With the primaries now complete (and Republican voters in Delaware giving the Democrats a huge gift by nominating the East Coast version of Sharron Angle over the popular -- and probably unbeatable -- Mike Castle), the races are set for the midterm elections in November. With many forecasters predicting success for the GOP, it raises the question: When you cast a vote for a Republican candidate in November, what are you voting for?
There was a time when a principled Republican could fairly and accurately reply that he or she was voting for smaller government and lower taxes as a way of improving the fortunes of the middle class. (I personally disagree with that policy position, but it is a fair argument to make.)
But in the current Tea Party- and Beck-Palin-Limbaugh-dominated GOP, such an assertion is completely untenable. Recent news has shined a clear spotlight on exactly what the GOP is actually supporting. As I pointed out last month, odds are, the Republicans are not looking out for you.
1) A vote for a GOP candidate is a vote for the interests of the wealthiest Americans, at the expense of everyone else, including the middle class. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell put his cards on the table when he said that senate Republicans will not accept anything short of a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, presumably voting against maintaining the tax cuts for those making less than $200,000 if the rich are not also included. It is important to note that just a day earlier, House Minority Leader John Boehner took a more reasonable position, saying he would vote for the extension of the tax cuts for those making less than $200,000 if he had to. (Here is a basic hint for life: If you are putting politics ahead of the good of the nation even more than John Boehner, it is a sign you have gone horribly off the rails.)
Unemployment is pushing 10 percent, Americans are concerned about the economy, and Republicans in the Senate are making their stand to support the wealthiest Americans? There is no reasonable, non-fringe economic argument that tax cuts on the top earners fuel job growth, but we know that these tax cuts have exploded--and would continue to explode--deficits (something House and Senate Republicans have previously said is just fine, putting tax cuts for the rich in front of deficit reduction).
McConnell's stand makes explicit what has long been clear in the actions of Republican lawmakers: They view their obligation first and foremost as protecting the wealthiest handful of Americans, above and beyond what is best for the rest of the country.
2) A vote for a GOP candidate is a vote to give power to a small handful of wealthy fringe Republicans who are pouring millions upon millions of dollars into anti-Democrat advertising. A front-page article in today's New York Times detailed how Republicans have outspent Democrats in House and Senate races so far, but that a bulk of the money has not come from the party or the candidates themselves. Rather, ads are being funded by independent interest groups who can accept unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations without any obligation to report the identity of the donors. That means that a few wealthy extremists (the article points to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth funder Harold Simmons, a Texas billionaire, and the infamous David Koch) have pumped millions of dollars into these campaigns. So no matter what any of these Republican candidates say, whether they are crazy, fringe-right Tea Partiers like Sharron Angle, Ken Buck or Joe Miller, or more mainstream Republicans, they will be at the beck and call of the Koches and Simmonses of the world. And we know whose interests they will be looking out for. (Hint: If you're not a millionaire, you just may be out of luck.)
Timothy Noah recently wrote a great piece for Slate.com on the concentration of wealth in the United States. He notes that in 1915, about 18 percent of the country's wealth sat in the hands of one percent of Americans. After World War II (a time economists have called the "Great Compression"), the income disparity between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else shrunk, bringing down the wealthiest one percent's ownership to less than 10 percent of income. Beginning in 1979, a period Paul Krugman has called the "Great Divergence" began, as the rate started climbing. And the disparity in income exploded during the Bush years, so that by 2007, not only had the gains of the middle class been completely erased, but the ownership of the top one percent had soared to 24 percent of the nation's income.
The moral of the story is that Bush extended a massive redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy.
As I've said again and again, there is anger in this country, and it is justified, but it needs to be channeled in the right direction. A vote for the GOP in November is a vote to reinstate the same wealth redistribution policies that helped to destroy the American middle class. In short, it is a vote for the top one percent to continue to increase its hold on the nation's wealth.
3) A vote for the GOP is a vote for the politics of fear. Since President Obama was elected, the Republican opposition to his presidency has been built on fear. Rather than offering competing policies, the GOP chose to lie and obstruct with the end game being scaring Americans into believing that the president was a dangerous extremist. It's not just the deranged ravings of pundits like Limbaugh, Beck and Palin, either. Reliance on fear (and absence of positive policy proposals) has been a hallmark of the Republican minority in Congress.
The GOP policy of fear is most apparent in the recent fomenting of Islamophobia. With unemployment strangling the nation, Republican politicians thought it was important to demonize an Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan. Last month I discussed how Republicans are cynically using the Islamic community center for political gain. But the issue is really bigger than just this one building in Manhattan.
Despite the Obama administration's stellar record in catching and capturing al-Qaida and Taliban leaders, Newt Gingrich spews out nonsense like:
"What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? ... That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."
It's a blatant use of baseless fear for political gain, seeking to scare Americans into believing that the president can't keep them safe (even though, so far, he has). That is the way of the modern Republican party.
But the Republican use of fear goes beyond foreign policy and terrorism. Fear is at the center of GOP domestic policy as well.
Rather than debate the president's stimulus bill or budget on the merits, the GOP resorted to fear-mongering, calling the president a socialist. Debate health care? Why, when it is easier to scare senior citizens with made-up death panels and again trot out charges of socialism and government takeovers?
In his New York Times column today, conservative David Brooks described how the misunderstood and overly rigid application of anti-government theory by mainstream Republicans like Rep. Paul Ryan is a recipe for a "political tragedy," a "fiscal tragedy," and a "policy tragedy." What especially struck me in Brooks' piece is a passage he cited from a Wall Street Journal op-ed penned by Ryan and American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks:
"The road to serfdom in America does not involve a knock in the night or a jack-booted thug. It starts with smooth-talking politicians offering seemingly innocuous compromises, and an opportunistic leadership that chooses not to stand up for America's enduring principles of freedom and entrepreneurship."
Ryan, one of the Republican leaders in the House, invokes terms like "serfdom" and "seemingly innocuous compromises," as well as making accusations that Democrats are not standing up for American principles. Let's be clear here. Ryan and Brooks are not saying that Democrats, in trying to dig the country out of an economic mess (created, incidentally, by a Republican president and Republican Congress), chose policies they thought would best do the job (which by any honest and fair assessment of the situation is the actual truth), but that they disagree with those choices. No, instead, they are accusing the president and the Democrats in Congress of actively trying to overthrow the American way of life, and to make citizens into serfs.
Ryan and Brooks aren't offering positive solutions. Rather, they make wild accusations to stoke fear in Americans.
Fear is really the only item Republicans are offering voters in November. The GOP isn't running on what they want to do (all they ever offer are more tax cuts for the rich), but instead on what bad things will happen if voters don't elect Republicans in November. Under the Republican narrative of fear, it's not that Democratic policies are well-intentioned but ineffective. It's that the Democrats are out to hurt Americans, and if voters leave Democrats in office, Americans will become serfs in a socialist takeover, which might not matter since the president is a Kenyan who doesn't want to defend the United States from Muslim terrorists.
Is this the country we want to be? Do we want to be ruled by fear?
Historically, that hasn't worked out so well for us. From the internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II, to the McCarthy inquisition of the early Cold War, to J. Edgar Hoover's anti-civil rights investigations, America has taken actions out of fear that we, as a country, later came to regret. And after 9/11, George W. Bush's reaction was similarly extreme, in effect doing everything the perpetrators of the atrocity hoped he would (curtailing the rights of Americans and damaging the economy, American military power and the United States' standing in the world through the ill-conceived and botched invasion and occupation in Iraq).
And yet, fear is all the GOP has to offer voters in November.
Republicans will run in November against what they say is an expanding federal government, an echo of the GOP traditions of small government and lower taxes. But make no mistake: A vote for the Republicans in November will be a vote for something very different. A vote for the GOP will be a vote for policies that favor the richest one percent of the country at the expense of the rest of us. And it would be a vote for the kind of fear that, in our history, has resulted in anti-American behavior that we, as a country, eventually come to regret. That is the real Republican platform for November.
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While Democrats are keeping all the ethically challenged members and certified old fogies, Republicans are listening to their voters and cleaning house in many cases, for better or for worse. In November we will see change again. We will have to see how that is going to work out. Let's all hold the b*st*rd's feet to the fire and make them work for us and quit spending and cut government. We are bankrupt and WGAS whose fault it was.
Neither party is willing to get serious about ending the war in Afghanistan.
Neither party is willing to even think about cutting military spending to reasonable and appropriate levels.
For 30 years the Republicans have transferred enormous wealth to the rich and pauperized everyone else.
For the past 30 years the Republicans have run up enormous deficits, taking the federal debt from $900 billion (Carter) to $11.6 trillion (GW Bush).
Therefore, the Republicans are ideal stewards of our nation's economic health.
Yikes! That didn't help.
The Tea Party Candidates represent the common American. Their supporters consist predominately of senior citizens, (whom what a future for their grandchildren.) small business owners, (whom want to continue to pursuit the American dream.) and Soccer mom's, (whom want to keep their suburban homes and carpool their kids in their SUV's.) and a whole lot of consious minded women and men. The only reason any bigots or racists have even moved toward the Tea Party groups are because the leftist media continues to say that is who they consist of. But they are absolutely not welcome.
Think about the logic, if some group or media is supporting the established governing parties they are obviously supporting corruption.
The only area that concerns me is the fact that the GOP has been hijacking the tea party and now claiming to be tea party people themselves like Sarah Palin. I think the tea party started out as a group that were fed up with Washington after the bailouts and grew very quickly thereafter. In general the group was not religous at all, but was a populist uprising, against both parties and their protection of big business and big government at the expense of the common man.
But if the tea party groups allow the religous zealots of the religous right to take over the party, then I fear that the movement is doomed. Christine O'Donnell is someone who believes that you can legislate behavior. This goes against the main theme of the tea party, which was to promote individual liberty. I will root for her, simply because I think her winning will drive the pundits from both parties crazy, but just the same, I think she is not a worthy tea party candidate.
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny, when the government fears the people, there is liberty." --Thomas Jefferson ...
Unfortunately only time will tell what will happen when the Tea Party hits DC but I see trouble ahead. I do however see that the rich and the Corporations will gorge for a short time before finding out that if America goes the rest of the way down, so will they.
I guess there are enough people that still believe that you can continue to do the same thing over and over and get a different result, I DON’T!!!!!
Those tax cuts occurred in 2001 & 2003. Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, so it was the Republican led Congress who passed them.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,133369,00.html
Are there really any stats to prove the money given to the ultra-rich really stimulates the economy?
The perception remains: The ultra-rich are holding tightly to the money that Main St. and our nation can use urgently. We cannot afford this tax-break for ultra-rich folks. Sorry.
The voters are falling for it again, just like they did with Bush. That didn't turn out too well and this will be far, far worse.
These candidates are backed by white Corporate interests using fear, religion, and division to maintain a stranglehold on the American economy.
The voters are once again falling for the fake patriotic rhetoric and voting their fear & anger or religious ideals instead of looking at their pocketbooks and who stole their money to begin with.
The GOP stole the American economy, crashed it and play games by funding a group calling itself a "tea party" to avoid the voters looking at the fact they are still voting in the GOP again.
The voters are angry about the economy the GOP left behind but won't admit that it happened in the first place because they voted the party line instead of what was best for America.
The voters are doing it again.
Voting in Bush and the GOP for 8 years didn't turn out too well and it won't end well this time either.
Repeating a mistake isn't fixing a mistake.
America will be overtaken by religious zealots & Corporate backed GOP candidates who will allow this economic disaster that is lining the pockets of those Corporations to continue.
Voters need to remember, these candidates are still the GOP.
I urge you to weigh your vote with extraordinary care this time.
Taxes on a typical US family - one making $75k annually - will have to rise by an additional $29,000 annually simply to dig out of the hole if government - at all levels - does not cut spending. Taxing the rich is not going to get us out of this one.
For substantiation, see http://www.mygovspendingblog.blogspot.com/
There's more to reckon with than a little Tea Party.