The problem with the Republican Party is not Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney
The Republicans chose Mitch Daniels to rebut President Obama's State of the Union speech. They chose Bush's budget director to talk about the economy. The guy who inherited the Clinton budget surplus and transformed it into the largest budget deficit in American history. If you want to understand how clueless and out of touch the Republican Party has become, all you have to do is start with their having chosen Mitch Daniels to rebut President Obama's State of the Union speech.
Republican insiders are freaked out over the possibility of Newt Gingrich becoming their presidential standard bearer. That's the technical term: freaked out. And that they are so freaked out over that possibility at least speaks to their not having completely lost touch with reality. They have completely lost touch with the American people, but they haven't completely lost touch with reality. Not completely. At least not yet. But in light of their support for the personification of so much that is so wrong and so unpopular in this country as alternative to Gingrich, their prospects for retaining at least a partial grip on reality are not good. And they did choose Mitch Daniels to rebut President Obama's State of the Union speech. Which speaks for itself.
The Occupy movement is not overtly political, at least not in the traditional sense of that word. It does not adhere to any political party or any individual political movement, but it is symbiotic with many political movements, and its goals align very well with traditional Democratic Party populism. The Democratic Party has been adrift from its populist traditions, and in many ways that made the Occupy movement necessary, but many Democrats seem to be recognizing what is happening. They seem to be rediscovering the Democratic Party's populist tradition. The Republican Party has no link at all to populism. The Republican Party, since at least the Reagan era, has been the party of the economic elite, waging neoliberal class warfare and then feigning outrage at what Republicans consider to be the class warfare of merely calling the Republican Party on its actually waging class warfare.
Since the Reagan era, the income gap has exploded, the wealthy have grown wealthier, the poor have grown poorer, the middle class has all but disappeared, and the nation has grown increasingly segregated by income. And while President Obama's State of the Union speech emphasized the degree to which he understands the importance of the Occupy movement and how it has changed the economic conversation in this country, the Republicans chose Bush Budget Director Mitch Daniels to speak on their behalf, thus demonstrating that they remain utterly clueless about what has gone wrong with the economy, how people feel about what has gone wrong with the economy, and how anything about the economy will ever again go right. While President Obama's State of the Union speech emphasized the degree to which he understands the importance of the Occupy movement by announcing the appointment of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to investigate the corporate crimes that neoliberal deregulation made inevitable, and that inevitably crashed the economy, the Republicans chose to demonstrate that they remain utterly clueless about what has gone wrong with the economy by having Bush Budget Director Mitch Daniels repeat the same stale failed Republican recipe of tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, and the class warfare of feigning outrage at the alleged class warfare of calling for economic fairness and justice.
Read more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/29/1059294/-The-problem-with-the-Republican-Party-is-not-Newt-Gingrich-or-Mitt-Romney?via=blog_1
= new reply since forum marked as read
