Are the right-wingers pushing it so far right now because...

[LiberalLoner]

They know it's either now or never? The demographics are not on their side. My husband tells me, in ten years time, the teabaggers will be washed up and done for as a movement as many of their most rabid supporters will have died off.

I don't know about ten years hence, but I think in 20 or 30 years, if present trends continue, the right-wingers will not be able to gather enough votes (unless they cheat) to push forward their agenda.

Are they being so ham-handed now, just because they sense they don't have much time to enact their agenda, and want to push it on the American people before they no longer have the power to?

They seem to be so unconcerned about the demographic shifts. They do not seem to be courting any voters except older, caucasion, mostly rural voters. Is that because they intend to establish a dictatorship, where demographics and votes don't matter?

If they are...I think of all the dictatorships in the past that eventually did come to an end. It never ended so well for ruthless dictators and their agendas...

[Taverner]

1. Well, I THINK they think its all or nothing

However the Corporations laugh last, every time

[LiberalLoner]

2. Do you mean, the people will always lose, and the corps. always win? :( n/t

[Taverner]

3. Well, if the past is any indication of the future, yes

[LiberalLoner]

4. I hope you are wrong but fear you are right. :( n/t

[Newest Reality]

5. It seems that, left unchecked,

we could see the United States renamed America Inc. Maybe it will be governed by an exclusive Board of Directors comprised of a handful of CEOs from major corporations.

That's just a way of illustrating what is actually going on. Why not dispense with the facade and save the effort and expense of the illusion?

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Have you been peaking into my fiction notes?

:hi:

[Newest Reality]

16. LOL! No ...

but we are probably on the same frequency ;) I do entertain ideas of dystopia now and then, myself. Extrapolating on current events makes that easier. The what if's are striking, sometimes.

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. I just placed the place 1500 years in the future

but trust me... it is what these guys would love, at an interstellar level.

[Taverner]

8. We're both on the same page there

[breadandwine]

6. Right now it looks pretty bad. With corporations ruled to be people, how can the GOP lose?

Then there are the rigged voting machines. Who cares what the demographics are when the goopers count the votes?

Then there's Sarah Palin. She has fact-free supporters who say anyone who disagrees is "bunk." And she knows how to rile them up at rallies. Then the vote gets rigged and the corporate media says, welp, it was the ENTHUSIASM of her supporters that made them vote out of proportion with their numbers in the population.

Bingo instant GOP takeover of the Senate and even White House.

This is why Palin must be stopped. She offers the vote riggers an instant alibi.

[elehhhhna]

7. They know Obama isn't sure going to get in their way. He's holding hands with Jeb today.

[markpkessinger]

9. This is what happens when Democrats repeatedly cave in to them

Much of the stuff Republicans are trying to do now has been on a Republican wish list for decades. They've figured out how to exploit Democrats' general lack of stomach for a fight to their own advantage (especially when faced with a Democratic president whose highest value seems to be not what's best for the country, but what he can do in the name of "bipartisanship"). So, on any given issue, the President, in defiance of what anybody with any serious negotiating experience will tell him, starts a particular round of negotiations with concessions to what he reasonably (based on prior debates with Repu8blicans on the topic) thinks will be attractive to Republicans. Despite the fact that the President is offering proposals that in some cases Republicans themselves have either proposed or suggested they would support, the Republicans' very strategic response is to deride whatever he is proposing as "too liberal" or "too expense," and then to suggest new demands that are still further to the right (in effect, moving the goalposts). So the President winds up conceding still more, for which the Republicans have not given a single thing. And of course, Republicans are only too happy to continue playing this game as long as the President allows it. And with each successive legislative round, the Democrats manage to get pulled further and further to the right.

What the President doesn't seem to grasp is that the only time there is particular virtue to be had in bipartisan compromise is when both parties are willing to negotiate in good faith. But Republicans have not acted in good faith once since President Obama took office, a fact that seems to be lost on him. Added to that is the fact that elected Democrats today do not, in any historical sense, represent leftward or progressive values; rather, they are already in the historical center, or even slightly right of center. So a "bipartisan" compromise between elected Democrats in the center, and Republicans who have gone over a radically right-wing cliff winds up being a fairly hard-right policy.

[Kennah]

10. From The Fourth Turning ...

The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire. Yet this time of trouble will bring seeds of social rebirth. Americans will share a regret about recent mistakes--and a resolute new consensus about what to do. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.

Maybe I'm a damned idealistic fool, but I say the next Crisis period will end in the defeat of corporatism around the globe. Chinese and western corporatism falls!

[rucky]

11. That's also why the Unions are pushing back as hard as they are.

This is a last-gasp fight for both of 'em. And pretty much the whole country.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. Yes and as is the Bagger movement

which is astroturf, might have already peaked.

[TheKentuckian]

13. Because they can and there is no counter of substance.

Any compromise between yesterday's moderate Republican ideology and today's Bircher TeaPubliKlan ideology is an automatic win for the Reich.

[JuniperLea]

14. Desperate death throes...

Grasping at anything that will float, even if it's a turd.

[wiggs]

18. To get the polarization they want, they have to define the right

clearly. It has to be doctrinal, black and white, no compromise. By dividing the nation into 'real Americans' and others they have successfully pulled the center to the right as well...at least the center of discussion and legislation.

[leftstreet]

19. +1

And the Democrats never do this. Or, just barely. Ex. they'll go somewhat 'anti-war' when it's feasible

[BarbaRosa]

20. Republican are pretty famous for not seeing beyond their reach.

Beyond their grasp, out of mind.