Rush to Oblivion

The Republican candidates for president, the Tea Party congress people, and their Murdoch-appointed public whips are rapidly alienating and igniting such a large segment of the heretofore apathetic liberal and moderate base of the American people, particularly women, it will be a wonder if there is anything left of the neo-conservative movement by November. In attempting to pinpoint and lock-in their so-called moral compass, they have managed to convince America they are nothing more than male chauvinist pigs in the usual guise of moral leaders. They are nothing more than a malevolent version of “Father Knows Best.”
It was and is one thing to attack the legitimacy of the first President of the United States of African ancestry by insisting, against all evidence to the contrary, that he was born in Kenya. It was and is another thing to pass along a racist anti-Obama joke from the U.S. Judiciary in Montana and then to apologize for it; but to attack women the way Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santorum and even Mitt Romney have of late has made this former independent voter more fervently committed to the re-election of President Obama. Obama has been attacked on the basis of race or origin repeatedly throughout his entire first term by all sorts of right wing attackers from Rush to Sherriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona presumably because either they do not believe some island state of Hawaii peopled by brown folks could possibly get a birth certificate right or because it must be a forgery.
Thanks to the creation of the Tea Party by the Koch brothers et al, the Republican Party has principled itself to the edge of oblivion. Its red-with-rage true color has shown through loud and clear during this presidential primary to the point that it has nowhere to go but in retreat back toward the middle of the political spectrum in the future, if it can wrest it away from the democrats. Olympia Snowe’s decision to leave the Senate because of her party’s ideological rigidity and refusal to compromise or reach across the aisle to find common ground with the opposition has paralyzed politics in America. Meanwhile, Obama, labeled a socialist by the right, has moved deftly to the center during his first term to occupy what might have been held by the Republicans had they not drunk the cool-aid of ultra-conservative orthodoxy stirred by the likes of Grover Norquist, Glenn Beck, or Rush Limbaugh, financed by the Koch brothers, and marketed by Rupert Murdoch.
George Will is already suggesting that the Republicans will likely lose the presidential election no matter who is nominated this round. He compares this moment with one back in 1964 when Goldwater clearly was going to lose his election. But if pundits and even politicians from the right continue to call women sluts, African-Americans illegitimate welfare seekers, and brown people illegal, there can never be any civil discourse let alone a renewal of real civic mindedness.
However, Will is counting on stopping Obama in congress where the Republicans can continue to block him from significant success as they have during Obama’s first term. It’s the very strategy that has brought moderate Olympia Snowe to end her career in the senate.
There are seven things that must happen if the United States is to get moving again:
1. Yes, the national debt trajectory has to begin to reverse direction;
2. The widening gap between rich and poor, executive and worker pay, needs to be reversed;
3. Corporations need to become civic-minded in a sustainable way;
4. Regulation of business needs to serve the greater good, not just itself;
5. Manufacturing in the U.S. needs a stronger magnet or incentive;
6. Entitlements need reform to be sustainable;
7. Women and minorities should not be treated as subordinates, victims, or demons.
The notion set forth by conservatives that it all can be done with no increase in taxes is nonsense. The notion set forth by liberals that taxing the rich will solve the problem of funding entitlements is equally nonsense. Some sort of all-of-the-above approach is what will work if the ideologues will kindly get out of the way so that congress can get something done. Until we send the ideologues packing, nothing will. What this country needs more than anything is more Olympia Snowes and her democratic equivalents, not fewer.