Why do you think they run on a platform of economic destruction? The Republicans goal is to bankrupt America, period. What better way to have to cut Entitlements, which is their true goal? Considering George Bush just revealed that his biggest regret was not privatizing Social Security, it's not like the Republicans disdain for our social safety net is a big secret. To many Republicans, America's "failures" are actually successes. The destruction of our economy is actually a huge success, bleeding out two wars, the Bush Prescription Drug bill and two massive tax cuts for the wealthy, all unpaid for and billed to the next generation and administration. How better to bankrupt the New Deal than with disastrous economic policies combined with two expensive wars and a host of unfunded mandates?
The Republican "Party of No" strategy has turned some public opinion in their favor, at least with a large evidently amnesic demographic of people who didn't care one bit about deficits and debt under Bush but suddenly found righteous anger once Obama took office. The strategy holds that if the economy doesn't rebound, people would be more likely to vote against the incumbent party as a protest vote. And with no platform to run on, the Republicans can only try to position themselves as a somehow fresh choice and hope the voters have a serious degree of memory loss about their last time in charge. And by the way, who thought Nancy Reagan would be such a huge influence on the Republican Party? 'Just Say No' indeed.
Obstructionist as they are, obstinate as they act, it is all part of the true platform: The Party of Failure. They failed at government in the 1980's and they failed at government in the 2000's and now they are doing their best to make Obama fail so they can call him a failure, get voted back into office on a wave of "anti-incumbent" anger and then get back to what they do best: keep failing. Republican strategist Grover Norquist famously said "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Republicans couldn't reduce the size of government by fiat so they did the next best thing: write more checks than the account holds, max out all the credit cards and leave it to the next president to have to make those unfortunate but necessary cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, or privatize Social Security and sink that big pool of protected Government greenbacks into the Casino on Wall Street. You can almost hear the wolves on Wall Street licking their chops and sharpening their knives at the thought of it.
If the Tea Partiers think they're the party of "less government," wait until they see what they would get after another Republican-dominated period of governance. I always wonder when the moment will come when people realize that they have been voting against their own self-interest? Is it when the anti-health-care-reform people get sick and get dropped from their insurance (which can't happen now, thank you President Obama and the Democrats)? Is it when they need the Police or Fire Department but due to budget cuts there aren't enough to handle every emergency? Or when their Medicare payments get cut and their Social Security goes belly up on the stock market? I keep waiting for them to suddenly realize that the Fox-guided message that delivers their narrative is being directed by corporate interests and that they are angry pawns in an elaborate game that ultimately will not benefit them at all. Just like the Religious Right in the last century, they are being used for others political gains. Getting Tea Party people elected as Republicans will not help; just look at Scott Brown, who votes pretty much in lockstep with the corporate-owned Republicans. It's Republicorp, and it's there to see if you don't have your tinted goggles on. Or should I say tainted goggles.
If the Republicans can keep Obama from succeeding, they might get another shot at Failure with a capital F. Perhaps they can call it Failure, Inc., because it is big business to keep our government from regulating big business and to keep our congress bought and sold. So when does the Party of No get correctly branded as the Party of Failure? And do they really need a shot at failing again? If you're one of the people thinking of sitting this election out because you don't think Obama has done enough in the last 20 months, consider what Republicorp will do if they take power and know that not casting a vote against them is as good as casting a vote for them. Unless, of course, you are rooting for more failure and the bankrupting of America. Time to wake up and smell what the Right and their corporate masters are really cooking.