Doomsday is here! Remember when Ted Nugent called President Obama “a criminal” and denounced his “vile, evil America-hating administration” which is “wiping its ass with the Constitution.” “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” “If you can’t galvanize and promote and recruit people to vote for Mitt Romney, we’re done.” Well, Ted, I for one am eagerly waiting your next move. As expected, it’s not just Ted who’s gone off the deep end. Now many disenchanted Americans, relatives included, see a one day drop in the Dow as validation the wrong guy won the White House.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. The stock market drop on Wednesday was the byproduct of two events. 1. The election behind us, the Fiscal Cliff looms as fear of GOP non-cooperation will force another downgrading of the United State’s credit rating and 2. The European markets fell 2% when the European Central Bank President (Mario Draghi) expressed concerns for continuing weakness in the European economy for the foreseeable future. Regardless of who won the US election, this was inevitable. I’d like to ask those people, relatives included, who blame the one day plummet on the election outcome, to please explain the previous day’s 1% gain when most polls showed Obama was going to win reelection? I hear the crickets already.
Without going into all the complex details of financial markets, let me get to the heart of the matter. The GOP is in a temporary state of disarray. They know they have to move to the moderate center but continue to pander to their evangelical, racist base and of course grovel to all the billionaires who shelled out millions to get their puppet, Romney, elected. The GOP mastermind Karl Rove realized he was taking a shellacking on election night and was in rare form on Fox News. Megyn Kelly, when listening to Rove’s desperate plea to reconfigure Ohio numbers, even said, “Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better, or is this real?” Perhaps it was, by far, the funniest thing said on election night mainly because it came from a Murdoch broadcaster challenging the de facto strategic leader of the Conservative movement. He mentioned the money the big GOP donors dumped but naturally failed to mention his take off the top on all monies invested; he got his cut. His assumption America was snowed by Obama and would never come back out to support him in sufficient numbers was an unforgivable mistake and he knew it.
Conservatives got distracted by perceived ‘momentum,’ SuperPACS, and ignored real polling data and forgot the function of a political campaign: convincing voters you have their best interests at heart. You can’t ask some Latinos to self-deport and expect them to vote for you. Underestimating the resolve of Latinos, given their growing percentage of the population, was political suicide.
The DNA of these right wingers may be their Waterloo, as Jim DeMint so aptly phrased it. If you believe you lost the election because you weren’t “tough enough on abortion” or too moderate, as some truly believe, you are certainly facing peril as a party. The real sane voice in the GOP would tell you exactly what a coach of a championship team would say: you have to lose a few games to win the championship. The losses should tell these guys something, America is not terribly excited by a misogynist, bigoted agenda that threatens to reward the rich at the expense of the poor. Job creators and tax cuts create jobs is pure garbage propaganda that America has rejected. It is time to regroup and take a few hits before their credibility is restored.
The fiscal cliff will have to be avoided by Republicans abandoning their insane Tea Party base and coming to the table and acting like responsible legislators. Period. The Democrats have compromised as far as possible, numerous times, during President Obama’s first term and the time to tax the super rich at a fair level is at hand. A reasonable Republican may be a distant memory from Barry Goldwater’s era. He said, I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass, referencing the rise of the religious right hijacking the Republican Party, which it still does today. If they continue this doomsday strategy, it will be their “Rapture.” America is ready for Harry Reid’s suggestion of a compromise which will prevent our credit rating from taking an avoidable beating.
In a speech in Iowa yesterday, rising “star” and newly minted Creationist Marco Rubio, one of the GOP’s 2016 hopefuls, pretended to understand the challenges ahead. He said to a crowd in Iowa, “Now comes the hard part. America faces monumental challenges in putting people back to work, reducing our crushing debt and advancing our interests around the world.” Does anyone see a problem with this? He’s spouting the exact same party line: debt is our biggest concern and we need to embroil ourselves in more foreign entanglements. Naturally, he was alluding to Democratic policies as the cause of our woes even though he and his party know damned well they caused this crisis. They will be cut from the line-up and left off the playing field soon if they don’t openly change their losing strategy. If the past is any indicator, they will continue to be obstinate hardliners who will ultimately suffer the fate they so richly deserve: extinction.
