What are the Republicans doing with their incessant bitching about Obama's stimulus bill? What is the real point of Republican attempts to obstruct and block the passage of this legislation?
Yes, we can kick around the endless arguments about tax cuts versus government spending, what fiscal responsibility should look like, how money should be spent, if, indeed, we spend it, etc. But what's the larger picture here? What's really going on with this stimulus/recovery dispute?
To Republicans, the very popular president Obama is the enemy. The de facto leader of the GOP, Rush Limbaugh, said so explicitly. Republican party leaders are misguided along policy lines, but they're not completely stupid, especially about perception politics. The Republican party hasn't been this unpopular for quite a long time and Republicans are keenly aware of that.
In light of this unpopularity, the central thrust of Republican response to Obama's popularity, is to bring him down…..to discredit him, to make him less popular…..no matter how they have to do it. Everything is "on the table", as it were.
Republicans, though they come across as completely oblivious to history, know the history of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Roosevelt, ask most any WW2 generation member, was beloved by Americans. His presidency brought systemic changes to America that have held up for over 60 years. Roosevelt was a Democratic giant and an American hero.
Today, Republicans fear most another Democratic giant. The GOP knows that if Obama is allowed to implement his agenda, beginning with the stimulus/recovery legislation, following through on structural financial industry reform, health care reform, foreign policy reforms, labor reforms, etc……chances are good that President Obama will become a giant, much like Franklin Roosevelt.
If Obama is successful in bringing about change, an already downward spiraling GOP, will become totally irrelevant.
That's what Republicans are faced with. And despite the illusion of calls for bipartisanship, despite pointless and often dishonest discussion about policy distinctions, what the GOP is working towards harder than anything else is to cripple Obama's presidency. The GOP is operating under a premise that goes like this: If Obama is successful, the country may very well get turned back from it's disastrous course, and Obama and the Democrats will get all the credit, insuring an even bigger Democratic majority in the future.
The problem here is that in our unique economic precariousness, if Obama fails, America will fail, disastrously. Apparently, the Republican Party is willing to take that chance with the nation their representatives take oaths to protect. Take a look at this new chart tracking job losses over the course of three recessions, 1990, 2001, and today…..
Looking at that chart and then comparing it to what the Republicans have been doing to stop, or water down until ineffective, Obama's plan, leads me to only one conclusion. The GOP would rather our American standard of living be irreparably harmed, bringing huge swaths of our population down to near third world conditions…..RATHER THAN TAKE THE CHANCE OF ENDURING A SUCCESSFUL OBAMA PRESIDENCY.
As witnessed over the last eight years with the Republican Party….EVERYTHING….is always about them. Country be damned.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes, why bicker about flushing $1.2 trillion down the toilet. What could the repubs be thinking?
Rev says, "the central thrust of Republican response to Obama's popularity, is to bring him down…..to discredit him, to make him less popular…..no matter how they have to do it. Everything is "on the table", as it were."
And, of course, Democrats have NEVER acted like that. That's why they were so pro-Bush for that last 8 years, wishing him all the success in the world and supporting him in a bipartisan fashion, for the good of the country and all that.
What's going to bring America down is irresponsibly spending ourselves into an unrecoverable position. You used to understand that yourself until the minute Obama took office. Now the mammoth deficit spending is hunky dory and necessary.
Regarding the New Deal, FDR's own treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, acknowledged that the massive spending didn't work to pull the country out of the Great Depression. To ease my divisive mind about the trillions in new spending we are about to embark upon, please point out at least ONE example in history where it actually did work.
And from the "master of the obvious" files: If Republicans actually believed Obama's policies would work, they would have been advocating such policies themselves.
Or maybe the GOP is suicidal and has a collective death wish. You decide.
I find your demonization of anyone you don't agree with to be a "failed theory of the past."
Ya' know, the blog has turned into a cooperative effort.
I write the post and then commenters, almost exclusively commenting from the conservative viewpoint, lend support to my post.
Thanks guys.
Nice conspiracy theory. If the legislation is clearly against conservative thinking and conservatives don't like it, they clearly must be attempting to bring down the Messiah. Totally fouled up logic, as usual.
This legislation is not what it purports to be, goes against several keystones of Obama's campaign ( eliminate pork, listen to all points of view ) and yet you immediately twist it around to a personal attack against Obama.
Knozzmeoking Have you read the stimulus? Not the whole stimulus but at least the summary. I have — in fact I have read 3 summaries. There is not as much Pork as the conservatives say there is.
Yezzmokeking Sumzing is referring to "conservative thinking", presumably in the good economic ideas department. That "thinking" over the last 8 years resulted in the DOUBLING of the national debt. That "thinking" led directly to a new Las Vegas Wall Street where all money shuffling industries could gamble, unsupervised naturally, with everybody else's money, until it all wound up in the hands of a few, while the real working American economy turned to sh*t.
I think that must be the "thinking" Smokeking is referring to.
"pork" is considered to be, when Republicans are in control, earmarks. There are no earmarks in this bill. Obama listened to other points of view. He not only listened, he went even further and gave up 42% of the bill to non-stimulative tax cuts…just to make the Republicans happy. More than fair.
But no, the GOP doesn't want compromise….what I said in my post is correct. It's not about the country, a country that has rejected Republicans out of hand,….it's all about the Republicans and their do-anything, even destroy the country, mindset. Destroying this bill, to Republicans, an action that actually endangers the entire population, is destroying Obama and, in some fantasia dreamscape, places them back in power.
I have said many times, and you can check the archives or ask King, the modern Republican Party is an anti-American organized crime group. Their current eagerness to bring the nation to near-term ruin for political oddsmaking only reinforces that belief.
To be honest I wouldn't read this blog if the Reverend weren't so unbalanced.
Mary – Obama campaign promise – I will use this office to make sure that Washington does not operate as in the past – no pork attached to bills. The fact that you don't see that much in the way of pork doesn't absolve Obama from breaking another promise within this first few weeks in office.
Rev – You will never hear me say that the Republicans were good stewards over our spending for the last 8 years. To be correct, however, it was the Democratic sponsored mandates to lenders that got us into this mess.
knozzmoeking Another think Republicans do is repeat and repeat — like a broken record — the same talking points like saying them will make them true. Yep a lot of people do start to believe them because when they hear something enough times they begin to believe it.
I see a change happening though — some of us when we hear the same old thing over and over again are beginning to investigate and find the nuance behind the talking point — you see the talking points are never a total lie but it is the nuance that makes them true or false. Those mandates — the mess we are in was caused by a whole lot more than mandates — and both parties had agendas that contributed to the mess.
Very good point, mary. The right wing machine is nothing if it isn't patient. They patiently repeat a disinformational talking point until it takes root. Then they water the newly created talking point until it becomes a healthy, though disingenuous, "fact".
Rev, you didn't respond to my request.
larry, ditto for me. It's like watching a train wreck. You can't look away.
Apparently King was asking for my response to this….
"And from the "master of the obvious" files: If Republicans actually believed Obama's policies would work, they would have been advocating such policies themselves.
Or maybe the GOP is suicidal and has a collective death wish. You decide."
Republicans, revising history about FDR, as King also does, actually do understand what happened during the 30's. And THAT'S what Republicans are afraid of. A progressive, Democratic led, era began in the 30's that saved the nation from third world status.
Today's GOP, well aware of the succes of the Democratic Party back then…..will do anything, including trashing our entire population's economic well being……in order to block another historic progressive era.
Simple as that.
This is nothing new. We all watched as Republicans worked to destroy our country over the last 8 years. My proof here is the fact that Americans disapproved of Bush and the GOP in record numbers, and yet, after the election they went right back to their nation-destroying ways.
The majority of today's elected Republicans are, without doubt, anti-American maniacs.