Over at the Washington Post, E.J. Dionne argues (correctly, I believe) that the GOP Clown Car Cavalcade’s central tenet is to run for head of a government they insist cannot work, a Disunited States of America in a very real sense, freed from oversight, responsibility, and oversight from Washington, shades of Goldwater’s 1964 run. What it does is leave President Obama as the classic conservative in the race, fighting to defend the advances in social welfare and the safety net made over the last three generations:
The GOP is engaged in a wholesale effort to redefine the government help that Americans take for granted as an effort to create a radically new, statist society. Consider Romney’s claim in his Bedford speech: “President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes. In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing — the government.”
Obama believes no such thing. If he did, why are so many continuing to make bundles on Wall Street? As my colleagues Greg Sargent and Paul Krugman have been insisting, Romney is saying things about the president that are flatly, grossly and shamefully untrue. But Romney’s sleight of hand is revealing: Republicans are increasingly inclined to argue that any redistribution (and Social Security, Medicare, student loans, veterans benefits and food stamps are all redistributive) is but a step down the road to some radically egalitarian dystopia.
Obama will thus be the conservative in 2012, in the truest sense of that word. He is the candidate defending the modestly redistributive and regulatory government the country has relied on since the New Deal, and that neither Ronald Reagan nor George W. Bush dismantled. The rhetoric of the 2012 Republicans suggests they want to go far beyond where Reagan or Bush ever went. And here’s the irony: By raising the stakes of 2012 so high, Republicans will be playing into Obama’s hands. The GOP might well win a referendum on the state of the economy. But if this is instead a larger-scale referendum on whether government should be “inconsequential,” Republicans will find the consequences to be very disappointing.
Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann all join Perry in calling for the wholesale elimination of government Cabinet departments. And as Dionne points out, Romney has now joined the group of Republicans who are running to dismantle as much of the federal government as possible, to leave us in an era where the states and cities fight amongst themselves for the favor of the “job creators” in a race to the bottom, each location offering more incentives than the last at greater and greater expense of their least wealthy constituents.
If you believe that states should be engaging in Hunger Games style combat and brutal competition not to create new jobs, but to strip them from other states in order to “win”, then the GOP is your party in 2012. It would be nice if Dionne’s last sentence were true, that Americans wouldn’t vote against their own self-interests, and yet tens of millions will. The only question in 2012 is if enough will turn out to defend the United part in the name of the country. If you believe that America is in this together, and that there’s a role for government in a federal system, then yes, President Obama seems to be the only one keen on going that particular route.
Read the first part of the quote from EJ Dionne and MH-P has a different take on our fight over the role of government. She posits that it started in 1860 and was never resolved.
Here is a video that I think is absolutely illuminating on the current state of affairs. Must watch.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/301205-1
Going back up to read.
I prefer to think of it as The Untied States of America. It’s certainly true, and that way, if we ever get smart enough to tie our our shoes, we might be able to come back together again. After all, as Nasruddin says, “Who knows? Maybe the horse will sing!”
Re: that map pic – keep in mind how it comes to be that way: http://sensoryoverload.typepad.com/sensory_overload/2004/11/free_states_vs_.html
I.e., this is all primarily driven by one thing, and one thing only.
Social change is hard; and, it is slow. This includes racial prejudice. Many white retain their prejudice against blacks; it is, simply, marginally harder to use that prejudice as a basis for behavior. Prejudiced people, nowadays, have to write and talk in coded language, so that it will be deniable. There is, of course, more to it than race.
There are, also, cultural, religious and economic issues.
Some of these cultural and religious issues have no real resolution; they will have to, literally, die off.
As El Malik Hajj El Shabazz (aka Minister Malcolm X) once said, American’s Chickens on are coming home to roost.
In this case, the corporatist wing of the GOP built their dominance since the mid 60′s by uniting corporate stooges with the scariest loons that can scraped off the bottom of the conservative barrel – Right wing Jesus freaks who scare even most church people, Hicks who still long for pre Civil War race relations, gun nuts, conspiracy theorists and just plain mean people. It worked from the 70′s on, they throw these “Joe Six Pack” a few bones like abortion and stiffer drugs to lock of Black guys, the rubes give them carte blanche power over the economy and allow themselves to get screwed over because, well it will the ‘darkies’ first.
Now, the Party is in a such bind that even relatively smart and sensible guys like Gingrich and Romney are jumping on the Right Wing kook express. Not even Reagan would argue against social security, and Bush the Lesser almost got tossed from office for even suggest privatization just 6 or 7 years ago. And, who would have thought raising debt ceiling would cause a political battle or that we should increase the war powers to jail anyone the government wants. Now, such insanity is wholesale Gospel on the Right.
No matter what happens, the GOP are marching to a point of John Birch right wing crazy they may never get back from. Even Flipper Mitt can’t twist is his way back from the dark side on this one – he’s officially jumped the shark on policies that he would have laughed at 3 years ago. And his closest competition are a known bigot who thinks we should return to the 60′s (the 1860′s) in terms of monetary and social policy and a former Speaker of the House so craven and crooked his own party gave him the boot as leader years ago. And those are the ‘smart ones’ lets not get to the fact that the GOP’s “great white hope” was a self-loathing Black fast food lobbyist and a game show host. Even the ‘moderate’ in this campaign, John Huntsman, wants to return to Bush era casino style bank regulation.
The GOP freshmen in Congress are so out of control, John “the Malboro Man” Boehner and ‘Turtle’ McConnell seem like moderates in comparison.
If this weren’t real, it would make a hell of a comedy.
Now, the Republican establishment realize the inmates run the asylum. There is no charismatic Reagan-like character who can rally the crazy. There is no moderate tone that can struck with congresspeople who hate the Black guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue so much they would vote no on crumbling bridges or extending help to needy people for two measly months. Obama is running the deck now and the GOP thinkers are running scared.
Kind of funny that the Devout Mormon and hardcore “Christian” fanatics are spreading the biggest lies while the “Muslim-Atheist-Marxist” Obama is seen as pretty darn honest.
That being said, Krugman hit on the head – the GOP is ran by crazy people and Romney thinks the media the general public are a bunch of inbred rubes who never heard of YouTube and/or don’t have a library card. Romney also illustrates the Republican moral and intellectual bankruptcy that Romney is the best the party has to offer. The rest are weirdos, bigots, morons or straight up con artists. To be rather blunt, all of the GOP candidates are all of the above, they’re a combination of two or three of those characterizations.
(Care to Question me? I can break it down for you in another post.)
You have to wonder in the age of Youtube how these sad sacks of shit can just lie and lie.
All Barack Obama has to do is replay Ted Kennedy’s senatorial ads against Mittens, and that will be that