Everywhere I look, these days, Republicans are revolting. Here are a few snapshots of what prominent Republicans are doing:
Incredibly, in addition to all this revolting behavior from leading Republican pundits and elected officials, there is also a full scale revolt led by Republicans against the American government, today.
That's right: a revolt.
The Republican revolt is called Tea Party U.S.A. and the idea is that Republicans will stage protests against government spending, today, to send the message to Washington that the American people are tired of taxation without representation -- or something like that.
Curiously, the Facebook page for one of the Washington, DC, Tea Party says that this is not actually a Republican event:
This isn't a conservative or liberal thing. This is about government forking over billions of dollars to businesses that should have failed. This is about taking money from responsible people and handing it over to CEOs who squandered their own. (link)
That seems reasonable, until we look at the list of organizations sponsoring the Washington, DC, Tea Party:
Not exactly a "Who's Who" of progressive or liberal non-profit groups. And if we head on over to the Tea Party website, we see the following "talking points":
Critical of both parties? Those talking points read like they were clipped out of a Gov. Jindal's response speech with a pair of safety scissors.
Yep. It has been a week of revolting Republicans, alright. And things are getting revoltinger and revoltinger with each passing day.
This leads me to wonder: Why would anyone support Republicans who revolt against government spending on tax relief for the middle class, but not against no-bid contracts for Iraq?
Why would anyone support Republicans who revolt against deficit spending the moment the country elects a Democratic President, but not during the last 8 years when a Republican was in the White House?
Why would anyone support Republicans who cannot break the habit of telling racist jokes whenever a black, brown or otherwise non-white person takes the national political stage?
Why would anyone support Republicans who use their huge media platforms to hurl 2nd-grade schoolyard insults at non-Republicans, instead of offering pragmatic solutions to America's economic problems?
As I watch the coverage of the CPAC conference, the dilemma facing revolting Republicans comes into focus. The Republican Party does not seem to have anybody in a position of leadership who feels compelled to speak about solving the problems Americans face in their everyday lives, today. Instead, the collective Republican leadership is stuck in revolt mode. They revolt against gun laws, against taxes, against any domestic program proposed by Democrats--all in the name of a vague idea of 'freedom,' but never with an eye towards what actual people are going through in this country right now.
And the more the Republican leadership revolts, the more revolting they seem to the vast majority of the public.
There is a groundswell of ideas trying to be heard in the Republican Party, but the din of the tea party Republican being thrown by the current leadership is blocking their voices. They are old ideas mixed with new: Goldwater conservatism blended together with the participatory civics of on-line media. It is a seed of a new Republican Party that has the potential to draw in new membership and garner national support. But we will not see or hear those ideas so long as they are drowned out by the revolting.
Meanwhile, as the Republicans leadership reverts to the same childish antics that turned off so many voters in the 2006 and 2008 elections, Americans worry about finding the money to put tea on their own tables--about making their mortgage payments, paying for treatment when they sick, and covering the cost of their child's college tuition. Symbolic tea parties, in other words, are not the collective action that an America in need actually needs right now. We need pragmatic, steady, and relentless actions--solutions after solution after solution until we finally stop the free fall of our economy and our optimism, allowing us to begin the long, arduous climb back to the surface. While revolting Republicans sit down for their tea parties, today, the White House, the Congress, and state governments across the country are working to give Americans those solutions.
Something tells me, however, that the Republican leadership has a lot more tea parties to throw--and long way down the rabbit hole to fall--before they see what really concerns Americans nowadays.
Cream and sugar, anyone?
Crossposted from Frameshop
Has anyone seen a good rebuttal / debunking to the latest craziness?
http://www.wimp.com/thegovernment/
This video states that the US is not a democracy, fascism is not on the right-wing, etc.
Hoping someone has already done the leg-work to help me enlighten those who are currently buying into this cr@p.
Such as their claim that:
"Amping up regulations only hurts these businesses"
Yep--because the businesses can clearly make excellent, ethical decisions on their own.
Republicans don't have a solution because they refuse to understand the problem:
Ten per cent of the population got four-fifths of the income increase during the Bush administration. Worker productivity went up every year but wages stagnated. The rich had broken the deal with the non-rich which was, Work hard and you will be rewarded. Without real new income, the non-rich ran up their credit cards and lived off, instread of just in, their houses. The rich got even richer by helping them do it, while Bush tax cuts to the rich guaranteed that the new wealth would escape taxes, which made them want to take even bigger risks. Then the bills started coming due, and the non-rich couldn't pay. Crash!
Now do you get it, Republicans?
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
How very true for both definitions of revolting.
I have long suspected that many Republicans could use a refresher course in American history. This suspicion was confirmed at last week’s CPAC where Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) asked this astonishing question:
“I just wondered that if our founders thought taxation without representation was bad, what would they think of representation with taxation?”
I believe it’s safe to assume that they would think something along the lines of: “Good, that’s what we fought for”.
It boggles the mind that a member of the House of Representatives could be so fuzzy on our nation’s history. While she clearly has heard the phrase “taxation without representation is tyranny” and knows that this was the rallying cry for the American Revolution, she doesn’t seem to realize that the fighting words in this sentence are “without representation” not “taxation”. This is why, after our founders won their freedom and created our nation, they did not eliminate taxation, they kept taxation and added representation. This was their choice among the four solutions for the taxation and representation equation:
Taxation without representation is tyranny.
Representation without taxation is bankruptcy.
No taxation and no representation is anarchy.
Taxation with representation is democracy.
The choice was clear.
It is also clear that Republicans can’t defend American values if they do not know enough of our history to understand what those values are in the first place.
I have been beating my head against a wall trying to make some sense of this poorly contrived equation of Republican't rhetoric. If you sit down and write all the Republican't issues on cards and try to link those cards to each other to make connections of any sort, you just can't. It can't be done. If you do the same with Democratic issues, you have circles or stacks. Democratic values are intertwined in our social, economic, judicial, global and spiritual policies. The Republican'ts views don't line up in any way. So trying to have a dialogue with them is like trying to have a conversation with a schizophrenic. And I'm not even factoring in their lack of a singular voice for the party. I'm basing this purely on their messages, their opposition to Democratic policies and their proposals. Nothing fits.
Jennifer
Therein lies the problem -- no one who is participating in these "tea parties" has actually attempted to "sit down" and think or make links at all!
Thanks again for a well reasoned post.
I started an email conversation with my cousin, a Republican, and said that I REALLY wanted to know what he supports, what he wants his tax dollars to pay for. I told him I didn't need to hear what he doesn't like or want because that's clear. I asked him what his values are. In return, I got a rant about Obama, socialisim, totalitarism, Barney Frank being gay and single-handedly bringing on the econimc crisis by helping poor blacks.
So I told him those were talking points I hear all the time and I quoted the Constituion on taxes and asked what "do YOU think"? Nada. He can't tell me what he wants or thinks about Republican values without it being what they don't want. It's shocking to me that someone can be so hardlined but not be able to articulate what it is he believes in. I get what he believes against loud and clear.
From now on, they are Republican'ts if they can't tell me what they believe IN. And I mean more than tax cuts. I want to know what they DO want their tax dollars used on based on the Constitutional premise that taxes will be used for the welfare of the country. Not what they don't.
Jennifer
Those who ARE R party "leaders" will tell you what they believe in: marketplace anarchy, carte blanch for the rich, hating Muslims and people whose skin are browner than theirs, "the ends justify the means," etc. They really do believe "in" a lot of things.
The "smart" ones have law degrees, electrical engineering degrees, etc., and can perform many highly-detailed jobs extremely well and sound lucid when speaking. But when it comes to thinking all the way through a large social problem, understanding all the sweeping scope of variables, considering historic analogues, and arriving at a reasonable, logical conclusion - they are quickly overwhelmed and devolve into slogans, sound bytes, and irrational, scary tantrums.
They all scare the crap out of me. The only thing scarier is the thought that Obama might continue to try to appease them into the foreseeable future. Clinically insane people may make for interesting carnival freak show attractions. But while trying to solve the most imposing problems we've ever faced, they are a totally unnecessary distraction.
EXACTLY!!!
HOLY MOLY! What ballz!!!
This is such poor logic. First, most consumers spend a lot of their money on entertainment. (So do most large corporations who sponsor sports teams and advertisements on tv or in magazines. Which in turn causes a lot of everyday products like food or clothing to cost more.) Secondly, citizens should be more concerned with SAVING their money. Spending is what got us here. If people had saved their money better, they wouldn't be as worried to ride out a recession.
And they are the "leaders" of the repug party...
As for the "predatory borrowing". When did lenders stop asking for paychecks and tax returns? How can someone lie about their income when it is so easily checked? The reality is the lenders weren't verifying income because they could lend the money, bundle the subprime loan with other loans and sell it. Unfortunately, there were too many subprime loans being bundled together.
The idea of preditory borrowing is to me like a hospital that hires a doctor just because he says he is an MD. Do you think the hospital would just take the doctor's word? No, they would check.
The absence of reasoning from those on the Right is beyond me these days.
And if we kept the Clinton tax rate in place these past 8 years what would the deficit be today?
Then show people exactly what Bush and the Republicans actually cost this country.