The Republicans' Private-life Paradox

For decades, one of the core principles of the Republican Party was that the government should be less involved in making decisions for the populace. Unfortunately, the actions of Republican legislators suggest that this principle only applies when Democrats are the ones making the rules.
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For decades, one of the core principles of the Republican Party was that the government should be less involved in making decisions for the populace.

Unfortunately, the actions of Republican legislators suggest that this principle only applies when Democrats are the ones making the rules.

If you are a woman and you would like to remove a collection of cells from your body, the Republican Party feels they should have more control over your body than you do, and have spent the past few years putting in rule after rule that puts government squarely between a woman and her doctor.

The Republican Party has been shamed into reluctantly accepting gays as citizens. But they have also altered state constitutions across the nation, including in Michigan, to ban same-sex couples from being married.

Republicans in some Southern states are forcing students to learn creationism in science class even though there is no actual science involved.

But perhaps Republicans' most duplicitous action so far was perpetrated in Tennessee, where Republican politicians, including U.S. Senator Bob Corker (who vocally opposed a bailout for the Big Three), lied to and threatened Volkswagen employees regarding the potential results of their pending UAW vote.

Outside of the fact that these actions are the complete antithesis of what Republicans claim to support, Volkswagen actually would like the employees to have some form of representation to work with management.

The Tennessee Volkswagen plant is now the only Volkswagen plant without a works council. According to a representative from the Volkswagen works council in Germany, the failure to form a representative body may cause the manufacturer to look to a more union-friendly location in the future.

One big question none of these politicians have ever answered is why they are so ardently against Volkswagen employees forming a union. Union voting was a democratic process. For the "buy American" crowd, the additional wages union employees make helps keep more money in the U.S. instead of letting it trickle down in Germany. Plus, Tennessee is already a right to work state, which allows employees to opt out.

If Republicans were true to their word they would concede, like former conservative hero turned union member Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, that "it's an American worker's right to unionize" and that "the employees voted to have it that way and in America that's the way it is."

In the end, getting the government out of your private life is just another false meme politicians sell to an under-informed electorate to elicit hate and fear for political gain.

Even for the representatives of "values voters," the ends justify the means -- regardless of how immoral their actions may be.

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