have given up on governance and committed itself to frustrating, stymieing, obstructing and preventing the Obama administration from accomplishing anything that could be considered successful during the remainder of President Obama’s term. They told us the why early on; to prevent Obama’s re-election. Now they have shown us the how; blocking any and all proposed government activities that they can; in order to continue the stagnation of the economy and increase the distress and anxiety among the citizens of the country.
When the T-Reps have regaining the White House as their goal; they go after the Democratic incumbent with everything they’ve got. Bill Clinton handed them opportunity on a silver platter when his personal peccadillo with Ms Lewinski became public (through a GOP operative). And the GOP beat him all but to death with it; and Al Gore along with him too. Otherwise it would have been mighty difficult to defeat Al Gore, the incumbent Vice-President of a successful peace and prosperity eight year administration with a Texas Governor whose main qualification was name recognition. That, and enormous amounts of Big Oil & Gas money.
President Obama will not provide the GOP with the same kind of scandal, so the current crop of T-Pubs will have to make do with a poor economy as Obama’s vulnerability. Obama will justifiably try to explain that the economic desk in the Oval Office was already on fire when he sat down at it and he’s been mostly successful in preventing the rest of the building from going up in smoke. But that’s not enough. People expect the President to do whatever he can to make things better, no matter what the problem. That’s where the topsy-turvy concept of the current T-Rep battle plan comes in.
It is virtually impossible for any President to accomplish anything of significance if the opposition party controls either or both houses of the Congress. As the T-Reps have shown in their one year of majority in the House; just saying No, loud and clear, over and over, can in fact prevent almost anything from getting done. Couple that with a 41 vote non-stoppable filibuster machine in the Senate and the T-Rep plan has, can and will go a long way to making the President look like a an unable leader. The T-Pubs are committed to this, even if they have to take traditional common sense economic policy and turn it inside out, upside down and on its head, in order to do so.
With straight face the GOP leadership stands firm against any form of tax code reform which will increase (if they pay any at all) the amount of tax contribution of corporations or billionaires; while decreeing that emergency spending on natural disasters is something that must be “looked at carefully”, even after a hurricane hits a dozen states.
They deny global climate change is in any way increased as a result of man-made hydrocarbon emissions and demand that the Environmental Protection Agency be dismantled because it “gets in the energy industry’s way”. They disregard volumes of scientific evidence from independent sources that call into question the safety and advisability of some newly touted forms of fossil fuel exploitation like Sand Tar and Fracking. The only thing standing between the American people and the health and safety hazards created by the destruction of the environment for short term profit by multinational conglomerates is the EPA Their job is to get in the way when the environment and the people living in it is threatened by greed, corruption and ignorance. Risking the vast majority’s health and safety for financial gain by the few is just plain, on its head, cockeyed.
The attempts to change, repeal or trash the entire economic safety net system of Social Security and Medicare in all their forms is also an example taking the economic and social contract created since the New Deal and turning it upside down. These programs which have been demonstrably hugely effective and beneficial, and have been funded in good faith by the contributions of American workers, must be saved from the mismanagement of willfully blind government officials; by re-structuring the funding stream. They should be not destroyed in order to save the wealthiest from paying their fair share of government expenses which are designed to take care of the hardest working Americans.
The T-Rep can’t seriously hope to lower unemployment by the proven false “Voodoo” concept of “trickle down” economics, which has clearly failed for the past 10 years. Yet they refuse to even consider a well targeted program of much needed, highly effective, infrastructure expenditures by Washington to fix our dangerous roadways, bridges and schools. Jobs in this country, using materials made in this country (more jobs) to do things that the government is supposed to do anyway seems like a reasonable (and proven) approach to getting America working again. But the T-Reps have created an atmosphere of fearful, inside-out thinking about the “deficit”, so they can stand in the administration’s way of using the government’s ability to borrow money cheaply to do the right thing for the American economy and people. None of the same concern about “scary” borrowing of money was ever mentioned when the Bush administration embarked upon two wars; one of which was poorly executed and the other of which was unnecessarily prosecuted. Another example of upside-down wrongheaded GOP thinking about where and how to spend American lives and treasure.
The T-Pubs seem to be trapped blindly in a the economic web and under the corrupting influence of a handful of international corporate entities which are committed only to taking as much money as they can out of the American economy. Tragically for most Americans these entities are completely unconcerned with the economic, environmental and social cost of their greed, no matter who or how much that cost is. What else could you call taking the American Dream and all it stands for in terms of the American people’s hopes, goals and values except; standing America on its head?