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Our Old
Enemies
Ignorance and fear can win elections
Excerpt:
Many Obama supporters have been disappointed
by what they see as the administration’s mildness on regulatory issues
— its embrace of limited financial reform that
doesn’t break up the biggest banks, its support for offshore drilling,
and so on.
Yet corporate interests are balking at even modest
changes from the permissiveness of the Bush era.
From the outside, this rage against regulation
seems bizarre. I mean, what did they expect? The financial industry, in
particular,
ran wild under deregulation, eventually bringing
on a crisis that has left 15 million Americans unemployed, and required
large-scale
taxpayer-financed bailouts to avoid an even worse
outcome. Did Wall Street expect to emerge from all that without facing
some
new restrictions? Apparently it did.
So what President Obama and his party now face
isn’t just, or even mainly, an opposition grounded in right-wing populism.
For grass-roots anger is being channeled and
exploited by corporate interests,
which will be the big winners if the G.O.P.
does well in November.
If this sounds familiar, it should: it’s the same
formula the right has been using for a generation. Use identity politics
to whip up
the base; then, when the election is over, give
priority to the concerns of your corporate donors. Run as the candidate
of
“real Americans,” not those soft-on-terror East
coast liberals; then, once you’ve won, declare that you have a mandate
to
privatize Social Security. It comes as no surprise
to learn that American Crossroads, a new organization whose goal is to
deploy large amounts of corporate cash on behalf
of Republican candidates, is the brainchild of none other than Karl Rove.
Too bad we can't get the Democrats to explain
what's going on and that is the fact
that the Republicans are super-bad gamblers -
always with other people's money.
The GOP gambled with the home equity of every
American when mortgage brokers were rewarded
every time they hooked another fish into a loan
bigger than they could afford.
That's a gamble they lost and every American homeowner
paid dearly for it.
The GOP gambled with the retirement funds every
senior citizen
when Wall Street was left to run wild and unregulated
by the Bush bastards.
That's another gamble they lost and every American
family paid dearly for it.
The GOP gambled with lives of 5,000 soldiers when
Bush insisted that
Saddam was a "terrible danger" who needed to
be stopped "right away"
That's another gamble they lost and 5,000 soldiers
paid dearly for it and
another 35,000 soldiers were maimed, blinded,
lost their memories etc.
Plus, now we're stuck in two expensive, never-ending
wars and we can't get out.
The GOP gambled with every beach on the Gulf of
Mexico when Cheney
told BP they didn't have to bother with that
$500K safety valve.
That's another gamble they lost and the Gulf will likely never be the same.
I wonder, those billionaires living in their multi-million
dollar beach homes
are they going to vote GOP next time?
You know they are - because Rush
says a clean environment is only for pussies
and socialists.
If the American voter had half a brain, he'd be
tired of
betting on the GOP because they're really bad
gamblers.
But since the Democrats refuse to list the facts,
those idiot Teabaggers
are helping the Wall Street robber barrons steal
more money from us.
If those ignorant Teabaggers only had a clue -
but they won't get one from today's Democrats.