Tuesday, November 13, 2012

The hope. And then the change.




-- If you don’t like change, then you’ll like irrelevance even less.

Last Tuesday, November 6, the Republican Party and conservatives in the United States received an important message, loud and clear: You Lost. Any way you slice it, Republicans and conservatives lost.

To be more specific: You had your ass whipped.

President Obama has been elected by a majority of the American people – twice – and by a landslide in the Electoral College. Democrats picked up seats in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Sure, Republicans still hold their obstructionist majority in the House, but it’s now beyond question that the November 6 election served them notice: If you continue to be the Party of No, you will pay a significant price at the polls with voters who no longer share your regressive, discredited views concerning the U.S. economy, taxation of the rich, the middle class, the role of government, the environment, and a wide array of social issues ranging from gay rights to women’s issues to immigration for Hispanics.

In short, if you think the United States is still a “center right” country, as so many pundits have been fond of claiming for many years, you are dead wrong. This is a “center left” nation that decisively favors the views and positions of today’s inclusive Democratic Party at  the polling place.

If you think the word “liberal” is still a dirty word in today’s America, then you’d better reexamine the election results, the ballot measures and the political positions of those who have won office.

The fact is, if you don’t like change – and the Republicans clearly don’t – then you’ll really dislike the marginalized irrelevance to which you are headed.

Many politicians stated that the 2012 Election would be big and “consequential.” Fear-mongering conservatives were especially vocal in declaring that this election was a cataclysmic decision about freedom, liberty, the role of government in citizens’ lives and the future of America.

Guess what? They were right! The big races and the big decisions in this election have been won by individuals who firmly reject conservative views, the selfish trickle-down dogma of “you’re on your own.” ... Along with the bargain: Obamacare is still the law of the land. And in the next four years, Supreme Court nominations will not be made by a Republican president. Hallelujah.

It’s amazing the extent to which Republicans and conservatives have refused to recognize the long-term resentment of the American public toward the mess created by George W. Bush and the Republican Party for eight horrible years. Bush ran the United States into a ditch, fiscally, morally, ethically and politically. Exit polls last week showed that more than half of voters hold Bush responsible for the current state of the U.S. economy, not President Obama. ... Here is a Republican Party that would not allow Bush or any of his goons anywhere near their nominating convention in August, yet they could not recognize this fact.

Many Republicans and conservatives now think that all they need to do is run a better “ground game” to get out votes, run different ads, figure out effective "strategies." They think they simply need to “moderate” their tone, use different words, adopt a different veneer of communications, abandon their crazed incivility toward others. They think winning the Hispanic vote is just a matter of speaking differently and avoiding phrases like “self-deportation.” This is utter nonsense. Complete baloney. Stupidity.

It’s the content, stupid. The trouble with the Republican Party and conservatives is that their ideas stink. Their policy proposals are worse than “malarkey.” Their proposals are regressive, bigoted, ignorant and divorced from the reality of American lives. They favor the rich, the 1 percent of this New Gilded Age, and we all know it. They have nothing but disdain for nearly half the American population – the “47 percent” who supposedly “want stuff.” Their patronizing attitudes toward women pre-date those of the 1950s. Their attitudes toward, and plans for, numerous minorities including GLBT individuals are at best hypocritical and usually either unconstitutional or criminal. They demonize people, most notably the President himself, and think that no one is listening. If someone disagrees with their views, that person is automatically a "socialist." Worst of all: They want to “take this country back” – as though these fatuous, corrupt, manipulative and greedy white men were somehow “entitled” to this vast and wonderful land that was never theirs to begin with. Such despicable arrogance.

This election has handed Republicans and conservatives their richly-deserved comeuppance, whether or not they ever climb out of their Fox News echo-chamber and admit it. A party as dishonest as the Republican Party, a movement as absurdly hysterical and regressive as the conservative movement, deserve a long period of wandering in the desert.

It wasn’t so long ago that one of the Republicans' discredited standard-bearers, the semi-quasi-half-assed-former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, was fond of asking, with her cynical sneer, “How’s that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?” … Well, eminently irrelevant Sarah, the hope and the change are working out quite nicely for us, thank you very much.

First the hope. And now the change. And we will continue to win.


(Text) Copyright © 2012 The Slab blog





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17 comments:

  1. Beautifully put, thank you. Now some change.

    -Gregg

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  2. That was a wonderful essay. Your writing is superb.

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  3. There's a reason the symbol of the Democratic Party resembles a jackass .

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  4. That diatribe is the entire Obama presidency in a nutshell . All noisy rhetoric , no answers .

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  5. The source is The Slab -- I wrote it. Proudly so.

    And I am not surprised to see that the negative comments are useless and baseless.

    The Slabber

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  6. Damn right. The Republicans lost, this election was a definitive and unarguable repudiation of their ideas.

    Should the Democrats lose an election some day, we'll chalk that up to something else. Too much corporate advertising or something.

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  7. Now that was beautifully stated and I agree 100% with both the sentiment and your analysis.

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  8. Beautifully stated! I agree 100% with both you analysis and the sentiments.

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  9. Is Italy among the top ten? I doubt it, but if she is, then certainly she's the only one currently not governed by liberals, as you call them in America. Here we call them "progressisti" (people who want progress).

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  10. The Republicans are attracted to the 1% because that's where the money is; I don't think they can see beyond the lucre.

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  11. Maybe now..perhaps.. The Republican Party has heard the cry: 'GET OUT OF OUR BEDROOMS!' We can only wait until the next person running for office mentions the word 'rape' in almost any context. - Montana Cowboy

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  12. Bush may have ran us into a fiscal ditch however Obama is digging us into a fiscal grave .

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  13. Very well put and Hurrah for the USA!

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  14. Nicely put but, after some immediate soul searching, the GOP is already wavering back to their extremist ideology.

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