The GOP: A Party Possessed

The Republican Party has come undone. They have overreached in nearly every area of law in our country. From outlawing collective bargaining in several states to passing voter suppression laws in over 30 states, and their current nationwide and unrelenting efforts to deny women any freedom or access to reproductive choice, this party of old men seeks to villianize almost every segment of our society, including their own party members. They are on a zealous crusade to create a new country. Some say they are insane; still others have decided that they are possessed by demons. I suggest that neither explanation is completely valid, but that both explanations are true. The demon that possesses them is the insatiable need for power and the insanity is simply the methods by which they are pursuing that need for power.

What will a vote for ANY Republican get you? Not just for President, but a vote for any Republican nominee for any elected office will result in more erosion of rights, including those for workers, the middle class, women, minorities, students and seniors. The GOP has staked its play for power grabbing on the premise that if the American electorate is divided and the blame for all of the country's problems can be squarely leveled against one or more segments of society, they can achieve their goals. By successfully pitting one segment of the population against others, they will win their most coveted prize.

Scapegoating has historically worked, not just in the United States, but in other countries as well, most notably in Germany during the last century.

The GOP talks about jobs and the economy, but since the elections of 2010, their agenda has been highighted by the things they failed to discuss prior to their elections. Some have called it their closet agenda. They came out of the closet almost immediately after being sworn into office and began to enact, throughout the states, their real agenda.

The first item on the list was villianizing unions and American workers; to blame them for the excesses in spending and the crash of 2008. They clearly redefined the symptoms of senile dementia by forgetting that it was the excesses of banks and the greed on Wall Street that caused the Great Recession, it was so much easier to bully workers. What the hell is wrong with America's workers? They want jobs, good pay, benefits AND a pension? How dare they? So, the GOP went after unions, destroying collective bargaining in several states. Teachers, police and firefighters just have it way too easy...At the same time that most Republican governors cut the pay and benefits of workers, they gave huge tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations, justifying them by insisting that the wealthy and the corporations would in turn, create jobs. At the rate they have cut the taxes of the 'job creators', why then do I have to ask, "Where are the jobs?"

The jobs that have been created are here with no help from the Republican party. In fact, the Republican party nationwide has done everything in its power to prevent Americans from getting jobs, but more than that, the GOP has stood united against people who have lost their jobs. They have fought every bill that would help unemployed workers in even minimal ways. Their philosophy has been that unemployment benefits make people lazy. So lazy, in fact, that this reward for being unemployed is so generous that millions are happy to stay out of the workforce. How many times have you heard Republicans say, "If we stop unemployment benefits, these lazy people will have to find jobs." Of course they never carry that philosophy the step further: there are still five applicants for every one job out there.

In one of their first legislative acts after sweeping the U.S. House of Representatives in the elections of 2010, the GOP attempted to change the definition of rape. No, you did not miss that part of their campaigns for office, but you should have known that the attempt alone was just the beginning of an all out war on women. Republicans insisted that only 'forcible rape' is rape. I suppose that if you are a Republican male, that makes perfect sense. If, however, you are not brain dead and you do not believe that sperm are people, rape is rape.

But we are talking about Republicans, and they believe that sperm ARE people and any woman who seeks to block any sperm from reaching full potential is a danger to the exceptionalism of America. These women are less than people and must be regulated, vaginally probed and denied contraception, if at all possible. In the words of Pennsylvania's Republican Governor, Tom Corbett, women just "have to close their eyes".

In 1990, the Republican candidate for Texas Governor, Clayton Corbett, made a similar statement, which at the time was considered shocking, but today might make him a real contender in the Republican party. The New York Times reports that he made the remarks while preparing for a cattle roundup at his West Texas ranch. He compared the cold, foggy weather spoiling the event to a rape, telling ranch hands, campaign workers and reporters around a campfire, ''If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.''