Like a bad marriage, Tea Party Republicans refuse to distinguish between YOURS, MINE, and OURS. The United States is not just THEIR country; it is also OUR country and MY country. It spends not just THEIR tax money; it spends OUR tax dollars and MY tax dollars too. Government should represent the values and priorities of the American people, not merely the demands of a rabble-rousing minority. Public policy debates without compromise and consensus are not my idea of “consent of the governed” when blackmail leaves a country held hostage and a majority of its voters disenfranchised.
This insurgent minority has:
- Employed covert and overt racism, deception, and defamation to delegitimize and undermine a twice-elected president;
- Tried and failed 44 times to overturn a healthcare reform bill passed by Congress, signed into law by the president, and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court;
- Presented a list of non-negotiable demands to gut environmental protection and financial reform, weaken the social safety net, hurt the working poor, and further undermine the middle class;
- Threatened default on the public debt in violation of Amendment 14, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution – thus risking a worldwide financial crisis.
Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority (John P. Judis).These actions by Tea Party Republicans, as reckless as they are, are examples of nascent totalitarianism. Let the backlash begin.
[The Republican Party is] becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe (Mike Lofgren).
A disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself (Hannah Arendt).
Maybe we tend to think of the Senate as the senior chamber of congress, mature minds, great statesmen and stateswomen. A legislative body that we can trust to go about the business of the people as opposed to the fear-driven mania we see every day in the House of Representatives. Fourty-four republican senators voted against the simple bill to keep the government open and meet our nation's credit responsibilities. Forty-four! That's every last one of those snakes except for the last two sane republicans.
ReplyDeleteThe Senate has the filibuster, often overused and abused for purposes of legislative obstruction.
DeleteOh...Excuse me. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Jeff Flake of Arizona were absent, attending family weddings. At least they have their priorities straight. Oh Vey!
ReplyDeleteI'd like to re-post this over at P.E. Well done.
ReplyDeleteSure, by all means, use it. And don't forget the photo, a worthy statement by itself, to reinforce the message.
DeleteThe Republicans made a decision back in 2009; the decision to have nothing to do with the ACA and to let Obama and the Democrats hang themselves on this piece of legislation.
ReplyDeleteFrom Congress to the various Statehouses, to media outlets, and to the Supreme Court, they have done everything they could do to to stall, to dismantle, to stop ACA/Obamacare.
The thought of another Democratic social program, becoming as popular as social security and medicare, becoming the law of the land really unnerves them.
We are now witnessing the beginning of the implosion of the Tea Party. Republicans are turning on them. In the next couple of weeks stories will begin to pop up about further dissent and then the recriminations will begin.
By 2014 even some of our most beloved Tea Party Governors and state legislator members will be testing the waters of breaking away from this Koch funded ideology.
This pretty much will continue throughout the 2014 midterm election....2010 will be the high point for the Tea Party movement....they lost substantially in 2012 and will do so again in 2014....and by 2016 they will be a mere footnote.
We just have to get through the funding and debt ceiling fiasco's....
I am so tired of the Tea Party and the Koch Brothers and I look on Tea Party folks with real disgust and wrote about it today:
http://taospeaks.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/breakdown-and-decay/
TAO - your first few sentences are right on point. The GOP is scared gutless that ACA will actually prove more beneficial than destructive and I think they really believe if they just keep obstructing and pandering to the tea baggers that they will get the White House in 2016. What kind of insanity connects those dots???
DeleteCongressmen seen boozing just hours away from a government shutdown.
ReplyDeleteCertainly there is enough disgust to go around. In the end, after all the melodrama, we'll be no worse or better off as a nation than we are at the T- 1 hr. and 30 min. to shutdown.
ReplyDeleteWhen America's public speaks both parties will fair poorly.As they should. But, the reality is the sky won't fall in, the world won't come to am end, and life will continue for us all. Pretty much as it always has.
The grandstanding has been amusing. Frustrating as well. I'll sleep well tonight. Tomorrow is another day. Life is too short. Especially when there isn't all that much left.
Yawn...
The monkeys, and their organ grinder masters that are well hidden behind the curtains.
ReplyDeleteThe current impasse instigated by Congressional Republicans is not merely about ObamaCare. Imbedded in the Continuing Resolution is a misogynist/fundamentalist social conservative agenda, specifically this:
ReplyDelete[The House-passed CR] “would exempt bosses from complying with the ACA’s Women’s Health Amendment if they oppose it for “religious or moral” reasons. This means that bosses could impose their religious beliefs on their employees, or block their employees’ access to needed women’s health care for vague and undefined “moral” reasons.”
The CR would allow employers to refuse to cover eight women’s preventive services included in the ACA. These services were identified by the Institute of Medicine and endorsed by the Health Resources and Services Administration. Although the House floor debate focused on contraception, the CR targets a wide range of women’s health services, including:
(1) Breastfeeding support, supplies, and counseling;
(2) Screening and counseling for interpersonal and domestic violence;
(3) Screening for gestational diabetes;
(4) DNA testing for high-risk strains of HPV;
(5) Counseling regarding sexually transmitted infections, including HIV;
(6) Screening for HIV;
(7) Contraceptive methods and counseling;
(8) Wellness visits.
In other words, GENDER DISCRIMINATION, a hardcore social conservative agenda that specifically targets women, but not men; an agenda that capriciously allows employers to pry into the private medical records of employees who happen to be women; that allows any employer to deny benefits to any woman by reason of “religious or moral” grounds even when such claims are bogus and non-existent.
NOTE: There is nothing in Law (Constitutional, Federal or State) that permits invasion of privacy or interference with medicine of this magnitude. Furthermore, no religious denomination has the right to enlist government as Inquisitor or enforcer of church doctrine.
Hypocrites of small government demand BIG government intrusion in your bedrooms, your underwear, and up your private parts.
This is bullshit. Frankly, there is no way these so-called "culture wars" will end peacefully.
If only we could get exemptions like that passed for other laws we'd like to get around. But you don't seem to understand that freedom of religion means that certain approved religions are outside the law and the rule of the courts. Says so in the Constitution which is really only a paraphrase of selected passages from the Bible - especially the parts about sex.
DeleteThe biggest impediment to democracy in the Western world has always been religion and its will to power.
There are fiscal consevatives, there are social fundamentalist conservatives, there are those who fit both.
DeleteEach must stand where their conscience guides them. Some are in a good place, others not so much. That can generally be said of society at large.
Live and let live. Respect oneself and the rights of others as well.
Moving along, the path is straight and reason has jumped the shark and left the country.
That is so fucking despicable. The lunatic fringe has become the norm. Women's healthcare bill of rights. Down the toilet if every last demon republican on Capitol Hill had their way. While they cheat on their women, throw away their wives and buy whores. The female republicans are scared to say anything. They're just tokens in a man's world.
DeleteAnd no, there is no such thing as a social, fundamentalist conservative. They are egotistical misogynists. Their hatred of women has nothing whatsoever to do with any true doctrine of the church. Keep in mind that the most conservative churches are controlled exclusively by men. A woman's healthcare needs have absolutely nothing to do with her choice to have sex or to not have sex. It's pure fucking hatred to simply hang them out to dry without any insurance coverage for basic needs.
Really FJ? Really? Tell my wife and her sister that. I'll watch them eat you a new asshole.
DeleteTalk about stereotyping. You're as fucking off base as the republican tea party assholes that stereotype people with your progressive views as communists, scumbags, baby killers (abortion), anti American, appologists for Islamic terrorism, and I could go on.
Yep, it's fine to point out bullshit and call out those who support some of the stuff you brought up. Just don't use broad brush strokes. Or my wife and sister in law just might kick your ass. Neither (and there many women like them) that would find it despicable that you find it neccessary to speak for them.
Perhaps Harkin is right. When one hears stereotypical rants like the one above it's hard not to think another civil war in in the making.
Good night FJ...
PS. My wife did not have children of her own, she is vehemently pro choice, supports gay rights, holds the live and let live philosophy, is a believer but does not attend church, is a fiscal consevative, has nevet been controlled by any man, and she has been a REPUBLICAN and worked her entire life.
DeleteI know others like her. So forgive me for pointing out you broad brush strokes are indeed stereotypical.
I guess I meant female republican politicians. All ten of them. I'm not particularly interested in how your family maintains its connections to the republican party. I certainly bear no ill will towards American women who identify as republican. The party has gone off the deep end. You have admitted that they no longer have any relevance. Republican war against women isn't just a buzzword.
DeleteStill, an apology is in order. I am sorry that I offended you and yours.
In regards to what I was trying to communicate, it looks like there are four female republican senators and twenty female republican members of the house. Twenty-four!
DeleteMy how things change. My how they don't.
ReplyDeletePresident Woodrow Wilson in his December 7, 1915 State of the Union address:
There are citizens of the United States....who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt....to destroy our industries....and to debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue.... Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out.
Funny that this was aimed at people like us, people standing up for human rights and basic decency against property rights, and yet it's people from Wilson's party preaching anarchy, sabotage and insurrection in the name of patriotism today.
It would all end in a moment if we could transport us as observers back a hundred years to look at the America of 1913, The Dickensian hell, the squalor, the oppression, the virtual slavery, the disease - the abuse of women and minorities, of the immigrants. The lynchings, the industrial goons cracking heads, the Klan stretching necks, massive the race riots. History is a horror these anarchist saboteurs want to bring back no matter what the risk, no matter what the cost.
But what of a country that simply isn't smart or honest enough to realize it's being screwed?
Egads - shoulda said it's NOT people from Wilson's party
DeleteI am not inclined to bash all conservatives in broad strokes. There was a time when the word 'conservative' was also synonymous with the words 'caution’ and ‘go slow.’ It was an approach to governance that said: ‘Do not rush headlong into grandiose prescriptions that may have unintended consequences.’ Cautious conservatism was not necessarily anti-progressive.
ReplyDeleteAccording to John Dean in Conservatives Without Conscience, there are at least 2-dozen schools of conservative thought, some in clear contradiction and often in conflict with others. Some strains of conservatism are decidedly authoritarian and antithetical to the ideals of a free and egalitarian society.
Neo-conservatives (such as Perl and Wolfowitz who sold a bogus war to the American public) are the opposite of Andrew Bacevich, the conservative author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.
What passes for conservative today is not conservative at all. A government shutdown smacks of radicalism and recklessness, certainly not caution.
Statements like this are cause for alarm: “What absolutely terrifies ME is that these poor, well-meaning imbeciles have the right to VOTE … THAT should worry EVERY thinking person of ANY political persuasion.”
This is an example of extreme authoritarian, social-controlling conservatism - one that reserves the right to confer citizenship only on like-minded people, i.e. the right to decide who is worthy versus who is not, including but by no means limited to the right to vote. This is a prescription for bias, oppression, and ultimately tyranny.
In 2008, the offspring of several prominent Republicans crossed party lines to support then-candidate Barack Obama. These include: Christopher Buckley (son of William F. Buckley), Julie Nixon-Eisenhower (daughter of Richard Nixon and granddaughter-in-law of Dwight Eisenhower, Susan Eisenhower (granddaughter of Dwight Eisenhower), CC Goldwater (granddaughter of Barry Goldwater), as examples. These are conservatives with a conscience, and I am grateful for their support.
The notion that only certain people should vote is a relic of early opposition to Democracy - and indeed of some early democracies. I'm sure the Tea Partwits® would love to have a House of Lords even though not one of those lumpen would qualify.
ReplyDeleteI've had people lecture me that our founders only intended that landed gentry vote and so that's how it should be. It's not worth replying to such people and it's not really accurate to call them conservatives these days.
I try not to use the word conservative any more for just the reasons you illustrate. Sabotage is not a conservative act, nor are the radical changes, the anarchist yearnings, the secessionist sentiments and of course the shutdown.
People who think Eisenhower, Nixon and Goldwater are liberals aren't conservatives, but without lapsing into vicious, snarky and hyperbolic epithets, I can't think of an appropriate title. that just takes more tentacles than I have.
Thank you for this unique article. I especially enjoyed reviewing it and ought to discuss it with everyone.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if anyone has thought about how this could so backfire on them. If the wheels of the country keep turning despite the shutdown maybe people will start to realize how much we don't need many of these agencies AND how much we don't need Congress!
ReplyDeletehttp://rationalnationusa.blogspot.com/2013/10/perhaps-it-is-too-late-something-to.html
ReplyDelete