The Republican Sideshow
Those events could easily become intertwined. And progressives who will be working as hard as they can toward both can only be encouraged by the approaching train wreck within the Republican Party.
For months, the media have been bombarding us with stories suggesting the strong likelihood that President Barack Obama would be defeated for re-election.
The usual excuse cited is Obama's failure to single-handedly turn around the disastrous economy he inherited. But there has to be something uglier behind it, since Republicans have voted in lockstep against every effort by the president to create jobs.
Hint: It's definitely not because Obama's a radical socialist. He's turned out to be a pretty cautious Democrat.
But as next Tuesday's Iowa caucuses approach, anyone fearing a presidential defeat in November has to ask: If Obama is such an easy target, why are all the Republican candidates so bad?
The answer is the Republican Party has moved so far to the extreme right that in order to be nominated a candidate may well have to be so mean and ignorant as to be unelectable.
Disavowing Decency
Repeatedly, we have seen strong pressure on Republicans to disavow any decent political position they have taken in the past.
That begins at the top of the field with strong opposition to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for creating a model for national health care reform by expanding coverage and benefits while putting pressure on insurance companies and health care providers to reduce costs.
It's a black mark in today's Republican Party to do anything so positive for people, especially for middle-class and lower-income people.
Other Republican candidates have run into trouble for failing to sufficiently hate immigrants from Mexico.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been exposed as unusually inarticulate and slow-witted for someone seeking the nation's highest office. But Perry, whose state borders Mexico, knows far more about problems actually faced by immigrants than any of the vicious demagogues who routinely demonize Mexican citizens.
Perry has had to defend the practice of charging in-state tuition at Texas universities to immigrant Mexican children who have grown up in the state.
All those who consider immigrants some kind of drag on the economy should certainly want to encourage bright, immigrant graduates from Texas high schools to get as many college degrees as possible to increase their lifetime earnings (and tax-paying) potential.
Not even Newt Gingrich, who wants to repeal child labor laws so children can get a head start on janitorial careers by cleaning their own inner-city schools, would deport enough Mexican immigrants to satisfy Republicans.
Gingrich says Mexicans who have lived here for 25 years, obeyed every other law, paid their taxes, raised children who are U.S. citizens and go to church are valuable members of our communities and shouldn't be kicked out of the country.
Only in an extraordinarily racially hateful Republican Party would that be considered a controversial position.
Speaking of race hatred, there is a very good reason why Texas Congressman Ron Paul is a favorite not only of the tea party, but also of white supremacist groups across the country.
After being ignored by the media for months, racist and anti-Semitic newsletters published by Paul in the '80s and '90s are finally surfacing in the mainstream media—like the “Ron Paul Political Report,” written in the first person, warning of a coming race war with urban black youth and containing this grandfatherly advice: “I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self-defense. For the animals are coming.”
Paul now claims he didn't write such revolting sentiments. He just sent them out under his name.
Paul's hateful screeds do not disqualify him in today's Republican Party. The only candidates who have to apologize are those who have taken positions that might be interpreted as decent or humane.
The most likely scenario at this time is for Romney to continue his successful run toward the Republican nomination despite the obvious lack of enthusiasm for him among the extreme elements dominating his party.
That may produce the kind of split within Republicans that is more typical of Democrats. If Paul, a libertarian, runs as a third-party candidate, he could take the tea parties and other vitriolic racists with him.
Some Republicans certainly could have trouble voting for Romney, who ran for the Senate claiming to be more liberal than Ted Kennedy.
But no one talks about the biggest objection to Romney within today's extremist Republican Party: his Mormon faith.
That may be what finally assures Obama's re-election. The message for Republicans: Live by bigotry, die by bigotry.
David also represents an attitude of the well-funded minority of Republicans that is hated by the working class majority portion that make up the rest of the Republican party. That is what splits the Republican party, how can the well-funded present a candidate that assures their wealthy 1% will continue to get over on America's 99%, (hiring just enough of the 99% as "plantation overseers"), yet still looks acceptable to those same 99% masses who can vote. The problem is that the loyal overseers are also going to be "gotten over on" when there is no more to be gotten from those who are overseen/used as the labor source (horse owners shoot lame horses, when they can no longer pull their own weight).
It's down to a battle of pure dog-eat-dog Capitalism versus any sort of compassionate equalizers, wealth re-distributors, playing field levelers, etc. The rate of un-equalness is now so high, the Republicans are having a hard time finding a unifying message! Hard-working republicans are feeling the pain as much as the welfare handout class is
It's no secret that normal people know that true equality is worthless, no sense in trying hard when everyone ends up the same. -- The human nature point is to let the harder workers (more successful workers, more senior workers, even luckier workers, too) have some way to boost their status above their less able or less fortunate neighbors, and give them the human (false-Christian) right to lord it over those others, too. Can you see the good in rewarding hard work? Of course you do. Can you also see the evil in how real people end up using the fruits of their hard work? That's where a change of attitude is needed.
As things become more and more unequal, as profit-wealth is ever "re-distributing" through good marketing and "free" commerce from the lower 99% up to the top 1%, it is getting ever harder to strike an acceptable balance that benefits the maximum amount of people. I've read somewhere that less than 10% are making 60% of all the purchases, so why should any profit-making business care about chasing after that bottom 40% of the purchases, too inefficient to create the diverse advertising needed to sell to a culturally diverse market that covers this lower 90%.
I will bet that when someone finds a candidate who can pull together the moderate middle, and shun both extremes in political opinion, that is the one who can lead. It's just too bad that those who have the money will not let that candidate get any traction. No "Change" will ever be allowed unless there is a big money winner of that change that can afford to lobby for it, whether from the private-profit right or from the public-funded left (which just feeds public tax dollars to a hired private agency)
But, it is useless to put a moderate in the Whitehouse if the 543 elected members of congress are not from that moderate middle as well, it's all millionaire Republicans and millionaire Democrats. People say that there are no members of the voting public in the middle any more, I don't believe it. We just have not been able to craft a message that cuts off both extremes, it has always been easier to craft a message that cuts off only one extreme, means that they also cut off a large number that hate them for excepting the opposite extreme.