Early this year, Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, made headlines by telling his fellow Republicans that they needed to stop being the “stupid party.” Unfortunately, Mr. Jindal failed to offer any constructive suggestions about how they might do that. And, in the months that followed, he himself proceeded to say and do a number of things that were, shall we say, not especially smart. Nonetheless, Republicans did follow his advice. In recent months, the G.O.P. seems to have transitioned from being the stupid party to being the crazy party.
I’m not certain how one might describe voting to repeal Obamacare 42 TIMES (while knowing there was no chance of success) as anything BUT legislative masturbation. We’re talking about one party that appears to have completely lost its collective mind, along with its direction, compassion and sense of simple human decency.
Never before in the history of the Republic has the political process been held hostage by a minority cabal willing to burn America down if they don’t get 100% of their demands met. The Congressional Teapublican faction didn’t come to Washington to legislate; they came to slash and burn. The result is a government that lurches from crisis to crisis, with brinksmanship and heartlessness being the order of the day and nothing of value being accomplished. That this rank hypocrisy would be embarrassing to anyone with a conscience is lost on Teapublicans…perhaps because they have no conscience. The Teapublican-controlled House of Representatives voted to slash food stamps, the rationale being that there are jobs out there, but public assistance provides no incentive to work. This sort of judgmental heartlessness comes from Right-wing zealots making $172,000/year and who don’t give a damn about the poor, the sick, or the hungry. They KNOW the jobs are there, and so everything they pursue precedes from that premise.
AMERICA: I GOT MINE. YOU CAN DAMNED WELL GET YOUR OWN.
You don’t vote to defund Obamacare 42 times and to slash food stamp spending without having a serious humanity deficit. One could reasonably conclude that the Teapublican vision centers around creating an American in which only the strong survive. How else are you going to be able to subsidize Big Oil when you’re giving handouts to those too lazy to do for themselves? Compassion is for losers and Liberals, and the social contract is just camouflage for a nanny state that refuses to hold people accountable for their own wellbeing. Public assistance for the sick, poor, and/or unemployed is the worst sort of socialism imaginable…but public assistance for corporations is a perfectly appropriate way to ensure American business continues to dominate the world.
What I find truly astonishing is how the Washington press corps refuses to call this institutional lack of compassion and a refusal to recognize the social contract what it is. Instead, they’re concerned about maintaining “objectivity.” The Teapublican faction of the GOP is bent on destroying America in order to achieve their goals…and that’s something to be objective about?
