On the Contrary

In Mitch Daniels’ Response he began by saying, “The status of ‘loyal opposition’ imposes on those out of power some serious responsibilities: to show respect for the Presidency and its occupant, to express agreement where it exists.“  What a boldfaced lie.  There is no “loyal opposition”, just a group of people who want to see the President fail.  One only has to look at what has occurred over the last three years to draw that conclusion.  There are a record number of filibusters, holding the country hostage to their debt demands, and defeating any attempt at improving the unemployment picture.  We have an ideological divide that does not allow the taking of prisoners anymore.  I wish the President would have made that point far more emphatic in his remarks.  We all know nothing is going to happen and now the critical battle is whether we are going to allow the Republicans to eviscerate government and turn us into a two-class society.  It is as simple as that and there is no middle ground.

On Republican leadership, I think we saw it at its most naked form when Rick Santorum was confronted by a woman who again raised the outrageous nonsense about President Obama being a Nigerian Muslim and Santorum pandered to her beliefs (and the amazing crowd of know-nothings around him).  Mitt shows us his leadership when he panders to positions he has rejected in the past, but anything to get by the primaries.  Newt?  Well if lying, deceit, obfuscation, and generating hate is leadership, then bring on the rope and we can call ourselves the lynch mob country.  Ron Paul at least shows some backbone on his unpopular positions on drugs, wars, and sex, but his racist comments and his zany ideas about anarchy as a way of governing lead us to wonder if he thinks deeply about complex problems.  Some leadership when you lie and pander to mob instincts to lead the nation.

I listened to Eric Cantor (ever notice that most of these people are not very bright?) explain how the State of the Union speech (before he had heard it) was just more of the same failed policies.  Really?  Eric and company have never let the President have his policies without being watered down by booby traps that make them ineffective.  But what really ought to make Americans think is that the same old policies are more tax cuts and less regulation.  That is where we have been for the last 30 years and the result is for all of us to behold.  One of the best offensives is to project your weaknesses on your opponent.  This is one giant example of calling what we have not tried except after WWII when our economy was booming, old worn out policies, while calling more of the same that has brought us down and created a two class society change.  You got to love their chutzpah.  But if we listen and follow them, well kiss you kid’s future goodbye.

The President began to throw down the gauntlet, but he should have learned something from Newt’s rise in the polls.  The rabble like clear lines and firm opposition.  Let’s hope this speech was simply a stepping off point for beginning to draw clear lines, confronting failed ideology, and not the lines themselves.  They need to be much more clear and abrupt or the middle class and the appropriate role of government will be lost.

In a work, yes.  Okay, I will explain.  With the coverage of the South Carolina primary, there was the required interview with a Tea Party leader about which way the Tea Party would lean.  My thought was run crazy candidates and then see which the crazies prefer.  This is rational?  Then I thought, who cares what these people think, it is all nonsensical.

The Tea Party sprang up from pure anger.  That is what distinguished these folks was that “they were mad as hell and were not going to take it anymore.”  Take what was the question.  It was in my opinion a reaction to too many changes and they were terrified little people.  First you have the crashing of the economy and the dawning of the idea that things might not be better for our children than they were for us.  Then you have the election of a black President who wanted to bring change to government.  Finally you have the recognition that government wasn’t working for them.  Bring on irrational fear and a claim to take back their government, which nobody took from them.  This was highlighted by their blaming government for everything bad and telling politicians to keep government’s hands off their Medicare.  Duh.

The present day Tea Party seems to be divided into three groups.  The first are the social conservatives and read this as evangelical Christians.  They want government to enforce their idea of religious values on the rest of us.  They are the ones who can’t vote for Mitt because he is a Moron and think Rick Santorum is making sense with banning contraception.  They are a little confused about the “Enlightenment” and the Founder’s brilliant move to create a government devoid of religion (or maintaining a balance so no one religion could dominate).  They have been busy reinventing history to claim we are a Christian nation.  They would bring us theocracy and restart religious civil wars.  So much for this group.

Then there is the libertarian group that would like to return us to the 19th century.  They love Ron Paul.  Once again we have a failure to think deeply.  They want government out of their lives (unlike the last group that wants government to their enforce their religious views), but they haven’t thought it through.  These are the people who love their Social Security and Medicare (they earned it!) but think government is the problem.  They are the group most responsible for the election of those in Congress who have stopped anything from happening.

All you have to do is to question these folks closely on their views and policy choices and then ask hard questions about the consequences of those policies that might impact them to show the irrationality of their policies.  Let’s cut taxes, stop regulation, and reduce government, and then all the complex problems that face us will just go away and the deficit will just magically disappear?  Who will build the infrastructure?  Who will ensure that higher education is affordable?  Who will ensure clean air and water? And it goes on and on.  These are the people who are totally out of touch with the reality of what government has already done for them and they simply do not want to uphold their end of the responsibility bargain.  The lessons of history are lost on them.

Then there is the last group that understands that government isn’t working for them and they are mad as hell and are lashing out at government.  They are the ones who are really aligned with the 99%.  They are neither Progressives or Conservatives in the sense that they are not pushing a political agenda, but really just want to throw the current bums out.  They are the only ones who are making sense in this group although unless their anger is channeled toward effective changes in government, just throwing the bums out and electing other angry people doesn’t really fix the problem.  This is the Mitt crowd because they want to throw Obama out and replace him with the most likely candidate to do that.

The bottom line here which no one seems to want to examine is that the Tea Party and their “choices” are irrelevant to addressing the problems that face us.  None of these people are offering policy choices or candidates who represent these policy choices that address the reality of our situation.  So what they think or where they are leaning should only be news in the sense that we want to make just the opposite choices if we hope to do anything effective.  Many writers have commented at how decent and earnest these people are and they are serious.  All that is true, but their choices are moronic.  I have very good friends whose political choices defy logic and good sense.  They stay good friends because I don’t challenge their thought process, but the media in this election must do just that if we are to understand that being mad is not a political policy that will help the country.

Note:  Where does Newt fit?  Newt is sort of the the default candidate of all these groups if their preferred candidate falters.  We must not forget that there are non-Tea Party conservatives that for the most part will either vote for Mitt as the most electable or Newt as a fall back.  Where is Jon Huntsman?  He is rational so he has no chance whatsoever.

Oh my head hurts.  This continuous discussion of the Republican Presidential candidate field is nonsensical.  The reality here is that they have no policies for our future.  They have bought lock, stock, and barrel, the Ryan budget plan and the only people who would support that will not get elected.  But the Tea Party, that small 3% of the population, controls the Republican Party so candidates have to take unpopular positions to get past the primaries.  But nobody believes any of this will work.  So we have all these non-viable candidates having to pass a litmus test.  Poor Newt (well actually I don’t have any sympathy for him) had to walk back what he said on Sunday about the Ryan Plan because if you don’t support it, you are toast in the Republican Party.  Sadly what he said was true, but the Republican Party can’t tolerate anyone who does not pass the litmus test.  Talk about thought control.

So why can’t the Republicans come forward with some new and appealing candidates to challenge Obama?  Because they don’t have any new or appealing ideas.  Let’s cut taxes for the wealthy, protect vested interests, get rid of all that regulation put in place to prevent financial and other disasters, and lets fire all government workers.  Does that about sum it up?  And it is a great plan for those that have, the top 2%, and sucks for the rest of us.  Doing what we have done before only with more vigor and expecting different results is just lunacy.  Oh did you see where one hopeful, Rick Santorum, said John McCain doesn’t know what he is talking about when it comes to torture?  These people are clueless.

But here is where I lambast the media.  All they cover is the politics of the issues.  That is, who is up, who is down, what they said, how it might play, and who might win.  None of it is either useful or relevant.  What is relevant are their policies.  The press could have used the Gingrich faux pas to look at whether what he said was factual and whether the attacks on him are warranted, but we are not going to get that.  They could look at the proposed cuts by the Republicans and asked if that won’t further depress jobs, but they don’t.  We get he said/she said.

Right now we are focusing on Arnold’s love child, the IMF Bank President’s alleged rape, Senator Ensign’s soap opera sex scandal, and of course who is going to be the Republican presidential candidate among clueless, pandering morons, while the nation begs for a strategy to deal with providing jobs.  Yesterday I presented what I think is a fairly simple analysis (Some Common Sense) about why we have it completely wrong and that what we are doing will just further damage the country.  So where is a real discussion about our economic way forward?  Why isn’t there a mainstream discussion about whether the Confidence Fairy really exists and a look at Europe’s attempt and failure with austerity during a severe recession?  Gee does flow down work, and what does the evidence show?  Has the rich getting richer helped the economy?  Did loosening regulations really help or create our disasters?  There is tons of non-partisan data out there showing we are on the wrong track, that about 90% of what goes for conventional wisdom is wrong or not supported by any empirical data.

But what we are getting is he said/she said, opinion mongers, and idle gossip called news.  I shudder at the innocent victims like the love child of Arnold, or rape victim in New York.  Come on people, from Rachel Maddow to CNN, can we stop this nonsense?.  It is time to start talking about the economy and forget all the other dribble.  The Republicans will finally get a candidate, but he does not have a snowball’s chance in hell if he hews to the Tea Party nonsense.  We can’t do anything about it so how about focusing on educating America about our real economic choices and what the data shows are the consequences?  Oh, I forgot, that would be boring and we are about entertainment.   We are about to entertain ourselves into a banana Republic.