On why the Republicans will not cooperate to save the economy, but need to make Obama fail, and the country be damned.
In his Lincoln’s birthday address in Springfield, Illinois President Obama connected Lincoln’s bold policies to keep the union intact with the necessity of government to intervene in affairs for the greater good. It’s a theme he will have to hammer home to a polity poisoned for nearly four decades on the Reagan shibboleth that “government is the problem.” In Lincoln’s time the South had its way with things, along with the complicity of northern states. It’s hard to give up an economy where you don’t have to pay your workers anything, not wages, benefits, not even respect as human beings. The South lost that one, thanks to Mr. Lincoln’s use of governmental force; then they swung into Jim Crow, the KKK and lynching, their politics of desperation. It was not without some success. Eventually, the last bold wielder of the power of government, Lyndon Johnson, had to tear down the grudging barriers, giving the political right an interlude, a “southern strategy,” based on fear and racism. Indeed, there was lurking, off to the east, the prime example of too much government, our Cold War nemesis governments in the USSR and Communist China.
Much of this edifice of the right wing has crumbled, brought down by the failure of Vietnam, the self-destruction of the USSR and the East Block, and the re-construction of China under the new “Asian values.” The substitution of long “little hot wars” for big cold ones proved insidious for the damage they inflicted on the quality of life on the home front. And, finally, with a dimwit who wielded executive power through fear, fiscal profligacy, and rampant laissez-faire-ism, the global economy has been brought to its knees. People losing their homes, jobs and pensions could not ignore the realities. The election of Barack Obama was made up of different, and somewhat potentially-conflicting parts: Part hope, for a politics that stressed unity rather than divisiveness; but part desperation, for a politics government by intelligence and rationality, rather that fear and blind faith; and part disaffection for the manipulative politics forged from Reagan to Rove.
There has been much written of the “end of that era.” Some pundits are saying that this election might have ushered in—countering Roves’s notion of a thousand year Republican Reich—an enduring Democratic government. But that might be more hope than a ringing mantra of “yes, we can” can bring to pass. The Republicans, however, see the possibility of this. They see that, if Obama can deliver on his “yes, we can,” if he can extract us from the greasy slope of Iraq/Afghanistan and put the economy on a healing, growthful course once again, that they will be the “back benchers” in perpetuity. They lost the White House and they lost more ground in the Capitol. But the margins weren’t overwhelming.
Somewhat oversimplified, the Republican choices are as follows: A) be good politicians who put country above the party and help Obama set things aright, B) play the ideological card and call it incipient “socialism” and do your best to cause him to fail. Option B, of course, promises a better chance to be back in power in a round or two, even if you have to cause more economic misery than your party has already caused (of course you do what you know best how to do).
The Republicans still have their friends in fossil fuel energy, the Wall Street bonuses boys, and the greedy CEOs, they still have Big Phamra and Big Insurance who are heavily-vested in a health care system that leaves about 50 million Americans uncovered; they still have Big Defense who are heavily vested in making a lot of weapons they we can’t use in wars fought in urban neighborhoods or mountain caves. All the elements for their flirtation with fascism are still there. They need to keep these “friends” close; lose them and all is lost. But they must also not appear to be willing to sacrifice even the loyal “useful idiots” to their cause of regaining power because, if the election proved something else, it is that some of those idiots might be willing to affect a “live and let live” posture regarding their “values” issues in order to get back into their homes and jobs. Republican pols will beat the old horse of incipient socialism and, as that political chameleon, John McCain invoked, putting the debt for a the stimulus package on the “backs of future generations”—left unsaid is that we are already overburdened with the debt of Bush’s Iraq war, money thrown into desert sands and the accounts of war profiteers.
So the early outlines of option B seem to be showing through. Suckered in by their false overtures to bipartisanism Obama “took for the fake” and got himself set up for a unanimous negative vote from the Repubs when his stimulus package went before the House. Not an auspicious start for a guy who has played a lot of street ball; but at least he knows where the drawling honkies in the hood are going. Obama might gain some political leverage from trying to characterize the policies he is recommending as a non-zero-sum games—but they are not, politics is not, and Republican politics is assuredly not—zero sum. If Obama wins—something that Republican garbage mouth liar Rush Limbaugh has publically wished against—then the Republicans win only if they have capitulated. If Obama loses, the Republicans win without qualification. So they will be obstreperous, and stupid, such as Judd Gregg, who first voted for the elimination of the Department of Commerce, then lobbied to be its Secretary under Obama, then bailed out because he can’t support the stimulus policies (he first endorsed) because they don’t fit “who I am.” (Betcha he as a “wide stance” too.)
So much for Obama’s brave new world of bipartisan politics. Of the two objectives—bipartisanism or putting American’s back in their homes and jobs—bipartisanism comes in third. There was not even a nod in the direction of bipartisanism in the first three quarters of the Bush administration, and after the 2006 elections Bush dusted off his veto and signing statements. Republicans see politics through the metaphor of war; it is best that the Democrats not try to see it as a re-constitution of Woodstock. It’s a game that, unfortunately, has to be played by the rules of the lowest common denominator. In short, the Republicans do not want to share power, or responsibility of any failed policies they can bring about. That’s how they play the politics of desperation. The sooner Obama dumps the phony bipartisan Republicans he sooner he can pull his spending compromises from his legislation and any other concessions to these back-stabbing sleazeballs. The sooner Barack Obama learns—or accepts—that and starts using his elbows and some tripping and shoving, the sooner he can bring a winning game from the courts to the Capitol.
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© 2009, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 2.17.2009)