They might look to the past and not expect the far right will settle down and go along with the tide of the future any more than they did after the humiliation of Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon. Ask Bill Clinton about the revenge of the Republicans or their patience while waiting for retaliation. Hell no, the fight is still on, and while Fox News broadcasts and there are people who watch it; while Limbaugh roars and while Coulter hisses and snarls like a syphilitic witch, it's still on. While money talks, it's not over.
Hell no, you can be sure that for the coming years, Obama will have won only by "suppressing the vote," by enlisting the help of the Black Panthers or the Neptunian Trotzkyite Front -- or by any other means apparent only to the collectively paranoid psychotic Tea Party base. Their number one priority will not now cease to be the removal from office by any means possible, the blocking of every initiative and the unrestrained and unfounded vilification of Barack H. Obama. To them, they are still the majority and when they lose it can't be their own fault.
Democratic urges to make nice and play well with others, and Democratic expectations of a sudden comity and cooperation may be dangerously premature. We're not facing a chastened and contrite enemy, newly motivated to re-examine its outmoded assumptions and tired tenets, we're standing next to a wounded and very powerful beast, and what beast has a conscience? The Republican machine is hardly moribund and is still as red, still as rich and even more motivated to lie, cheat, steal and filibuster than ever.
The GOP may be a party in grief and shock, it may be acting out the first two stages of that Kübler-Ross hypothesis: anger and denial, but any expectation that we'll see an attempt to bargain honestly, much less to get to any kind of acceptance in the near or near-distant future -- or perhaps ever, is terribly premature, in my opinion. Yes, we may have dodged a bullet this week and the next four years may be a reprieve from the GOP success in their war against human rights, liberty and Democracy and perhaps the war against real Capitalism, but we have to temper our great expectations. 2014, 2016 are the numbers of the beast and there never will be an end of their era.
Karl Rove has a lot to lose as he pretty much bet the farm his American Crossroads was going to float the Romney team across the water to the White House. A whole lot of old rich white guys backed him with tons of money believing he could deliver. While we cannot count on Rove and his minions to play nice or cooperate we can keep calling them out and bringing attention to their continued lack of cooperation emphasizing how hurtful their obstructionist tactics are to the economy. I believe that is part of what put Obama back in for a second term-people are sick of all the crap, they just want their jobs back.
ReplyDeleteKarl Rove made me laugh. Well, honestly it was a sad laugh because watching him just reinforced my already held belief the rEpublican party is dying a slow death. A self inflicted one at that.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, I'm not a rEpublican, but at one time the conservative movement in the republican party (Barry Goldwater)had integrity and really did have the nations est interests at heart.That was then, this is now.
Who knows what 2014 and 2016 will bring. I suppose that will depend on the House, the Senate, and the President and whether or not we resolve some very pressing problems in a truly bipartisan fashion. I'm not going to be holding out a lot of hope this will happen.
Demographics are changing, and whether the rEpublican party likes it or not it is the reality. If the party of the Elephant ever wants to again be big and relevant they are going to have to enlarge their tent and accept some social realities they campaign hard against. I won't go into detail as I'm sure you know to what I refer.
Anyway, this nation does need to continue it's political and philosophical diversity. if we don't we then become that which none of us want, one party rule. At least that is what I think none of us really want. The benefit of having multiple views and positions is obviously so we have the chance to pick the best of the alternatives offered. Choosing the best of the alternatives requires good faith, the willingness to occasionally bend, and the desire to do the right thing.
One can and should argue their principles, values, and views, the founders of this republic that we all love would expect nothing less. At the end of their day they found a way to make it happen. Should we do anything less today?
Okay, I'm done. Now I'll wait and watch to see what happens. Of course adding my two cents worth from time to time.
I think the Republicans have been on the wrong side of history for a very long time - maybe since Lincoln. There are a few exceptions. But everything I think is just and fair and in the spirit of liberty and justice for all, they have usually opposed and nearly everyone who stands outside they're Bizarro World seems to think of them as the party of fable, fraud and feudalism.
ReplyDeleteI usually astounded to hear people justify their support of GOP candidates and their reasons are always based on utter delusion and denial of obvious facts and perhaps this is the reason for my contempt for humans and the reason I spend so much time with boats, cars, computers and radios instead. 8 cylinders good, 2 legs bad (unless we're talking about birds and theropods, of course)
You're right about there being plenty of blame-shifting, denial and no contrition. Ditto for their unwillingness to compromise and make nice.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think the realization that all those hundreds of millions spent on attack ads, on top of the 24/7/365, ceaseless output of their huge propaganda infrastructure, couldn't ensure them victories is going to shake the political right in a big way. The few of them who haven't completely lost touch with reality know that issues-and-policies surveys that don't mention parties or politicians typically yield responses in line with Democratic positions that range from 55% to 80% approval. It's been that way since the 1970's. Consequently, along with distractions, demagoguery, politics of personal destruction and dirty tricks, they must spend huge sums on propaganda -- you better be scared, etc. -- if they're to win elections regularly. That's why they kow-tow so slavishly to Big Oil, the financial industry, the Koch brothers et al. That's why they pander to the religious right, to racists, greed-is-good types and to society's paranoid sociopaths.
So now, if spending unprecedented sums of money no longer works, they're up that famous creek without a paddle. If their only recourse is to start making nice to dark-skinned, heavily accented and far from affluent immigrants and African Americans, their coalition will come completely apart. Ditto for courting "feminazis" and LGBT types. Without Dixie and states like Oklahoma, Kansas and Arizona, they're toast, and they know it.
Yes, I do like to think that you can't buy everybody's mind, or fool all the people all the time. Let them bankrupt themselves trying to stick us with ridiculous candidates. The demographics will continue to change as the good old boys fade into minority status. They can continue to portray us as being biased, unfair, hypocritical and all the things that actually pertain to themselves, but they're on the way out.
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