mistake by doobybrain, on Flickr
Go Republicans! Go! You just keep doing what you’ve been doing this year, and by early 2013 you won’t have to worry so much about working on the problems of the nation. You will have lots and lots of time to spend with your families and at cushy jobs as lobbyist for the remaining few Republicans in the House and Senate.
After a month that has seen not one, not two but four Democratic wins in various special and regular elections that were supposed to be cake walks for Republicans, last night it was topped off with a Democrat beating a Republican in one of the reddest of gerrymandered-to-be-red districts in the entire North East.
Still, I know you guys. I have been watching you for a very long time and I know that today is not going to be about lessons learned. Nah. Today is going to be all about rationalizations found. You’ll say that it was the third party guy (though of course that does not explain losing the other four elections you expected to win). You’ll say it was outside money (which of course ignore the million or so your outside money groups spent, nice investment there Karl!). You’ll say it is anything but what it really is.
Why are you losing where you should be winning? Especially since you keep saying the American people on behind you? It is pretty easy really. You’re policies and the way you talk about them make you look like a bunch of mean assholes who want to help the rich and stick it to the poor at every turn. This has the added problem, for you, of being true.
Looking beyond the fact that no one outside of your donor circles (and maybe not all of them) is keen on ending Medicare and turning it into a voucher program that will not pay enough for care and then using that savings to give the wealthy more tax breaks, there is a host of other issues and actions that your caucus has undertaken.
Just look at yesterday. While they are still searching for the dead in Joplin and Oklahoma was taking a devastating hit from at least three EF-4 or -5 tornado’s, the House Majority Leader, Eric “Hair Helmet” Cantor, was saying that he did not think there would be disaster relief for Joplin unless the money was offset in spending cuts.
Didn’t anyone think that holding help for one group of Americans hostage to cutting programs for other groups was going to be a loser? I know that Republicans are all about being selfish and that elected Republicans think that everyone in the country is like that, but we as a people tend to pull together when there is trouble and anyone that gets in the way of that, is likely to be considered an asshole. Keep it up Majority Leader Cantor!
b
Then there is was the House hearing with Elizabeth Warren. The Chair of the House Oversight Subcommittee Rep. Patrick McHenry did something that is pretty rare in Congressional hearings, he actually accused Ms. Warren of lying about the agreement for the time she would spend with the committee. It is not like he had not been on CNBC that morning accusing her of lying about her role in advising the State AG’s on the mortgage fraud cases, but it one thing to say it on a news program it is quite another to say it on the record in Congress.
Ms. Warren was suitably stunned by the Representatives churlishness. It goes down as another loss of decorum in Congress akin to the “You Lie!” incident during President Obama’s speech about Health Care Reform. You know, Republicans, it might seem like it makes you look tough to do this kind of thing, but the reality it makes you look like school yard bullies. I say go for it!
By now this all has to sting a little. And there are not a lot of rationalizations left that can excuse away all of these events. Still I think I know where you’ll go next! Way back to 1991, when the Democrats only had Paul Tsongas as a presidential candidate at this point, then went on to win the White House and extend Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress. I have heard rumblings like the with your problem with a good candidate to lead your party this cycle.
The problem there is that you are not looking at one of the memes that really hurt the then President Bush and the Republicans generally. Namely that the Republican party was mean and callus. It was something that your party spent an entire year trying to play down to little success.
Now you are facing the same kind of issue. And it is not just Medicaid either. See, a story that is going to break shortly is that your budget cuts a program that feeds many poor women and children in this nation. It is called Special Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children or WIC . This program currently helps about 9 million low income women and children and has been running for the last 15 years. If memory serves, Republicans, that means that it passed your House back in the heyday of the so-called Republican Revolution.
Now your Party is ready to cut funding for it by most of a billion dollars. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities says this will mean that the Republicans will kick 325,000 to 475,000 moms and kiddies off of a program that helps make sure that they don’t starve in the richest country on the planet. From that article:
Unlike other key low-income nutrition programs, such as SNAP (formerly called food stamps) and school lunches, eligible WIC recipients have no entitlement to benefits. If funds are insufficient, eligible applicants are put on a waiting list for services.
See? This is the real clencher here. The moms and babies on this program don’t have other entitlement programs to fall back on, they just go on a waiting list and hope that Chicklettes make a good dinner until they an get in the program. How do you think you are going to look on top of all the other overreach when this story hits the news?
Now, I am the last person you should take advice from. I admit that I am totally committed to your downfall of both your party and the heinous ideology it springs from. Still I am going to give you the advice that serves my purpose. Don’t change a thing! Keep going like you are going! Stay the course! If you can rationalize what you have already done and still sleep at night, hell, there is no reason for your party to stop being hateful and stingy and so deep in the pockets of people like the Koch bothers that your offices have a dent where their testicles push in, but don’t let that deter you!
It is only another year or so and this will all be over. You will know what the real opinion of the American people is, and you’ll have lots and lots of time to think about it once you and your party is relieved, again, of any real responsibility for governance.
The floor is yours.