BREAKING NEWS:

In a press conference today, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus announced his party’s new Contract Against America which is centered on an avowed opposition to the following items:

1. Sex
2. Winning the Lottery
3. Juicy Hamburgers
4. The Death of Osama Bin Laden
5. The Wheel
6. Jesus (but not The Old Testament God)
7. Laughter
8. Being Cozy in Bed on Rainy Nights
9. Puppies
10. Oxygen

To balance the scales, Priebus followed up by providing a list of what the GOP supports:

1. Dog Bites
2. Telemarketing Phone Calls During Dinner
3. Yeast Infections
4. Sudden and Expensive Car Repairs
5. Impotence
6. Forgetting Wedding Anniversaries
7. Hell
8. Watching Fox News (see 7.)
9. Spontaneous Combustion
10.A Giant Meteor Striking the Earth and Exterminating All Life

Priebus concluded the press conference by deeming baseball, hot dogs and apple pie offensive and UnAmerican and promised that if voters returned Republicans to majorities in Congress and the White House this year, they would finally allow Satan back in the classroom.

Though I wish I was joking about this, the GOP has indeed come out against the concept of “good things”. They oppose tax fairness for all Americans as “class warfare”, criticize immorality as “opposing Free Enterprise”, protest helping the poor and needy as “enslaving people” and object to the refusal to turn everyone over the age of 65 into a cheap and plentiful food source for the 99% (“Soylent Greed”).

During the Superbowl, Chrysler presented an ad starring Clint Eastwood that basically expressed that though we’ve suffered and are suffering hard times, as Americans, we have the strength and will to come back.

This was of course an outrageous attack on Republicans. Karl Rove responded this way to it:

ROVE: “I was, frankly, offended by it. I’m a huge fan of Clint Eastwood, I thought it was an extremely well-done ad, but it is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising.”

Put through the GOP Translation machine:

ROVE: “How the hell are we supposed to win in November if Americans become hopeful and they see the truth that the economy is getting better? Anyone who tries to inspire hope and confidence in Americans or points out that things are improving is an enemy of the GOP. We need a desperate and angry nation that is fearful for the future if we want a chance of winning! I mean, we sure as hell aren’t going to win on substance or Mitt Romney alone!”

When the unexpectedly positive jobs report and the sharp drop in unemployment numbers to 8.3%, the lowest level since February 2009, was announced next week, how did Republicans respond to things getting better for the nation and most Americans?

REP. JEB HENSARLING (Chairman of the House Republican Conference): “Today is an indication of another failure of this president’s policies, 36 months in a row of 8 percent-plus unemployment.

REP. BILL FLORES: “The president’s team is gonna trot out their happy faces today. But the American people are gonna say, ‘not so fast.’”

MITT ROMNEY: “We welcome the fact that jobs were created and unemployment declined. Unfortunately, these numbers cannot hide the fact that President Obama’s policies have prevented a true economic recovery. We can do better.”

Reality and things getting better in America is clearly anti-Republican. Both are deeply offensive to Republicans and inspire a push back from Republicans that despair is what America is all about.

It’s no revelation that Republicans nearly always run on hate and fear. The Rovian strategy of Bush’s re-election wove the fear and loathing of gay marriage along with the certainty of a terrorist attack on America if a Democrat was elected. The McCain/Palin run was predicated on fear of a black, socialist Kenyan pal of terrorists taking over the White House and beheading Christians in the streets while making their children convert to Islam.

So here we are again in 2012 and once again, the campaign is again instilling fear of other nations and races (including that “feriner” Obama), instilling fear of the nation’s economy and social fabric being destroyed (by that “feriner”, socialist Obama) and instilling anger about things that are getting better by insisting that they are not getting better fast enough (thanks to that “feriner”, socialist, failure Obama).

There is no positive or hopeful view about America from the GOP. Romney may blather about how he “cares” about the middle class but he can’t talk about what specifically he will do to make things better for 99% of Americans. That’s because his budget plan would raise taxes by more than 60% on the poor.

What is surprising is how unsurprising this all seems to far too many Americans. It is positive to see that as of now, when Romney should be at his highest advantage over Obama, Obama is polling well ahead of Romney. However, 45% of those polled are supporting Romney and the negative and nihilist policies he represents.

How can this be? Are 45% of American voters closet super-villains? Do they really oppose truth, justice and The American Way? Of course not, there are a variety of reasons why people are supporting, ignorantly and against their own interests, the GOP as the party of Anti-Good.

There is of course the mindless GOP Base which would support steamrollers destroying their homes and all of their possessions if it was supported by the GOP. Then there are those who are racist,  hate that a black man is in the White House and want to do everything they can to replace him with a lying, uncaring and unprincipled white man to restore integrity to the office.

The group supporting doom and gloom in the form of The Republican Party that may be the most annoying is The Short Term Thinkers. The Short Term Thinkers use the fractured logic of, “Well, we may have had the worst recession since the depression, things may be getting better but as long as everything isn’t perfect for me today, we need a new President.” Such ignorance about the need for programs and leadership to become most effective and beneficial over time is astounding.

Would these same people expect to be able to save up a retirement nest egg in one year? Would they vote against evolution because it didn’t change things quickly enough?

Preceding the economic crash, Americans have been programmed by our corporately designed greed and self-indulgence-oriented society that “You can have it all…now!” There is a harmful lack of long term planning and commitment by Americans to big goals and an almost neurotic leaping back and forth from party to party based solely on wanting things now.
There is an extraordinary amount of wishful thinking and naivete as well, frequently believing the pie-in-the-sky promises of one party’s candidates to make everything better immediately…which appears especially ignorant after these same people have seen time and again that better times can’t be brought about by any politicians or party instantaneously.

Sometimes, the hobbled reasoning of these people is, “Well, I don’t like that things aren’t how I want them now so I’m just gonna vote against the party in power!” What is glaringly absent from the reasoning of such people is that they aren’t thinking about how much worse things could be under that specific alternative they would put in power by default.

If you’re unhappy with your car because it doesn’t go fast enough for you and just jump into any other car because it isn’t your current car, you could be trading a decent car for one that breaks down and sabotaging your ultimate goal, that is, safely arriving at your desired destination.

If one doesn’t explore and compare choices and just gives power to another entity based solely on rejecting the current entity in power, you can (and we have) indeed go from the frying pan into the fire.

There are those Short Term Thinkers who vote primarily on their immediate feelings and emotions, those who either refused to vote in 2010 or voted for Republicans out of spite for Obama and the Democrats not giving them the miracle they wanted.

VWA (Voting While Angry) is dangerous. Reason and critical thinking is abandoned. Such people not only cut off their noses to spite their face, they’ll cut off their own unemployment insurance as well, along with Social Security and Medicare. What these people care about is “getting even” and hurting the politicians they’re mad at…even though they may be harming themselves far worse than they have been. It’s irrational.

A political party that is based upon hate, fear and bad things happening to 99% of good people should be a cult, a small quirky minority that is nowhere close to being a mainstream party. There are only about 28% of voters that identify themselves as Republicans. That sounds about right.

Without those voting out of ignorance, emotion or disappointment at not having it all now, the GOP would be consigned to being the minority oddity that it should indeed be.

So maybe, the answer this year is to use their opposition to “good” against them, appealing to the good in these people, something the GOP is unable to do and perhaps a long term trend against those who root against “good” could become a longtime or even permanent majority.

And that could be very, very good indeed.

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Khirad
Member

Believe it or not, but Chuck Todd actually made salient point, half-kidding – whether he intended to or not.

‘With all these social issues back with a vengeance, it must mean the economy is really improving.’

After all, as we all know, when are culture wars the hottest? – when National Security and the Economy are gone, it’s the only old GOP standby left except for the new one of just being anti-Obama on absolutely everything (real and fictitious).

jjgravitas
Member
jjgravitas

Good point Khirad. It explains the sudden rise of Rick Santorum the family values nonsense he is spewing. The GOP can’t claim superiority on national security: they started two wars without being able to finish either of them or catch the guy responsible for pulling us into war in the first place. Obama is two for three, having ended the Iraq war and having finished off Bin Laden … he’d be three for three if he ends the Afgan war by Election Day. And the GOP can’t claim superiority in economics since the last time the last time they were in the White House they started with a booming economy and a budget surplus and finished with a collapsed economy and trillions of dollars in debt. And yet they somehow think they should be allowed to take over the Presidency again. On a family values ticket? Family values combined with racism, how do they manage that?

kesmarn
Admin

Another gem, AdLib!

I discovered this 1 minute summary of the GOP-Romney world view this morning: 😆

Caru
Member

Never let the good get in the way of the self-interest and greed.

jjgravitas
Member
jjgravitas

Good one, Adlib. Nice summary of what the GOP is all about. Too bad the folks in the middle of the country – the GOP’s base – can’t see the GOP for what they are. Their whole mission statement (admittedly) has been to make life as miserable as possible for the president and the rest of us and blame everything on the president, so that four years later we would vote the republicans back at the end of his term. We’ve been expecting them to do this all along.
One problem with that plan: it isn’t working! Jobs are being created, unemployment is going down, corporations have been discussing plans to bring outsourced jobs back to the USA.
Instead of helping them to rise, the GOP’s bubble of insane negativity is causing them to sink like a lead zeppelin.

choicelady
Member

AdLib – this is wonderful! Not only are they the hard and fast believers in the politics of NO, they are into the poltics of NAY. Nothing good EVER is allowed to be expressed if this horrible president, that Black Muslim Socialist community organizer and neo-commie did it.

i do not think this is all that recent. I cannot recall one single time when Reagan or either Bush admitted the Dems did anything well. The retreat into lying and posturing is scary – you cannot hold to account those creatures who shapeshift.

I keep hoping the vast majority of the American public will see through the Swift Boating of this president. He has out backs. Now we need to have his.

AlphaBitch
Member
AlphaBitch

Ha-lo, all. Does it count as VWA if I had a bumper sticker that said “I’m voting for F*CK YOU in 2004”? I meant it and I was an angry voter. A compassionate voter, I voted for Gerald Ford cuz of that tamale shuck choking thing. An angry voter, I would have voted for the GUY who likely invented mattress sized feminine hygiene products over W.

OK, time to check out. Sigh. Misses to you all, hugs as well. See you somewhere down the road when life gets back on track. Thinking of you always, peeking every now and then – AB

choicelady
Member

LOL!!!!! AB – you can do any damn thing you want because you really do get it and you make us crack up no matter what.

We miss you, too, dear heart. We’re here if you want us, here if you need us. And we laugh deliciously a lot because of you! Be well!

Kalima
Admin

Wonderful post AdLib, and if you want to see the dire consequences of VWA, all you have to do is follow the news coming out of the U.K. The inmates are running the asylum over there, doing things that we know for a fact have never worked for any other country, and governing by pulling ever increasingly ridiculous suggestions out of a hat. This is what we got from the anti-Blair, anti-Labour voters, they thought, though most of them didn’t think, that the Tories would change their spots. Had they spent just a few minutes researching the Tory history, they would have found the pattern of economic destruction, and the growing inequality between the filthy rich, the middle class and the poor. The Tories will end their days by leaving a legacy of more poor people than when they took office. That’s what VWA has done for the U.K., plus of course the fact that Cameron wants to continue Thatcher’s wet dream of privatizing our NHS, so that only rich people can stay healthy, while telling the rest of us to bugger off and die.

Perfect graphic btw. 🙂

foodchain
Member
foodchain

My first comment after assorted news today is this. Once we are finished with dinner, I hope to have more. (and I hope the image translates)
img

KQµårk 死神
Member

That deserves a PMSLPMSLPMSLPMSLPMSL

foodchain
Member
foodchain

Thanks KQ. It’s one of my favorites.

Chernynkaya
Member

Food- HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!

foodchain
Member
foodchain

Cher, I know: I dug this up out of my old “sent file”. I LOVE this. I thougt it sad that it wasn’t animated! 🙂

choicelady
Member

food – probably for the best! None of us could catch our breath for laughing!!!

choicelady
Member

OMG!!!! How AWFUL and how awfully funny!!!!

Artist50
Member
Artist50

Love the image and can only see it as Karl Rove who has appointed himself the de facto head of the Republican Party. Why people listen to this college drop out turd blossom, I will never understand. Also loved that Clint said anyone could use the ad, let’s hope the Dems have seized on that. How dare this nation have a message of hope – disgusting!

KQµårk 死神
Member

Great article AdLib.

I think both sides play this but there is no false equivalencies here, the Republicans are unprecedentedly worse. Meaning every day the set a lower standard for hoping America fails under Democratic rule. Worse they even change their positions just because Obama takes a position they once favored like tax cuts for the middle class. The worse instance of this was on Libya when the whole senate including Republicans in the Senate voted for a NFZ over Libya (albeit a non binding resolution). However then when Obama went to the UN and passed the NFZ with the UN security council they almost all decried it was wrong. You just cannot deal with people that cynical and intellectually dishonest. Anyone who has no problem throwing their own principles in a wood chipper just because the other side advocates them too are just beyond reasonable.

Of course you have the constant gloom and doomers on the ‘left’ like AOLHP that downplayed Friday’s positive jobs results just as much as the right wing. They obviously put their personal agendas and clicks and giggles before what’s good in America as well.

I guess the positive side is that even independents are starting to see this trend with Republicans but only when the economy shows improvement.

The other fortunate thing is the GOP are going to nominate a candidate who embraces all these obviously cynical contradictions in the GOP. Mittens has lied about the economy and at one time embraced the majority of issues Obama has and will campaign on in 2012. Don’t think for a minute Obama won’t remind him of that when debating him.

SueInCa
Member

Adlib
Excellent post. You know a few years ago(prob back in 2004) I did not think too much about how Republicans were so anti everything good. The 2008 election really opened my eyes. I could not believe the vitriol coming from the right. Whether or not it is true I heard that some republicans voted Dem in the primaries for Obama because they thought he would be easier to beat than Clinton. Based on the exceptionally close race between them I think those stories may be true. Then it backfired on them big time and the claws came out. I golfed with a guy who was a Republican during that time and he said he knew a lot of people who did that. He could not understand how so many “white” people could back Obama. He actually said white too. That round could not be over fast enough.

Their hatred has been brewing for three years now and they know their candidates are weak so they are lashing out and grabbing at any straw they can find. I can’t remember which talk show it was but they were talking about a study that linked intellect to the party you vote with and the less intelligent vote republican.

Think about it, Karl Rove did not have a college degree and Bush put him in, what, second in command at the White House? Intellect is not important to them and they court people who cannot think long term. It is all canned to them, there is no thinking outside the box. The simpler the better.

Chernynkaya
Member

As the election season goes on, I have almost come to think this whole polarization issue, i.e. the Manachean Battle of Good and Evil, is a trumped up illusion. (But this might just be that I’m having an uncharacteristically good day.)

Something just doesn’t add up. Poll after poll shows that the majority of the public is in favor of Obama’s policies, and maybe even to the Left of them on social issues–gay marriage and contraceptives, for example. Yet what we hear about is dominated by Fox viewers, leading us to believe that at least half the country is disgusting. I don’t know if polls are accurate, or if people even vote the way they poll, but votes are facts; polls are not.

All I know for sure is that Obama won decisively against McCain, who was more moderate than Romney. I also know for a fact that in 2010 voters went insane and/or stayed home, and that now polls say they are feeling remorse (Ohio voters regret electing Kasich, hate Boehner.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/02/o…)

I’m beginning to think it’s like the Tea Party scam, where the media made us believe they were a real force to be reckoned with, when in fact they were a corporate movement with only the same tired old haters we’ve always had among us–or about 10% of the population, if even that. So while I absolutely believe that there is a very significant percentage of voters who are stupid and pathological, I really wonder if there are as many as we are lead to believe. The MSM is in collusion to keep us divided–they regurgitate Fox talking points gleefully. On all MSNBC shows, hardly a day goes by when we aren’t treated to a Limbaugh clip. It just feels manipulative and manufactured–and I often fall for it too!

I cannot wait until November to find out if we have all been scammed by the media, or if we indeed live in a repulsive country.

KQµårk 死神
Member

Spot on Cher. You are exactly right about the Tea Party. This Republican primary contest has shown how utterly weak they are even in their own party they are less than a third of the voters.

I think the inflation came from the fact that Faux News conflated the teabaggers as those who are sympathetic to them added to the real teabagger activists.

I’ve come up with the answer and I use to think it was just cognitive dissonance but it’s not that simple. Now I think it has more to do with an honest internal conflict for many.

After the Teabaggers protests we all remember the signs ‘No guvment run healthcare. Don’t take away my Medicare’. Well with hard core baggers it is totally cognitive dissonance. They just can’t accept their ideology is contradictory to the reality of that sign. Those are your hard core Federalists who falsely believe State law should trump Federal law based on the Constitution.

But for the independents who lean to the right it’s more my latter argument of a internal conflict. They really do believe in limited government. But they know there are government programs that help people that they do like as well. These are the people Dems can reach and who poll favorably on Dem’s issues which takes them in the 50%-70% range.

My personal feeling is government needs to be the exact size it needs to be no bigger or smaller. With a country of over 330 million people and this size duh you are going to need a relatively big government. Right now the government is just too small to provide an adequate safety net. For the record, in Europe I think some governments are too big.

Most of all government needs to run efficiently and that’s the biggest reason I’m against Republicans. They run government poorly because they don’t believe in efficient government.

I think Obama could uniquely sell this argument about the size of government and him trying to make it more efficient is building political capital in that direction.

Chernynkaya
Member

Totally agree, KQ. There are some who are pragmatic conservatives too, and they are reachable. Good points.

I was just reading something from a Leftie purist whining about Obama’s SuperPac and thought, “How stupid are you? What a loser position–want Obama to open a lemonade stand to compete with the Koch’s half a BILLION?!” (Just venting about how much I loathe those leftie losers.)

KQµårk 死神
Member

My position on Obama signaling rich Dems to fund Democratic superpacs is it’s a little hypocritical of Obama sure because of his position against superpacs. But to get swift boated 100 fold by the Koch bothers just to be a purist, that’s just stupid. Like always Obama took the pragmatic approach and purists disregard the real world. That’s why Feingold lost in 2010. He became too much of an ideologue for WI voters.

Chernynkaya
Member

I posted this a few days ago, but ICYMI, here’s the original Swift Boat ad. It’s really powerful, and we can expect more like this–and worse!

choicelady
Member

Cher – this is bloody brilliant. I agree – we’re being scammed. Most people are not that knee jerk. To wit, a recent poll shows even CATHOLIC women are happy with Obama’s HHS decision on contraceptive coverage.

The drumbeat of “anti-Obama” is a serious, Swift Boat type problem thaks to Citizens United, but I truly believe it can be overcome with maybe fewer but far more memorable ads and info. Look – the Kochs threw everything INCLUDING the kitchen sink into WI and OH and lost BIG time. Two thirds voted AGAINST SB 2 in Ohio. That’s freaking amazing since that simply cannot be all public employees. They also threw out most of the trogolodyte GOP in WI – and all of this occurred with Koch money flowing like a never-ending stream.

Motto for this year? Yes, we CAN AGAIN!!

People want real solutions, real issues, real people. None of the candidates inspires confidence on the right much less with the center of Indies. What then is more worrisome is whether they will be challenged by good Dems and whether said Dems can win in the House and Senate.

Here is where a lot of our energies need to be focused. Get on board everybody!

Chernynkaya
Member

Thank you, C’Lady! I think the Komen uproar started to open my eyes. I SAW for myself what people think. More people than we were lead to believe pushed back HARD. We were lead to believe we are divided in half, and we are not. It’s like claiming that when 90% vs 10% are in disagreement, we are polarized. Uh, no! And now I see this contraceptive issue with Catholic institutions being a trumped up controversy by the Right AND all media. ALL media. (One caveat about that though: I did hear something that resonated, and that was that even Catholics who favor birth control will get tribal about what they may perceive as an attack on Mother Church. Hard to know.)

I know that the election will be hard-fought. (If you want, check out the video I posted below of the Swift Boat liars–it’s potent as hell!)It will get so ugly, most of us will be repulsed.

But the more I step back out of the horse race, I see that all the R’s have is outright lies. And I think if they really believed in their policies, they wouldn’t need to lie. If they thought that the public agreed with them, they wouldn’t need lies. They must know at some level that they do not have a platform that is acceptable. And in turn that tells me that we can win again–on the merits of the policies alone.

Of course, what 2010 told me is that people can freak out and go moron. But I think people have gotten “used to” the economy now in a way they didn’t in 2010–it’s not as scary, and even if they don’t see that it’s getting better yet, they are at least seeing that it’s stable. We must all pray hard for the economy.

And I love your motto: Yes we can AGAIN!

Chernynkaya
Member

Awesome, awesome, AdLib! I’m still reading, but here’s a short commercial break:

Romney’s Half-Time ad

Greta42
Member
Greta42

Outstanding post AdLib! You summarized very well the mindset of those in the GOP who see anything positive developing in the country as a danger to their goal of re-taking the White House and Congress. Rove’s angry reaction to a positive Ad aired during the Super Bowl reminds us of the quintessential gall of the man who caused so much damage to US elections through his dirty tricks and Rovian tactics.

Also really like the use of VWA -Voting While Angry and will borrow it liberally!