One of the unintended consequences of GOPer insanity, is that it tends to drive intelligent people nuts too. I mean after, all, you point out their lies, their inconsistencies, their blatant attempts to misdirect, and you convince not a single one of their minions.
Case in point. Yesterday we mentioned that at least some GOPer candidates were thrilling their ogreish followers by promising to “bring the government to a full stop” until health care reform was rescinded.
You might ask, being the intelligent person that you are (you are here after all), why would they do this. It didn’t work when Newt and his band of slack jaws did it the last time. In fact it rebounded to the benefit of Democrats.
Why the answer may be quite simple, if Keith Olbermann is right. He claims that Dick (the other Dick) Armey suggested that the reason it didn’t work last time was because GOPers told everyone they were going to do it. Soooo, maybe they will just not tell anyone this time.
Yeah, nobody could figure it out right?
Actually that’s not so far from the truth. You simply have to understand GOPer leadership. See, your basic GOPer figures it’s worth the time and trouble and expense to actually get a good bead on your bedfellows. So the powers that wannabe, look at their base.
What they find are a conglomeration of religious fundamentalists and low-ranking working class stiffs who are angry at giving away a dime of their money at anything beyond macho things like defense and bigger weapons. One spends every extra moment seeking out justification in a book for their petty bigotries (read fears) and the other spends every single moment massaging their own pleasure centers (read whatever you wish here, from drinking, to sports watching, to fishing).
Now the GOPers knew that such folks are not ripe for sophisticated political theory. They can’t understand it for the most part, and have no inclination to do so. So, you keep it simple. Play to their pet loves (the bible, apple pie, military security, Communism and all other isms, all otherness). Continue to belabor that all the “good old days” are being destroyed by the “other side” and that America is in dire straits of being destroyed from both the inside and the outside.
Convince them further, that all the media, save Fox and Rush, lies to them profusely in ways they cannot discern, and that it’s just plain best to listen only to their own “fair and balanced” offerings.
Once you have secured their total attention to only you, then of course you can thumb your nose at reason, logic, and even basic provable truth, for they (your robotic followers) are conditioned as Pavlovian mutts, to respond only to YOUR voice.
So, quite obviously Armey’s analysis could work. As long as GOPers don’t mention that they and they alone are shutting down government, their Pied Piper rats will know no better, and if a stray actual fact should slip by onto their radar, they will dutifully recall the mantra: “all lame-stream media is controlled by Soros and is a lie.”
All the rest of us, of course, point out that the GOPer truck is blocking the road, but we only get through to each other, and we already know it. Thus our increasing feeling that we must be going insane.
It seems that Boehner is backing down on the tax thing. Has to because the GOP is starting to look bad to the still-thinking-a-little-bit INDEPENDENTS. But as usual, the buzz machine cranks up and wherever you go, you hear the same warning: Obama and company are trying to institute “class warfare” (the not rich 99% against the woeful 1%, the rich). And the other one, the Obama administration is “pitting one group of Americans against another.”
Again, we brain-functioning folk see this “talking points” as evidence of a party marching in lockstep, uninterested in speaking to or for their constituents, unable to think independently, and thus politics as usual. The great lemming population has been conditioned to regurgitate that which it hears over and over again. So it’s business as usual. And they score again.
All in all it seems the GOPers walk a fine line. On the one hand they can say anything, sure that their lunatic base “hears” only what they have taught it to hear. At the same time, they know they cannot win with this band of mobish rubble. So they can’t appear, at least on mainstream media, totally wacko. The problem is in trying to keep the two separate.
This becomes increasingly hard to do when everyone with a cellphone is only a UTube moment away from spreading your private musing with the “special” people, into the greater reality. This may have been what happened to Newty (the slimy patootie) Gingrich and his “stunning insight into Obama” by realizing that he operates from a “Kenyan anti-colonialism.” This little gem is getting such wide play that even the pretty-much-inattentive-until-two-days-before-the-election independents have sat up and taken notice.
Ahh, but such is life in the GOPer hole. Trying to walk a tightrope, all the while knowing that one slip means the family jewels are toast. I’m looking forward to eunuch Gingrich aren’t you?
Existential Ennui 
I’ve gotten very, very cynical since the last few elections.
First the Republicans won the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, but really they didn’t change anything. Then the Democrats won all three, and they haven’t really changed anything, either.
I just don’t see a way to win this game. I don’t think I want to play it anymore.
Thomas, I so very much understand. I dozen times or more I’ve threatened to opt out because both sides are utterly corrupt at their center. The problem is, what to do then. If we just try to bury our head and create some security around us, we are doomed. We have got to, in the end, keep talking, speaking out, working to defeat the villains and reward those who truly have human interests at heart–all of them. At least that’s where I have come to.
Thomas, quite the oppiosite: Reagan and GW Bush Reversed everything good about the USA:
– they Shipped USA Jobs and Factories to Otjher Countries, Deregulated Wall Street, Banks and Never enforced National Financial Laws.
Each began Massive tax cuts to the Richest 5%, started False Wars (Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan; Bankrupted the USA to kill People Programs like Education, Medicare, VA, etc,., Etc., to Reverse USA Spending to the Richest, Wealthiest, Bihggest Profit Companies and People.
It’s Called Enrich the Richest, with Taxpayer Money.
GOP Money Policy is Listed under STARVE THE BEAST.
The Problem with Democrats is they have not Reversed Bankrupting GOP Policies, Because BIGGEST Money owns Congress.
All began with Ronald Reagan. Finished with Rqadical GW Bush.
Only we voters can change the Situation, by Voting AGAINST the GOP/Teabaggers.
We have to Vote to stop these problems wchich caused All the Problems we have.
We have to VOTE.
Not many do!!!
Vote Against Teabaggers/GOP.
It’s only a game for Billiobnaires if we Voters Don’t Vote.
Every Vote Counts.
If a few million more would do so, The GOP Bums, BIGGEST Billionaire Money would be OUT of Congress.
Tony, I agree. At least that’s how I see. If we do nothing, we hand the country over to the worst of the worst. The Dems aren’t so much better, but they are a bit.
The tendencies of the Teabaggers are right–throw them all out, but they are replacing them with idiots, and that helps no one. The GOPers will have much trouble on their hands come next January I think. The House and Senate leadership will not be finding it easy to control these wiggy nuts.
It occurs to me that the PR campaign which the $6million+ club is operating on their own behalf has been pretty successful in equating any and all forms of graduated income tax with ‘class warfare.’
That’s major mojo for the wealthy. That’s like being able to completely sidestep any and all questions about conspiracy by asking (into the microphone) “what, are you a conspiracy theorist?” This will become important when the electronic vote-swapping gets back online (all they need is a close race).
And there’s that other bit of PR which has so many working class thinking they’re ‘middle class’. But if you need your next paycheck, you are not middle class, I don’t care how many TVs they let you buy.
I think the GOP leadership and their funding arm actually despise the majority of mankind. When it comes down to it, they don’t despise the liberal worker any more than they despise the conservative worker who stupidly buys into hating his own peers and kissing GOP ass and fighting the GOP’s battles for them.
John, the “classless” society has been a lie perpetrated in our educational system for decades, perhaps forever. We like to think that we don’t have it. My parents were dead center working class, yet they thought of themselves as middle class all the way.
Those who are not interested enough to learn and seek knowledge always will fall for what the demogogue dishes out. And clearly the GOP has been excellent at this sort of thing. I agree, that give less than nothing about any of the masses, they only use those they can.