The single greatest threat to the United States is not joblessness, foreclosures, another recession or skyrocketing debt or health care costs. Nor is it terrorism, China or declining influence abroad. No, the single greatest threat to our country is today's Republican Party.
That's because the GOP is relentlessly pursuing a policy of the American public be damned, so that next year Republicans can regain the national political dominance they held from 2001 to 2006. Their sole, selfish aim is to complete the transformation of the U.S. to a government of, by and for the rich and the far-right.
Veteran reporter Robert Parry, a retired correspondent for the Associated Press and Newsweek, accurately summed up that policy this way:
Modern Republicans have a simple approach to politics when they are not in the White House: Make America as ungovernable as possible by using any means available... Control as much as possible what the population gets to see and hear; create chaos for your opponent's government, economically and politically; blame it for the mess; and establish in the minds of the voters that their only way out is to submit, that the pain will stop once your side is back in power...
Republicans and the Right... are well positioned to roll the U.S. economy off the cliff and blame the catastrophe on Obama. Indeed, that may be their best hope for winning Election 2012.
George W. Bush's presidency, with Congressional Republicans in lockstep behind him, made an excellent start on the destructive transformation of this country: two unpaid-for wars (one based on lies); failure to prevent the worst terrorist attack on the homeland or punish its instigators; waste of tens of thousands of U.S. and foreign lives, and worldwide diplomatic failure.
At home, approval of torture, warrantless wiretapping and ineptness and indifference in the face of Hurricane Katrina created a permanent stain. Economically, Republican tax cuts created few jobs and increased the national debt by 75 percent. What the Washington Post dubbed "executive grandeur" made income inequality the worst since the 1930s Depression. Finally, the GOP's failed stewardship of the economy resulted in a crisis that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testified was even worse than the Depression.
When national revulsion against Republican misrule drove Democrats into power in 2008, the GOP resorted to today's strategy. It became evident even before the new Democratic president took office when the Republican Party's de facto leader, Rush Limbaugh, declared: "I hope Obama fails." And since the inauguration, Republicans have done everything in their power to assure that failure, although it's meant misery for millions of Americans.
"I wish we had been able to obstruct more," says Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell who succeeded brilliantly in keeping his members in line in opposing every important measure that's good for this country including presidential initiatives for health care, financial regulation, economic stimulus and a dozen executive appointments and even more judicial ones needed to keep government functioning.
Given the frightening record of business and financial deception and fraud that led to the economic crisis, who in their right mind could possibly oppose increased regulation of business and enhanced protection for consumers? The answer: almost all Republicans. Elizabeth Warren is too committed to consumer protection to win the votes of Senate Republicans acting for their paymasters at the chambers of commerce.
President Obama's new law extending health insurance to 30 million more people is too good for working Americans. Beaten in their attempt to vote it down, Republicans are now suing to kill it. Remember the GOP plan? It proposed health insurance for one-tenth as many people. Is it any wonder that people in all other industrial countries, where health care is a right, laugh at us.
American business hates government -- except when it needs government help. Which is just about all the time. And it's just fine with Republicans whenever business goes to the government for help. In fact, GOPers are almost always corporate-friendly, as opposed to people-friendly. And they have a right-wing Supreme Court majority that helps them buy legislation by equating money with speech and corporations with human beings.
But heaven forbid the average citizen should try to get a government benefit, or a job or more unemployment insurance or aid in taking back a home seized (often illegally) by the bank, or getting health care for a gravely ill child with a pre-existing condition. Republicans are happy to vote overwhelmingly against him, ignoring the Constitutional command that government "promote the general welfare."
Ronald Reagan, a president with rich friends and poor instincts, did this country an unforgiveable disservice by encouraging Americans to hate and distrust their government. Remember when he declared: "Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem," and joked that: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Contrast that with Reagan's almost religious reverence for "the magic of the marketplace."
But my own life experience, like that of millions of Americans, tells me that in important ways the government is more reliable than the marketplace. I spent a good part of my career working for one of the largest, most triumphant examples of American capitalism: General Electric. When I retired late in 1997, GE shares were selling for $68.56; when GE CEO Jack Welch, the greatest corporate genius of them all, quit 11 months later, those shares had dropped to $39.66. In 2009, under his successor genius, they fell as low as $6.66. And they closed the other day at $18.49 -- only about a quarter of what they were when I retired. Needless to say, those shares formed a large part of my now badly-depleted retirement assets. Fortunately for me, GE was one of a declining number of companies that still provided an additional defined benefit pension plan for employes like me -- something the company is now proposing to drop for new union hires.
In contrast to my GE stock disaster, Social Security hasn't missed a monthly payment to me for more than 13 years, or to my wife in nine (imagine the value of our Social Security stock portfolios if Republicans had succeeded in their privatization scheme). Medicare enabled me to have spinal surgery, a hip replacement, cataract operations in both eyes and radiation that cured my prostate cancer; and my wife to have a hip and knee replaced, without breaking us financially.
Maybe that's why I call Reagan a liar and a fool for his denunciations of those benefits from our government to me and millions of others. And you should, too. But Republicans regard him almost as a saint. And those same Republicans just voted almost unanimously in Congress to kill Medicare and replace it with Rep. Ryan's pathetic plan to replace single payer with cut-rate vouchers for money-hungry private insurers. And they're now holding a critically important increase in the debt ceiling hostage to measures that would weaken the recovery.
The Republican Bush administration destroyed our standing abroad and our economy at home, and killed and maimed thousands of our young men and women for no good reason. Since 2009, Democrats have done their best to clean up the Republican mess -- something that unfortunately takes time. Republicans have fought those national cleanup efforts -- and the vast majority of the American people -- every day. And they say they're proud of their obstruction. As for solutions, they offer none, except for tax cuts like those that created record-low jobs under Bush, and spending cuts that would cripple the government.
These policies failed before and would inevitably fail again, and might well drive us into a real Depression. That's why the Republican Party is the single greatest threat to the United States of America. It cannot be allowed to win in 2012.
Robert Reich: The Republican Strategy
Robert L. Borosage: A Toast to a Remarkable Leader: Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Simon Rosenberg: Obama Tax Deal Should Be Supported
Meredith Bagby: Debt Ceiling: The Sky's Not Falling -- Yet
Republican Party Strategy After the 2008 Election - Barack Obama ...
Can the Republican Party's Opposition Strategy Pay Off? - TIME
Tea-Party Activists Complicate Republican Comeback Strategy - WSJ.com
Republican party strategy backfiring on business? - Jeanne ...
Let the economy falter and the dollar collapse.......Prices will go down and industries will suffer massive loss of income...... The republicans will be blamed and they will be exiled from office for a long time.
I have slowly come to actually hate these people's greed and avarice. I put them in the same category as the Taliban........both want to destroy our way of life.
History will judge him harshly........for he was the person mostly responsible for trashing our form of government and starting the narrative that Government is The Problem......
So, let it fall. American industry will become competitive as the dollar is worth less. This is a sad triumph because in a better managed country, to have the boss currency would be a good thing. Germany demonstrates how good management can sustain labor and industry despite the most expensive labor. The United States imposed much of the German system upon it as we occupied Germany after WWII. We knew what it took. Once upon a time...
Let the dollar fall because Republican policies have so weakened us that this little humiliation is merely another. All the Washington Republicans have signed on to Grover Norquist's pledge even knowing that his ambition and intention is to destroy the United States of America, starve it until he can drag it to the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub. It's time to face them down and let Americans decide if our national destruction is our desire.
Said another way, they give mere lip service to their oath to the Constitution and are nigh enemies of the state.
I have been saying it for a while now and it still holds true, the GOP, The Tea Party and Fox News are all in it to wreck this country.
What other reason is there to lie, mislead and deceive the population?
These parties need to go the way of the Whig party, into obscurity.