Republican rage and infamy know neither bounds nor limits. Were anyone to doubt that sad reality, consider their totally-destructive role in the recent economic stimulus package. Even after President Barack Obama had reached out to Republican Congressional leaders repeatedly, not a single House Republican voted for the stimulus bill--and only three courageous moderate Senate Republicans did so. It was more than clear that Party Discipline had been imposed, and those three Republican Senators, two from Maine and one from Pennsylvania, will suffer the "slings and arrows" of their outraged colleagues for their temerity in doing the right thing.
As the Republican non-alternative to the Obama stimulus package, we heard the same old tired litany of tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts. Somebody needs to tell these elitists that the Americans suffering most from this drastic economic downturn are not paying taxes anyway--they are out of work or under-employed, may have lost their homes, and have little left. Giving these people tax cuts is worthless and meaningless--but that is OK to Republicans, as the poor, the homeless, the downtrodden, and the underclass which America does not even admit exists are not their kind of people. Rather, they love to praise those "small businesses who create most of our jobs," ignoring the reality that most of those small businesses today are losing money and many are closing. So tax cuts do not help them much either. As always, it is the Republican fat cats who benefit the most.
The obvious game the Republicans are playing is called Sabotage the Recovery! By doing all they can to get the stimulus package to fail, they are setting the stage (they think) for a comeback in 2010 and 2012. While paying lip service to the need for drastic economic and financial mesaures, they really hope that any such measures endorsed or promoted by Democrats, particularly by the White House, will be insufficient to do the job. It may well be, at least in part, that even the gigantic bill just passed is not enough to pull us out of our tailspin--particularly with the Republicans doing their best to see that this is just what happens. But since they have no real alternative, and would rather complain about how many pages the bill contains (as if anyone except Congressional staffs and a few economists actually read such complex legislation) they do what they do bes--delay, interfere, complain, whine, object, and sabotage.
The Roman Emperor Nero is said to have fiddled while Rome burned. But our Republicans go a step further--they heap wood on our economic fires. In case they think they are fooling the Obama Administration, after rejecting his good-faith outreach, they should consider what he told reporters on Air Force One. Asked about the lack of Republican support for the stimulus bill, he said that while he is an eternal optimist, he is not a sap. Neither are the American people saps, nor fools. This latest case of Republican Rage and Infamy will come back to haunt them, just as the Bush chickens are coming home to roost.
