The Republican Strategy To Split America -By Robert Reich

[kpete]

Robert Reich

Posted: February 18, 2011 01:52 PM

The Republican Strategy

The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class -- pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don't believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.

By splitting working America along these lines, Republicans want Americans to believe that we can no longer afford to do what we need to do as a nation. They hope to deflect attention from the increasing share of total income and wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs and wages of everyone else languish.

Republicans would rather no one notice their campaign to shrink the pie even further with additional tax cuts for the rich -- making the Bush tax cuts permanent, further reducing the estate tax, and allowing the wealthy to shift ever more of their income into capital gains taxed at 15 percent.

The strategy has three parts:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-republican-strategy_b_825206.html

[msongs]

1. meanwhile the official democrat strategy is "bipartisanship" now and forever nt

[Raster]

3. Most of the House and most of the Senate are millionaires, and have little to nothing in common...

...with the "common man." Nothing. This is not a government of the people, for the people and by the people, and has not been for quite a long time. The people are being parasitically fed upon like a vampire's victims. Our labor is taxed and garnished. Our children are raw materials for the war machine. Our great Social Security trust fund has been used by Congress as it's national slush fund.

Obama is a servant of the Lords of Money, plain and simple. Same horse, just a different color.

[Skip_In_Boulder]

5. And that is why our country is imploding

Are we ready to start using the fascism word yet or are we going to continue to soft peddle it.

[northernlights]

17. bipartisanship....just another word for

collusion. :shrug:

[Raster]

30. Thank you!

bipartisanship = collusion

[SpiralHawk]

2. "Smirk." - RepubliCons Against America

[OHdem10]

4. Yep Fox Talking Points all day today. Setting up resentment

"The Uniion workers earn much more than private sector.
Union Benefits are much better and the private workers
taxes will be paying for them.

Listen to this often enough and grounds for division.

Divide and conquer is Republican strategy always.

[upi402]

6. Has Reich ever spoken out about his support of NAFTA? n/t

[lunatica]

24. This OP is about what he's saying now. Do you disagree?

[w4rma]

7. K & R ! K & R ! K & R ! K & R ! K & R ! K & R ! K & R ! K & R ! (nt)

[EFerrari]

10. Yes, he's exactly right. I hope everybody understands this.

This is why the right wing media is/will play up Obama's support of unions.

[PA Democrat]

8. The masses fight each other for a few crumbs while the elite

have more bread than they could eat in 1,000 lifetimes.

[Kurovski]

9. K&R

Always

[FailureToCommunicate]

11. As always, short and to the point!

[swilton]

12. Reich is absolutely right

But I see it also along the lines of abortion rights and DADT - the conservative religious issues are splitting America as well. I've also thought that the immigration (blame the loss of jobs on the foreign workers) is in that category. Not that I don't support abortion rights, all-gender rights and people of every color and faith, I just think these issues are being exploited for political gain.

Whatever, we need STRONG Democrats to stand up to this and call it for what it is.

[Blue_In_AK]

13. Robert Reich and I concur.

As usual.

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. Methinks WI took them by surprise

[hfojvt]

15. ack, I am not getting his math

the top 13 made an average of $1 billion each. That's a total of $13 billion. Taxed at 15% instead of at 35%. The extra revenue would be 2.6 billion. 2.6 times ten to the 9th. I would expect a teacher to get at least $50,000 in salary and benefits. Or 5 times 10 to the 4th. 2.6 divided by 5 is about .5. 10^9 divided by 10^4 is 100,000. Times .5 is 50,000.

Seems to be high by a factor of 6.

[Enthusiast]

16. K&R! Love Robert Reich! nt

[moobu2]

18. A strategy brought to you by

The Heritage Foundation and some other RW think-tanks, the Koch brothers and various RW Christionists groups.

[CanonRay]

19. It's mostly working

[Juche]

20. They've done this successfully for years

White against black/latino
Natural born vs immigrant
heterosexual vs homosexual
religious vs agnostic
middle class vs poor

It hasn't failed to work yet to distract, misinform and inflame people long enough to let the country descend into plutocracy and oligarchy. I don't see why adding public vs private sector or young vs old will do anything but make it worse.

[XanaDUer]

21. K & R'd

nt.

[malaise]

22. He's right

K & R

[underpants]

23. Jesus kpete you are a DU hearts slut

NICE!

[lunatica]

25. I'm catching up to these preferred DUers

LOL! So far I've got 4 hearts! I'm catching up rapidly!

[BrklynLiberal]

26. Reich can join Lakoff as one of the Cassandras of this century.

Trying to reveal the truth, and being ignored....

[riderinthestorm]

27. Just heard this from a Rethug insider who says there really is a plan

and Walker/WI is the first roll out. Walker will not back down because he can't. More powerful players than him are holding him (financially) hostage and he's unable to do anything other than what they tell him to do.

Reich's words are almost exactly identical to what I heard this afternoon in my conversation with this guy and I'm really creeped out.

[truedelphi]

29. Who or what is this person connected to? I bet I'm not the only

One here Who would like you to comment a bit more.

Ahnold Schwatzennegger was in office a very short time during his first term
as Calif. Governor when he pulled the "We have to quit offering the pensions to the nurses and the teachers, and all other workers" BS.

But the state workers rose up against him, and one of the things that whoever is doing this in Wisconsin has learned from Ahnold's failure is to separate the workers from one another. In other words, the police and fire fighters can keep their pensions but the teachers and others cannot. (At least that is what I heard from Maddow.)

[riderinthestorm]

31. Just sent you a PM. Frankly, I'm embarrassed by my connections.

I do know that the plan is to wait the teachers out. They can't legally strike so they will have to go back, sooner rather than later, is the plan.

[Raine]

28. They are what they are and do what they do BUT

my number one concern is what if anything are the Democrats going to do about it?