Take care of luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.
- Dorothy Parker
If you’ve ever wondered what Republicans really stand for, President Obama managed to sum it up rather nicely in his weekly address yesterday. Their strategy is as simple and straightforward as it it cynical and mean-spirited. Simply put, the Republican plan in the run-up to this fall’s mid-term elections is to “filibuster our recovery and obstruct our progress”. By screaming “NO!!” at every opportunity, by blocking the re-authorization of extended unemployment benefits, and by working to make the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, the GOP message to middle-class Americans is simple: “F—k you!!”
What I’ve found so disturbing is the lack of prominent Democratic voices willing to call “BS” on Republicans. By thinking that they can negotiate and work with obstructionists with no plans to do either, Democrats have for months succeeded in neutering themselves. What we need is a President and other prominent Democrats willing to lay out, in no uncertain terms, just how Republicans plan to continue screwing Americans…and they most certainly do.
There are now 2.5 million unemployed Americans who have run through their benefits, and Republicans continue to block efforts to extend those benefits. Republicans are working to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy while they in effect tell the unemployed to go fornicate themselves. After all, isn’t unemployment the fault of the unemployed? If we give them money, how are we to know that they won’t spend all their time snorting coke off the backsides of supermodels? How are we to know that they won’t be buying lottery tickets, Thunderbird wine, and Marlboro Lights?
Democrats need to stop playing the game by Republican rules. If they need to start name-calling and trotting out specific examples of Republican malfeasance and hypocrisy…THEN DO IT. Democrats are on the verge of potentially giving away their advantage to a party that wants to drag us kicking and screaming back to the Bush years..and the American Sheeple just don’t care enough to get it. Democrats have the opportunity to focus the easily propagandized American Sheeple on the reality that Republicans don’t give a damn about them. Oh, Republicans want their votes, but as soon as they have them, they’ll continue the class warfare they’ve been openly conducting since 1.20.01. The American Sheeple, given half an opportunity will eagerly continue to vote against their own interests. Democrats need to open their eyes to reality.
WE DESERVE BETTER…but we’re not going to get better until Democrats get angry and begin showing their teeth. That needs to begin in the White House NOW, and it needs to continue up to Election Day. Anything short of such an effort will hand Congress back to the same thugs who gave us two wars and an economy in the toilet. Is that what the American Sheeple truly think we deserve??
