Dear Republicans,
Today a woman returned a pair of shoes to the shoe department. Thinking she was being a typical fickle female, she provided her so called rationale.
"Since Obama was re-elected, I'm not sure that I'm going to have any more money and the government is spending too much money." As if Obama wasn't President 3 years ago, or when ever she bought the shoes. This is the logic of the Republican Party...
Let this absorb into your small minds:
Barack Obama was re-elected President of the United States of America on November 6th, 2012, and the world is still spinning on it's axis. For two whole days, people have been mourning the Romney/ Ryan loss and have questioned what went wrong. Everything was in place for a Republican win of the White House and a possible Senate pickup. There was a vulnerable president, a struggling economy, a still too high unemployment rate, a Supreme Court decision that allowed carte blanche in corporate campaign spending, and a moderate GOP candidate from a blue state with a background in business ... with perfect hair. Republicans could not have scripted a better scenario in the lead-up to Tuesday's election.
However, following an election in which absolutely no Republican momentum was capitalized on, it is apparent that the GOP has much deeper concerns than an inability to win swing states. Republicans lost women, Latinos, and young people by double-digits. Why? Well, there is a very simple explanation.
1. The Tea Party
The tea party advocates for change so long as everything remains the same. Its as if being qualified or sane has become overated with this group. When I was younger, Republicans were the party of business, the Gordon Gecko's or Pat Bateman's if you will. They spoke of fiscal responsibility, raw capitalism, federal sentencing guidelines, drug wars, pragmatism, rationalism, science, math, economics
(trickle down), education, and true American exceptionalism. Then the 80's happened and as a response to homosexuality and aids, the christian right hijacked the party and made it more and more extreme. It became apparent that in order to win elections, you had to pander to this group of people on more and more social issues while unfettered spending went unchecked. Finally, the group became so extreme and anti- intellectual that the Patron Saint of conservatism, Ronald Reagan, whose entire Presidential record has been re-imagined to seem happier and more Pollyana-ish than it really was, isn't even a conservative anymore. There are now a set of litmus tests to prove how conservative a person is and if one shows apathy, they are labeled a
RHINO, Republican in Name Only, and are almost booted out of the party.
When the party leaders started sending out blatant dog whistles and unwilling to reign in the Limbaugh's, Ted Nugents and Donald Trumps of the world, they wrote their own fate. They also signaled to the extremes that it is okay to scapegoat people of color, Hispanics and gays as being the reason for the financial meltdown and the decay of traditional family values.
The language and tone of the tea party was full of hate, vitriol and represented the worst that America had to offer. When people lament about how Obama has taken away their fundamental rights of free speech or their second amendment rights to bear arms, I wonder if they have so short a memory that they forget all the times people hung chairs, hung dolls that represented the President, called the President or the First Lady a monkey, depicted them both as monkeys and sent them out as email Christmas cards, spat on Senators during the healthcare vote, pondered the use of second amendment remedies, claimed the founding fathers ended slavery, or that humans were being mated with mice and they had fully functioning brains. What about carrying guns to protest rallies, and blaming every national tragedy as Gods judgment for gays, abortion and whatever else. The list of crazy goes on and on.
If the Republicans ever want to be taken seriously again, they have to disconnect themselves from this fringe crazy wing of the party. Their views do not fall in line with the rest of the country, instead its closer to a totalitarian dictatorship, similar to the Taliban. Andbecause of them, they lost seats in the Senate, possible control of the Senate and millions of dollars spent on campaigns nationwide. To let the tea party hold the reigns for another cycle is party suicide.
2. Culture War
The Republican Party is a party that is polarized and is either unwilling or unable to address the changing demographic in this country. White people are no longer a majority which prompted the rise of the tea party in the first place. Nothing has changed since Obama took office, he is Bush lite, except more articulate. People whine and say that he is tough on business because he hurt their feelings by calling them
"fat cats", even though they have made record profits in his administration.
68% of white people voted for Mittens, he won
17% of the Hispanic vote and
7% of the black vote. If Republicans ever want to be electorally viable, they need to get the Hispanic vote up to about
40%. However, that won't happen with telling Hispanics that they should
"self deport", they are lazy, coming up with the most asinine laws where they can be jailed and deported just for looking Hispanic or speaking Spanish. Sticking Marco Rubio on a ballot won't do the trick, they need to do some actual thinking and real reformation of Immigration policies, otherwise, they will be dead in the water as a political party.
3. War on Women
As Soon as the tea party freshmen took control of the House, they went on a war of the uterus, despite the fact that they campaigned on the debt. It was abortion, the redefinition of rape, rape, rape, rape, and more rape. The very people that screamed about no government intrusion had no problem with government intrusion on my uterus and who people slept with. That logic always seems to escape social conservatives...
Republicans made argument after argument about the sanctity of life and that rape was either a gift from God, another form of conception, akin to pregnancy out of wedlock, or that the human body had ways of
"shutting that thing down" if it were deemed legitimate. As a result, every creepy creeperton that made rape statements lost their bid for re-election, inevitably costing them a possible majority in the Senate. It appears us women in the electorate did have a way to shut that thing down, meaning the failed campaigns of all those residents of crazy town.
It's time to let go of the social conservatism, and focus on fiscal conservatism, period. Morality can not be legislated, no matter how hard you try, unless you live in a theocratic society. They say they want to live in democratic and free society, unless it relates to sex, relationships, drugs, or religion.You know what, that's not truly a free society, and you can't have it both ways. Everyone isn't Judeo-Christian and doesn't share those so called values, whatever those are. For the record, Jesus was a socialist...
4. Republican Obstructionism- Party of No
As soon as the Republicans took control of the House, their sole goal was to deny Obama a second term. Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader, famously said that was his only agenda. Category 5 Moron Michelle Bachmann, made that her harpie war chant,
"One term president." Instead of doing the work they were elected to do, they played political games, dabbled in birtherism, demanded to see birth certificates, called Obama a terrorist, a communist, a socialist, blamed him for everything from WWI to the rain. They perpetuated the
Us. vs. Them mentality that permeated and festered throughout the not so intelligent electorate. By elevating the likes of Allen West, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, there was no working ability to have the mythological bi-partisanship. It was nothing more than trying to score political points for the political vacuum that is the Republican punditry.
5. Living in a Fantasy World
Republicans as a whole hate facts. Or should I say, they change their rhetoric when it's politically convenient. Most Republicans are as socialist as the Left. While not as socially liberal as the left—not advocating equality, gay rights, feminism, etc., etc.—Republicans have proven every bit as fiscally liberal with the exception of the last year or so. But try to get one to admit that social security and medicare are socialist programs along the lines of Obamacare, and they’ll dance and dodge all day! It was Bush II who created medicare prescription drug coverage at the cost of $550 billion, and only nine Senate republicans opposed.
Public schooling is a socialist institution, paid for like a social welfare scheme, where socialist teachers teach socialism to conservatives’ kids. It was designed as an anti-conservative institution and operates openly as an anti-conservative institution. Yet most conservative parents still mock homeschooling and refuse to put their kids in even a private school. Some Christians argue they’re salt and light—
”we just need prayer back in schools!” The only prayer any kid should be praying in school is
“Mom! Dad! Please! Get me out!”
There is no such thing as private property as long as property taxes and the threat of liens exist. Bad-mouthing Obama’s socialism rings hollow until you pressure your state, county, and municipal officials to abolish property taxes. Of course, you’d also have to argue against public schooling as well, for about
75% of property taxes go to pay for public schools.
Republicans were the original spend-and-tax, big-government Progressives, and remain so today. The same Republican men who nationalized the military, in order to fund their progressive ideals, created, promoted, and signed into law the Sixteenth amendment (national income tax) which had the side-effect of rendering the IRS a permanent institution. So, the tea party is in effect protesting itself. I told you they weren't the brightest bulbs in the box...
6. The Party of Stupid
Why is ignorance celebrated? The Republican party has steadily dumbed itself down to the lowest common denominator. They deny global warming, evolution, coined the terms "legitimate rape", and "death panels". The believe the Bible is 100% literal, that the earth is 6,000 years old, humans and dinosaurs co-existed even when there is fossil evidence that proves that this didn't happen. When did they abandon common sense, logic and embrace ignorance and take pride in it. They even nominate the dumbest candidates they can find and call them "authentic" while calling educated people "elitist". Seriously?! Elitist for having a college education and using proper English. Sorry for not wanting to have Honey Boo Boo as the titular head of the party and you shouldn't want to either.
The problem was that we saw the Republicans for what they really were and it was a right-wing party that did not reflect the rest of the electorate. Politics is tribal, but surrendering the centre-ground can be ill-afforded in any election. The GOP may have targeted the blue collar and the religious vote, but its policy towards immigration, the economy and women saw it ostracize a huge proportion and increasingly important section of the electorate: Hispanics and women. Suicidal when one looks at the make-up of the swing states.
This is a party that has placed ideology ahead of electability and fitness to govern. Ultimately this is why you failed and failed spectacularly. But buck up. We survived 8 years of Bush and conversely you will survive 8 years of Obama.
