The Imaginary GOP
What we saw at the Republican convention, Dirty Harry arguing and berating an imaginary Obama for several minutes, said everything about the GOP today. In short, a party at war with an opponent who does not actually exist. While many saw the irony in the Eastwood spectacle, most missed the true elephant in the room (pun intended.) The Republican Party, as it portrays itself, is even more fictional than any socialist, Kenyan born president they could ever dream up.
Much like 2001, 2008 was a year of national tragedy: A catastrophic financial collapse wiping out trillions in wealth seemingly overnight. Unlike the immediate post 911, America didn’t unite to fight our way back. Instead we watched the Republican Party exploit the fear and uncertainty we faced, while doing everything they could to ensure our newly elected President would fail. GOP ideology in regards to job creation, government’s role in our lives, health care, cap n trade, foreign policy…on and on. All seemed to do an about face upon Obama’s arrival. To be fair, Obama wasn’t the catalyst for the sheer hypocrisy of the GOP. The party who embraced the relentless (and successful) “Flip Flop” attack line for Kerry has no shortage and frankly no shame when it’s time to change positions. In fact they are downright schizophrenic in regards to nearly everything they advocate. Why is it then that their base doesn’t seem to notice?
"I'm a strong believer in free enterprise, so my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention, these are not normal circumstances. The market is not functioning properly. There has been a widespread loss of confidence. Without immediate action by Congress, America can slip into a major panic. If Congress fails to approve the rescue plan, the nation could face a long and painful recession…”
-George W. Bush September 2008 speaking to America about TARP
Many Americans (in particular Republicans) incorrectly believe that Obama signed the Troubled Asset Relief Program into law, but it was Bush who pushed for government intervention to save our failing markets. With credit markets virtually frozen and a lack of liquidity where was the money going to come from to keep our fragile economy afloat? Hard line types preached the mind numbing “let if fail” line in lieu of government intervention, apparently unaware or completely oblivious of what lay ahead for hard working Americans if we let it all burn to the ground.
Bush, originally approached to “bail out” Lehman Brothers, declined and it yielded disastrous results for the financial markets and subsequently for our retirement accounts. That mistake was not to be made again, and for good cause. While I think it’s fair to say that nobody likes tax payers to cover losses, we would have ultimately paid a much bigger price by doing nothing.
That all aside, there lays the problem: There were no Tea Party protestors when Bush enacted TARP. There was no outrage from the right (something they’re so good at after all, being upset or offended.) In fact the right was notably silent when Bush sent Americans checks and told them to “Go shopping.” Nobody lined up with signs accusing him of being a “Socialist” who hated the free market or secretly wanted to dismantle it.
Imagine a newly elected Barack Obama sending us all checks to put a little money in our pocket and push the economy along? The mere notion would send the right wing blogosphere into hysterics and probably cause Sean Hannity’s head to explode. Beck would have emerged from his padded cell to announce the fall of our capitalist system as we know it and that a government takeover of the private sector was now in play. Republicans instead stood by their man and even made claims that the economy was “fundamentally strong” during this time. In the end there was nary a peep from the right side of the aisle about the big evil government coming in to help this country out. (Oddly enough the party of tax cuts also loathed the stimulus, which in itself was composed of 1/3 tax cuts.)
Silent too was the right side of the aisle when Bush oversaw the largest expansion of socialized health care, Medicare, in our nation’s history. Funny how that works isn’t it? The right wing media didn’t say anything and neither did their base. That’s because despite the GOP claims of fiscal conservatism, free markets and limited government intervention into our lives, they are nothing of the sort. In fact the Republican Party fails miserably at virtually all of the basic tenets of what they claim to represent.
Ronald Reagan, the now almost mythical patriarch of the GOP, not only raised taxes, but grew government. He also shared a strikingly similar sentiment to Obama when it came to taxation:
"Some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary, and that's crazy. It's time we stopped it,"
– Ronald Reagan
In terms of advocating fiscal discipline and addressing revenue vs. expenditures, I would actually argue that raising revenue to pay your bills is fiscally conservative by nature. Yet you’d be hard pressed to find a Republican today to agree with that assessment.
Bush Jr. cut taxes while waging not only one, but two wars simultaneously, a first in our nation’s history. To support these cuts and increased spending, he simply borrowed money. With these actions he created a polarizing, and often overlooked, dichotomy in our nation. We had a small subset of the population, probably less than 1%, willing to lay their lives down for America over a questionable war, while the remainder was let off the hook for holding up their end.
Think about that for a moment. Historically America at war was a time when everybody chipped in. Our finest men and women would go to fight while the rest of the country came together on the home front to support them anyway they could. Yet this time, taxes were actually cut, thus lowering the already small contribution these individuals were making (especially when compared to the ultimate sacrifice the soldiers were willing to give.) “Support the troops” was ultimately an empty slogan, backed up by little more than yellow magnetic ribbons for our cars while doing virtually nothing for our soldiers. Hardly the patriotic pro military stance our modern Republicans proclaim to hold so dear to their hearts (unless the soldier was gay, then it’s OK to boo apparently.)
The right’s media also likes to pretend that big scary secret socialist Barack Hussein Obama has clamped down on the free market, and that the business community is being suffocated by all these new regulations he is passing. In reality Obama has passed less regulations on business then “small government conservative” W Bush by this point in his term. Likewise Daddy Bush has them all beat, passing the most regulations of them all by this point in his tenure.
Republican leaders go out of their way to let their base know about their allegiance to Jesus Christ. It was Christ of course who fed the poor; tended to the sick, practiced forgiveness, preached peace...you know all that liberal touchy-feely stuff conservatives seem to loathe. Today’s Republicans have adopted a perverted version of this man’s teachings (See a pattern yet?), seemingly holding a deep disdain for the poor, and are overwhelmingly against health care (even if it’s their own original plan.) This stands in stark contrast to everything they claim to live their life for.
Let’s not forget that religious institutions pay no taxes yet pump millions into shaping public policy, more specifically who gets to marry whom. Likewise the GOP’s “small government” ideal is tossed on the scrap pile as they work in tandem to suppress the rights of Americans and their pursuit of happiness. Interestingly enough the Christian Right simultaneously claim to being oppressed for their views. The mental acrobats required to assume the victim role while oppressing others is simply mind boggling. (Similarly Fox news employs the same tactics, assuming the victim role, the lone voice in a sea of liberal media, while also proclaiming its media dominance in the next breath.)
Even stranger is VP pick Paul Ryan who speaks openly about his faith, yet looks upon Ayn Rand’s philosophy as the main building block of his world view: Every man for themselves, your success is all that matters, the rest deserve their own misery and suffering. A lesson I don’t recall Jesus ever teaching. On the other hand, a free for all embracing and advocating individualism hits a road block rather quickly when it comes to the rights of women or homosexuals. One of the many anti-women- bills Ryan supported would have refused hospitals to provide abortions to women in the case of an emergency and even if their lives were in danger. He also cast another vote to completely eliminate family planning services for low income women altogether. Of course with gays he walks a tight party line against their service in our military, the right to marry, and even stood against hate crime legislation for LGBT. This all stands in stark contrast to his deeply rooted Ayn Rand vision in lieu of pseudo-Judea Christian ideals (Keeping the base truly happy can be complicated after all. Jesus did heal the sick, but we believe Jesus would not have wanted family health care planning for women-that’s crazy talk.)
Ryan, as we know, also wants to “save” Medicare, and by “save” it, he means give us all vouchers to the free market and let us fend for ourselves. If he had his way, alongside Romney, he would gut Obamacare too (but not the good parts Romney likes of course), which would mean millions of seniors attempting to purchase healthcare from insurance companies who can now deny them for pre-existing conditions. Does this sound like anything that would mirror the sentiment and lessons taught by Jesus Christ? Hardly.
Ironically (or not) Ryan is looked upon as an intellectual heavy weight with deep rooted fiscal conservative ideals, the next big rock star for the party. However, like everything else GOP, his record is nothing of the sort. A big spending conservative who backed the 700 Billion dollar bailout, Medicare expansion (another 400 Billion), loans to the auto industry and of course voted five times to raise the debt ceiling under Bush’s presidency. Most recently Ryan voted for a federal spending bill that was 19 Billion more than the original budget allocated. Finally and not surprisingly, Ryan also attacked Obama for defense cuts that he also previously voted in favor of. How then, does this man qualify as a budget hawk coming in to reign in big government spending? Republicans must suspend reality or remain completely oblivious to it in order to support their party.
The single most important mantra for the Republican Party is (Palin check your hand here) “Less government.” But what they really mean is “Less government for things we don’t like or don’t affect me.” In reality the GOP mantra should read like this: Big government is only bad when it’s something we don’t agree with publically like regulation or spending (even though we are the leaders in both of those columns.) You know like two men getting married or a woman having an abortion. Then it’s totally acceptable to encroach on the personal lives of our citizens to force our religious and/or moral values onto them via big government.
As we know, conservatives are all too happy to tell gays they can’t marry, often making it a staple of their platform. This also appeals to the right wing Christian base, despite the fact that Jesus never said anything about homosexuals, much less homosexual marriage. It’s a right wing two-for-one in the hypocrisy department.
Where are the jobs? In the rightwingoverse, free market should be left to its own devices. Shake out the weak and let the strong emerge from the carnage (See Ayn Rand). On the other hand why isn’t Obama doing more to create jobs? It’s not the government’s role to create jobs, that’s why we’re so darn angry at Obama for not creating jobs (The GOP Congress with their approval rating in the teens, is exempt from such analysis of course.) Follow that so far?
Republicans warned us all about Obama’s beaurocratic mess created by his healthcare reform. Death panels for Grandma, months of waiting for operations, and less doctors. When it comes to our health care they want government out of the way, unless of course you’re a woman. In this case the conservatives have mandated that you should be subjected to an intrusive transvaginal wand.
Likewise, if a woman would ask that her insurance cover birth control, so that she can have easy, free access to those things that will allow her to practice safe sex and have a child at the best time possible (technically a conservative way to think), the right would denounce her as acting “entitled.” Should she not practice safe sex, and have many children who would then get them tax breaks and, perhaps, greater access to government programs, the right would then denounce them as a drain on the system and, wait for it, entitled.
Thus, we have a conundrum. To the right, women are little more than an entitlement waiting to happen. They either act entitled to control their sexuality or create more little entitled people. (This, I'm guessing, is why so many on the right are closeted homosexuals, no entitlements come out the back door.) Government involvement is only good when the right feel the need to shame a woman for her morally bankrupt choices (Would Christ judge?), while all other medical services should be excluded from big government consideration.
So what do the Republicans actually believe in? It may be easier to tell you what they don’t believe in, which is smaller government, less spending, no intrusion into our personal lives, fewer regulations, not expecting others to adhere to their religious beliefs and being fiscally responsible. Let’s also not be fooled by the ferocity to which they make their stand over the last several years. The timing isn’t just suspect, it’s obvious: Once Obama came into power they would drive home a continuous, highly focused narrative repeated ad naseum regardless of their actions previously, until it became the truth. Frankly, at the end of the day, working together to convey a message may be what the GOP does best, because they fail miserably at doing anything inside it.
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