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All The Comforts of Home: Republicans Destroy, Democrats Serve Cookies
By David Michael Green (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)
The party, meanwhile, was busy last week choosing for themselves a new chairman. And guess what? He’s a real conservative fellow. Now there’s a shocker. And he’s a black man. And he argues that Republicans have gotten a totally bum rap when it comes to perceptions of their racist politics these last decades. You know, that whole Reagan states’ rights campaign kick-off speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi – a town famous for only one thing, murdering civil rights workers – for example. Or that whole Nixonian Southern Strategy to appeal to racist white voters in the South. Or the Willie Horton ad. Or the small matter of mass black voter disenfranchisement campaign in Florida in 2000. Or Ohio in 2004. Yeah, man. You gotta feel bad for the GOP and this unfair reputation. They really need to hire some new marketing people!
Oh, and did I mention the guy who didn’t get the chairmenship? He sent around a CD to party leaders that included the snappy little tune, “Barack, the Magic Negro”! Some people in the party thought that was pretty tacky. But others didn’t, and so a serious and major debate ensued within the party leadership as to whether this was an appropriate thing to do, and whether it was a good idea to put such a person at the top of the party. Hmmm, tough question. No wonder they had such a struggle over it.
Of course, the good news for the GOP is that with a black man as their chairman now, they’ll no doubt be drawing tons of black votes from this point forward. And the even better news is that the GOP thinks that with a black man as their chairman now, they’ll no doubt be drawing tons of black votes from this point forward. You know, just like Sarah Palin knocked down those barriers preventing women from gaining equality (the same ones that Republicans had spent lifetimes erecting) and thus energized the female vote for the GOP ticket. Oh yeah.
Let’s be honest. The chances that the GOP would change its ugly ways only rose to the high-water mark of about three out of a thousand because of the trouncing they took in two elections back-to-back. Anyone who thought these folks were about to give up either their abysmal politics or their disgusting tactics hasn’t been paying attention since the 1950s. And, besides, what would be the point? We already have a party that stands for just about nothing, and does so with unsurpassed strategic blunder, and a passionate devotion to the avoidance of both passion and devotion. Who needs another?
Speaking of which, I’m starting to feel kinda dumb for having said lately that a certain fellow by the name of Obama is a real smart guy. The more I see him in operation, the more I get the sense that the prime directive of his operating system is to always seek the making of happy-happy with his adversaries. He actually had some nice Republican members of Congress over to his new house the other day and personally walked around the room carrying a plate of oatmeal raisin cookies to serve them. You think I’m making this up, don’t you? You wish. I wish. If this keeps up, pretty soon he’s gonna make Chamberlain at Munich look as tough as the siege of Stalingrad by comparison.
He gave the Republicans a couple of hundred million bucks worth of worthless tax cuts as a means of compromise, even though that substantially diminishes his chances for succeeding in bringing recovery, and therefore also in succeeding at playing president. He says nice things about Ronald Reagan and throws a big shindig for the guy who just got through spending half a year calling him a socialist terrorist. He’s now put three Republicans in his cabinet, which by my count totals to a contingent therein approximately three hundred percent bigger than the liberal cohort (of, maybe, one person). Not only that, instead of trading the last Republican added for the 60th Democratic senator and thus a filibuster-proof majority that would guarantee getting his legislation through Congress, Obama agrees to a deal wherein the Democratic governor of New Hampshire backfills Judd Gregg’s seat with a Republican appointee.
And what do they do, in return? Trash his bill in public, say that they hope he fails, and vote – with nary a single exception – against the signature legislative initiative of his presidency. During an economic crisis, no less, with a public already massively angry at them.
If anyone knows this guy’s Blackberry address, pass it along, wouldya? I’d like to remind him that Republicans don’t get that whole ‘post-partisan’ thing. Precambrian, yes. Post-partisan, no. They will thrash the country (again) if they think it will wreck this presidency and bring them back to power. I’m not sure how Rush Limbaugh could possibly have been quite any more explicit about that. Yo, Barry. They are going to resist you any and every way they can. If you succeed, they’ll take credit for it, maybe saying that the Bush tax cuts finally kicked in. If you fail, I’m pretty sure they won’t be acknowledging the role of their political sabotage during a national economic crisis.
Lose the hand-holding impulse, dude. You’ve got cred, you’ve got crises, you’ve got control of the government. If you throw them a bone and they slap your face in return, the thing not to do here is increase the size of the bone. No more oatmeal cookies, man. Pull their useless stuff out of the bill, redraft it exactly the way you want it, and ram it down their throats. If they use their 41-seat minority in the Senate to block a relief bill that the people desperately want, the House has passed, and the president is waiting to sign, make them pay for it politically by endlessly reminding the public just who’s standing in the way of the Red Cross trucks, and just who’s driving them.
I mean, is it really too much to ask for a Democratic Party actually does something? Without asking the GOP for permission first?
Once before, American had a crumbling economy, a bumbling foreign policy, an angry electorate, and a decisive election. Ronald Reagan won in 1980, and Democrats cowered for the next three decades. They’re still cowering.
This time the conditions are almost identical, except for three things. First, people are hurting a lot worse now than in 1980. Second, it’s the Democrats who have won this time. And, third, it wasn’t an election. It was two.
But, of course, one thing hasn’t changed.
It’s still the Democrats doing the cowering.
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