Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Republican party: the world is watching

All these Republicans, if they want to avoid being tarnished with the same brush, need to repudiate this racism being propagated so brazenly and confidently. There is no place in America for this sort of attitude. If you don't repudiate it, you'll be tarnished as a racist yourself. Really, it's these sorts of divisive acts which can destroy a nation, gut it, from the inside. This unanswered hate is creating serious divisions among political parties, state populations, families, etc. Claiming these are the actions of a few bad apples won't fly. The Southern Strategy, popularized by Republican strategist Kevin Phillips asserted that because of the Democrats' support of Civil Rights, they would be less attractive to white southerners when previously white folks in the South had been a key Democratic constituency. In order to increase their appeal to white southerners, Republican strategists decided to employ racist, hateful, but somewhat subtle, means of playing on white peoples' fears.

David Frum, one of W's speechwriters, in the wake of the passage of the healthcare, wrote that Republicans had listened to the most extreme voices in their party in failing to attempt to make a deal with Democrats on healthcare and putting all their eggs in one basket - staking a huge portion of their short and near-term electoral outlook on ONE ISSUE. By taking such a hard tack, they gave themselves no wiggle room through which they might make some compromise that would allow them to take some action that would allow them take some credit for the health care legislation. But they didn't reject the extremism but made a Faustian bargain instead-gambling that they could "defeat" health-care reform - as if being the gatekeepers for the health-care industry is more important than ensuring that kids don't die in childhood - and now that they've lost, they have no tangible results from this Congress to show to their constituents. The party leaders' failure to condemn the disgraceful strategies emanating from these Tea Partiers' speaks to the tolerance Republican "leaders" have for the tea party ideas.

They might not really agree with some of the disgraceful things that Tea Partiers and others have said, but they are happy to take advantage of the increased enthusiasm for Republican, and Republican-friendly, ideas which the Tea Partiers have generated by turning the media's attention to their regressive gatherings. Frum says that the party elders made a mistake in failing to reject the hell-bent, extremist, Republican strategy on health-care. The longer Repubs fail to reject such disgraceful actions from Teabaggers, the more I have to conclude that the Republicans don't disagree with them.

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