Requiem for the GOP

In the midst of the healthcare “debate,” President Obama told the GOP that “If you don’t like this law…you’ve got to tell us specifically what you’d do differently.” The key part of that challenge is that he wants them to actually be specific, which is why it’s amusing to hear Republicans fire-back by saying; well, nothing specific. This may be why nobody seems to recall any sort of constructive criticism or solid alternative from the opponents of Obama-care. In fact, 2 days before Obama’s remarks, House Speaker John Boehner was asked if the GOP will actually introduce a legislative alternative to ACA, to which his response was; “We’ll see.”

In this case, it doesn’t seem that being specific is in the GOP’s best interest. That’s because when the Healthcare reform that we all know as “Romney-care” was passed in Massachusetts, even though it centered around the exact same “individual mandate” that is now a controversial cornerstone of Obama-care, it was unanimously praised by Conservatives. In fact, Obama-care was derived directly from the success of Romney-care, which explains why, despite small differences (that critics never seem to mention) both plans hinge on state-based exchange authorities and subsidies for low-income patients.

Yet despite the similarity of the two plans, when Mitt Romney passed “Romney-care,” conservative think-tanker Dr. Robert Emmet Moffit, the Director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, didn’t hesitate to take credit, saying “We’ve been honored by your request…to participate in giving our best advise and our technical assistance in designing a new and different kind of health insurance market.” The same Dr. Moffit would later go on to co-author a book called “Why Obama-care Is Wrong for America,” a book that might as well have been called “Obama Has Cooties!” The reason being; opponents of Obama-care constantly explain the horrifying inevitability of what will happen, while avoiding the explanation of why it will happen. This is just one example of how Republicans have gone from being the party of business and smaller government to the party of thinking whatever the fuck you feel like.

Here’s the main problem with that; thinking whatever you want is something you do when you’re not thinking. Maybe this is why the overly oblivious have a tendency to become hypocrites, and perhaps it’s how the healthcare plan that conservatives celebrated, has now inspired a near-identical plan that they condemn with every last puerile fiber of their being.

Combine that with blocking Obama’s nominations about as many times as every other president on record combined (PolitiFact), as well as not raising an eyebrow when he’s interrupted 48 times by Fox News (Youtube) or when Jan Brewer stuck her finger in his face, and I can’t tell if he’s the president, or the gay ginger kid with his head in the toilet. We really need to ask ourselves; does this clamoring tribe of conservatives have legitimate reasons for wanting Obama-care to fail, or are they sore-losers who unconditionally want this president, as well as the Democratic Party to fail? This could be what people refer to as a “self-fulfilling prophesy.” This relentless barrage of government obstruction and indiscriminate filibustering is so thinly-veiled that it just might lead to the downfall of the Republican Party instead.

Its kind of like when I used to induce a spatula-flogging on my little brother by throwing myself against the stove as soon as our grandma left the room, only to later face a wiffle-ball-bat to the testicles. In retrospect it wasn’t worth it, and I’m guessing that a completely reckless onslaught against our government, over problems you’re not willing to explain, isn’t either. Bob Dole clearly wasn’t spit-balling when he called his own party an idea-free group of obstructionists. As far as I can tell, they’re only idea has been to fuck shit up and blame it on the black man.

Perhaps this is why Republicans in California are using taxpayer dollars to send-out flyers which direct people to a website that looks almost like the state’s official healthcare website, except for one thing; it’s not. Oh, and you can’t use it to sign up either. Instead, it attempts to frighten people away by blasting them with anti-obamacare premonitions. This is what the GOP has sunk to; deliberate misinformation, and many times its not even deliberate, it’s just plain stupidity. When someone constantly tells you what will happen, without explaining why, there’s a word for that; propaganda.

This concept may explain why the Associated Press had to “self-impose” a fact-checking quota on Michele Bachmann during the debates so that it wouldn’t “overload the system.” If you think that’s an embellishment, try and wrap your head around how a champion of the Right, like Bachmann, can get away with saying something like this; ”Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.” Yes, an elected official actually said that. She also says things like “Not all cultures are equal” and the grossly anachronistic classic; “But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.”

A greater example of the conservative shit-for-brains phenomenon is the conservative savior and radio-jockey, Rush Limbaugh. Back when BP turned the Gulf into a floating Texaco, this man actually said “The ocean will take care of this on its own, if it was left alone and left out there. It’s natural. It’s as natural as the ocean water is.” Yeah, great point Rush, what a relief to know I can pet grizzly bears and go swimming in a volcano simply because their natural.  Either this man was sick the day his class learned about fish or he’s never tried to breathe oil, either way the point remains the same; it’s agonizingly disturbing that this is the right-wing’s spokesman, and it just might be that his decades-long worship is indicative of the ignorantly callous Frankenstein that his party has become. This is also the man who said “The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them” and of course one of my personal favorites; “There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived or at any other time in history. Does this sound like a record of genocide?” No Rush, it sounds like a record of you having your head firmly lodged up your pudgy, moronic, hypocritical pill-popping ass.

If I had a dollar for every bullshit, bat-shit, fucked-up thing the right-wing has verbally-diarrhea-ed out of the undisciplined, primitive, mini-organ that they call a brain, I wouldn’t need universal healthcare. And don’t even get me started on republican males who verbalize alternative views on rape. To quote Bill Maher; “there are Mexican drug-mules that don’t pull this much shit out of their ass!” Maher also has a beautifully suitable compound-word to describe the Republicans pervasive detachment from reality; “fact-free.”

Now Rush Limbaugh likes to refer to himself as a “comedian” and an “entertainer,” which likely means he thinks of Bill Maher as a liberal version of himself, however there’s one key difference; HBO isn’t pounding at Rush Limbaugh’s door to do a cable special. Sponsor-wise, Rush is having enough trouble just staying on the radio. In fact, Bill Maher said “There’s a reason people compare me to George Carlin — because we’re stand-up comedians. Rush Limbaugh likes to say he’s a comedian—You know what, Rush? When you can stand up in front of an audience of 3,000 people, all the time, like I do and make them spill their fucking guts out and laugh their asses off for 90 minutes; you’re a comedian, but you’re not a comedian.”

Furthermore, Phil Porter, in the comment section of YouTube said it very well; “Republicans don`t do funny! They don`t know how it works!!!” I’d even take it a step further and say that if Sarah Palin managed to learn anything from Tina Fey; comedy is their enemy. There’s a reason comedy is foreign to them. Sid Caesar once described comedy by saying “It’s the truth, and you put a curly-cue at the end of it.” Therein lies comedy’s essence; the truth. That being said, it could be argued that the Right’s lack of humor is a testament to just how out-of-touch they really are. If you doubt that, find me a conservative comic who’s funnier than the new Dennis Miller. I guess it’s difficult for someone to be funny when their constant rejection of facts turns them into a walking punchline. I don’t think anyone can ignore the fact that the hard-right doesn’t have any Bill Mahers or Jon Stewarts. Oh, and Steven Colbert doesn’t count because he’s a satirical caricature who’s mocking them, which actually took them a while to figure-out.

If there’s anything that symbolizes how far this party has distanced itself from reality, it’s the fact that the Bush administration actually thought that Steven Colbert would be the perfect humorist for the presidential roast. As difficult as it is to fathom, they booked Colbert and somehow managed to overlook the immense likelihood of George W. Bush being publicly humiliated with brutal irony, and that’s the problem with this group. If we’ve learned anything from Socrates, it’s that people stop thinking when they automatically decide to never change their mind, which seems to be what’s causing their perpetual collision with reality. Which is exactly the point Colbert made at the presidential roast, quasi-praising Bush by saying “We always know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday— that he did Monday— no matter what— happened— Tuesday!”

With that in mind, it’s no wonder Republican Governor Bobby Jindal told his peers to “Stop being the stupid party.” The same Bobby Jindal went on to heed his own advice by proposing a plan to completely eliminate corporate income taxes by slashing social programs and raising sales taxes, a plan that for obvious reasons had to be scrapped. If they want to really stop being stupid, maybe they should start by helping the vanishing middle-class, instead of bombastically picking on them.

It’s no secret that the middle-class is dwindling, and I doubt it’s a coincidence that I began to hear about it during the presidency of George W. “de-regulate the fuck out of everything” Bush. The reason for this is that Republicans only seem to have one solution for income inequality, which is; you take the people with the most money, make sure they get even more money, then watch the left-overs “trickle down” onto the rest of us! Pope Francis, a man who conservatives hate, who by-the-way is Time Magazines “Person of the Year,” put it very well; “There was the promise that once the glass had become full it would overflow and the poor would benefit. But what happens is that when it’s full to the brim, the glass magically grows, and thus nothing ever comes out for the poor.” Exhibit A: The financial crisis, aptly occurring at the finale of Bush’s 8 year long de-regulatory free-for-all.

Rush Limbaugh however, saw it fit to criticize the Pope’s views calling them “pure Marxism.” Okay Rush, the only thing that’s “pure” is your own contagious brand of ultra-conservative ideology. It turns out that Pope Francis doesn’t think very highly of “ideology” either, calling it “rigid” and saying “In ideologies there is not Jesus.” And that’s just what a belief in “trickle down economics” is; an ideology. However it’s become an anachronistically displaced ideology because the same group of people who just cut food-stamps during a recession are the same people who want tax-breaks for corporations that report record profits.

Despite the president recently drawing attention to the growing wealth gap, Chairman of the House Budget Committee Paul Ryan said that America is simply made up of “takers and makers.” I guess my question to Paul Ryan would be; “what-the-fuck one are you?” This is a man who’s ironclad party just shutdown the government, up’d the instances of presidential-nominee-blocking from 86 to 168 in just 5 years and are clearly causing what is being called the “least productive congress in history.” Furthermore, you don’t have to look very closely at our millennial economic history to deduce that the only thing the “makers” have been “making” is poverty. Oh yeah, and they’ve been making the government less productive while reducing social safety-nets.

This is just one of countless examples of obvious hard-right hypocrisy, which will grow less defensible the poorer this country becomes. During years of prosperity, Republicans rashly thrived as the party of the rich, and filled in the voter-gaps by pandering to droves of Christians and gun enthusiasts in a way that seduces them into abandoning their own economic interests. I doubt they will be so fortunate in a future where poor people multiply like gremlins. Despite Republican’s chronic aversion to social safeguards, they often say they want financial prosperity for all Americans (as long as they’re not the ones who need food stamps).

Ostensibly, their justification for cutting social programs often seems to be because of their deep concern for the national debt. Better than any other group, they seem to recall the snowballing debt, while harboring complete amnesia about how it started, which brings me to the man who is arguably the father of the modern day GOP; Mr. Ronald “Reaganomics” Reagan, a man who conservatives seem to regard as Jesus part II. In order to improve the economy in the early 80’s, President Reagan implemented a plan that theoretically made room for major tax cuts (mostly for the wealthy), mainly by deregulating the market and reducing government spending, which is great except for one thing; he didn’t reduce government spending! In fact, the cuts that were made to social programs were offset by an increase in military spending.

Yet despite the plan missing it’s most vital economic cornerstone, Reagan proceeded anyway; a reckless maneuver that eerily resembles the cavalier antics of modern day Republicans. He might as well have tried stacking money on a table with a missing leg. So what happened? By the end of Reagan’s presidency, the national debt had tripled, which he acknowledged as the “greatest disappointment” of his presidency. Reagan and Bush administration official Richard Darman claimed that “In the Reagan years, more federal debt was added than in the entire prior history of the United States.” Yet despite the Republicans apparent fiscal concern, they continue to worship Reagan’s “trickle-down” economic theory, even though he gave man-birth to the enduring chain-reaction that tripled the annual deficit.

One might ask how the GOP can continue to put such a train-wreck on a pedestal? Probably because the least conservative thing anyone could ever do is to change their mind. The apparent economic philosophy behind the modern day Republican party still seems to be nauseatingly simple; those with better means should receive better treatment. Is this really something to promote in an age where more and more executives go bankrupt while falling back on luxurious safety-nets made from other people’s pensions?

Technology entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa made an excellent point; “Bailouts don’t create jobs, start-ups do.” It seems as though Republicans are so eager to persecute the poor for being “lazy” that they’ve forgotten how important they are. In a capitalistic system, people of limited means are crucial for a very simple reason; there’s more of them than rich people. If regular people can’t catch a financial break, who’s going to buy all the shit rich people are selling? There is one group, however, that’s definitely buying it; the Tea Party.

The Tea Party mainly began in response to Obama’s efforts to repair the economy, particularly the stimulus package. Though the stimulus wasn’t perfect, most economists agree that it stopped a second Great Depression. After the Tea Party was ignited by a blog and a Youtube rant, they were scooped-up and spoon-fed talking-points by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative activist group founded and funded by two of the wealthiest men in America; the Koch brothers. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, reminds us that “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.” I guess “grassroots” sounds more inviting than “special interest.”

Tea Party folk like to think of themselves as the new voice of reason in politics, however their values are anything but new, in fact, they’re identical to those of the John Birch Society. Half a century before the dawn of the Tea Baggers, the John Birch Society promoted “traditional values,” extremely limited government, a completely free market, income tax exemption (very patriotic) and ending economic intervention. They also accused everyone of being a communist and frowned upon the Civil Rights movement, claiming that “The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America.” Sound familiar? It should, because it was written by one of the founding members of the John Birch Society, Fred Koch; the Koch brothers father.

Knowing that, we really have to ask ourselves; does the Tea Party’s brand of polished anarchy have modern-day relevance, or is it simply the John Birch Society and “Reaganomics” in Tea Bagger’s clothing? Having a completely free market has always been a nice thought, however it relies just a little too much on trusting the goodwill of greedy people. For as much as conservatives enjoy citations from the Bible, like the “golden rule,” they behave as though it actually means “he who has the gold, makes the rules.” Of course it makes perfect sense for the Koch brothers to want a free market, but i will never understand why their insatiably aristocratic urges are vehemently endorsed by american workers who risk being replaced by someone who lives in Mumbai.

Ted Cruz (Mr. Government Shutdown) claims that the media has a tendency to describe the conservative base as either stupid, evil, or crazy, which is not entirely true; I like to call them “pawns.” However it is true that in a market where jobs are outnumbered by people; if you relentlessly attack things like unemployment benefits, food stamps, school lunches for poor children, and the federal minimum wage, then you come-off as evil. And if your a blue-collar-Joe that supports it; you come-off as stupid and crazy.

If there is one person who epitomizes the moronically simplistic trance of the republican base, its Joe the plumber, the “undecided voter” from 2008 who had many Americans very concerned about what Obama will do to his tax-rate after he buys the plumbing company that employed him. What he should have been more concerned about was paying off the lien for the backed taxes he already owed, not having the funds to buy the firm, and actually getting his plumber’s licence! That’s right, in addition to putting the cart before the horse on his imaginary business, Joe the plumber wasn’t even a real plumber. Oh yeah, and his first name wasn’t Joe either.

When you hear people say that “modern” conservatives live in an fantasy world, this is what they’re talking about. With all the issues piling-up on our nation, the right-wing is still focused on the same old crap; corporate tax-breaks, gay marriage, overturning Roe vs Wade, and stopping a hand-full of brown people from stealing our landscaping jobs. The newest right-wing fixation, in the fight for non-urgent things, is their obsession with voter fraud.

Conservatives in the supreme court recently championed the downfall of key parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, allowing 9 states, mostly in the south, to no longer require federal approval to change their voting laws. This was immediately followed by a full-scale war on “voter fraud,” a problem that study’s consistently show to not be a problem. In fact, the Brennan Center described it as “exceedingly rare.” However, these facts haven’t stopped battleground states from passing unnecessary voter ID laws, like the new law in Texas (which  is aimed at women with maiden names), as well as restricting early voting (which blacks utilize way more than whites), and playing God with geography to create districts that are no longer dominated by Hispanics.

However, I don’t even have to prove that the GOP is conniving to reduce the turnout of Democratic voters; they openly admit it. According to Political Journalist Jamelle Bouie, “Among friendly audiences they can’t seem to help it.” Like when the Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida Jim Greer said “It’s done for one reason and one reason only; ‘we’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us.’” Is Greer the only Republican who feels this way? Not according to him! He also claimed that “the Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” and North Carolina Republican executive committee member Don Yelton admitted “The law is gonna kick the Democrats in the butt.” He also said that “if it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give ’em everything, so be it.” Needless to say, he resigned shortly after that. Despite their totalitarian tendencies and rape of Democracy, somehow these are the same people who routinely accuse others of being un-American.

If the GOP doesn’t start playing fair and treating poor people better, they might have to lose Jesus as their mascot. If there’s anything that exemplifies hard-right hypocrisy; it’s their inapplicable worship of the world’s first hippie. Since Jesus’ all-inclusive philosophy seems unmistakably absent from GOP policies, I’m tempted to assume that they think of him more as a really cool magician (someone who’s “power” somehow proves that God thinks they’re right about everything).

An alarming number of hard-right Republicans seriously think that if Jesus were alive today…he would endorse the GOP! Right folks, he kicked the money-changers out of the temple…but he’s a Republican. His book is called the NEW testament, but it’s very conservative. And as soon as a new pope shows-up who acts exactly like Jesus; they immediately call him a “false profit.” Republican alienation has become so out-of-control that  they’ve made it all the way to subconsciously ostracizing the “Son of God.”

In fact, they’ve gone even further than that, and are now starting to turn on each-other. Like when John Boehner angrily criticized conservative organizations for criticizing Paul Ryan’s budget deal “before they’ve even seen it!” Boehner also claimed that conservative groups like Heritage Action and the Tea Party are “using our members and they’re using the American people for their own goals,” which may be why, when they were still on good terms, he said that congress “should not be judged on how many new laws we create. We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal.”

At this turning point in history, the GOP seems grossly incapable of saving themselves.

They have become so self-righteous about their inflexible, irrelevant, cookie-cutter ethics, that they don’t even flinch from orchestrating a symphony of obstructive acts, no matter how closely those acts resemble treason. As their destructive brand of ultra-partisan sabotage spirals toward gasps of abject desperation, the amiable world of entertainment, popular culture and cyber-space have become evermore geared towards exposing their imperious shadow of inexcusable frivolity.

Like when Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens faced a storm of angry emails and death-wish’s after allowing himself to be recorded saying “Let me tell you what we’re doing [about Obama-care]. Everything in our power to be an obstructionist.” He later uttered a remorseful sentence that will likely be the famous last words of the Republican Party; “I didn’t realize I was being videotaped and that got on the Internet.” Furthermore, this is almost certainly the reason that Mitt Romney and his “47 percent” remark didn’t make it to the Oval Office.

If they can’t even acknowledge smart-phones (or anything smart, for that matter), how is this crusty tribe of mischief-makers going to save their “organization” from relentlessly shooting itself in the foot? Partisan loyalty has kept them afloat in recent years, but it wont save them from future generations of tech-savvy curiosity-seekers. To quote a liberal victim of YouTube, Howard Dean, “They have to start caring about ordinary people in order to win elections again.” As the American melting-pot is rapidly infused with disgruntled women, gays, minorities and low-income families, it would seem that, in a suitably ironic twist, the conservation of conservatives will depend on their ability to become less conservative.