Be careful what you ask for...very, very careful

[T]he furious and frustrated electorate should be careful when they demand change in the upcoming midterm elections — because what they get may well be very different from what they actually want…. Listen to Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Nevada, a Scientology adherent who also favors returning the country to prohibition of alcohol. Although there are five unemployed workers in this country for every available job, she believes that unemployment insurance is keeping people from seeking work…. Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, for example, sees cutting off benefits as “tough love.” The only way to revive the economy, in his view, is for Americans to “accept a wage that’s less than we had at our previous job in order to get back to work.”

We live in difficult times. Two wars, unemployment hovering around 10%, crumbling infrastructure…yeah, I get it. Things are tough. Being Americans, of course, we don’t want to hear that part. What we want is for the problems to be fixed…NOW. We don’t want excuses, we don’t want politicians telling us that there are no quick and/or easy fixes…because what we demand quick AND easy fixes. If we don’t get it…well, there’s going to be Hell to pay come the next election cycle. And this time around appears no different.

What I find so interesting about our current political climate is that there’s little recognition of the reality of the legacy left us by George W. Bush’s eight-year Reign of Error ©. There can be little doubt that The Worst President EVER © and his neoConservative thugs spent eight years turning the federal treasury into their personal playground. After passing $1.6 trillion of tax cuts for the wealthy in 2001 and 2003, we went from a budget surplus to the massive and growing deficit we face today. Republicans created the deficit, and yet they (with no apparent sense of irony) are blaming Democrats for profligate spending and a predilection for Socialism. W. T. F???

Now Republicans are attempting to exploit our collective anger by working overtime to convince us that the people responsible for this mess are…wait for it…Barack Obama and his evil Democratic cohorts in Congress. Just put us back into the majority, they tell us, and we’ll make things all better. We’ll restore fiscal responsibility to Washington. We’ll fix things. We’ll make government work. Uh…right; and that’s exactly what they did when they controlled Congress from 2001-2007, eh?

Though America might not be in the mood to accept advice from a confirmed Liberal, I’d caution against voting Republican simply out of anger, frustration, and/or discontent. I realize that most of the electorate has been conditioned to vote against their interests (because Liberals and Democrats are evil, don’tchaknow??), but change for the sake of change is a crap shoot. This is especially true when Republicans won’t specify what their agenda is. The reality is that Republicans want to return to the good old days when Captain Codpiece © and his cronies got us into this mess.

Are we really so stupid that we’d vote to return to being led by the same folks who turned our budget surplus into a massive deficit by passing tax cuts for the wealthy? Are we really willing to hand the keys back to the same fools who got us into this mess? Are we going to simply ignore recent history and take Republicans at their word?

Do I really need to answer those questions?

WE DESERVE BETTER.