I vowed to make this blog non-political, but we live in such extraordinary times that I cannot resist commenting on what is happening. I will do my best to make this the last political statement I post here.
Never has the intellectual bankruptcy of the Republican Party been more apparent than it is now. Their idea of an intellectual is the self-proclaimed leader of their party, Rush, how low can you go, Limbo. He is a man who has never let a thought change an opinion or a fact interfere with a belief. In other words, he is the quintessential spokesman for the Republican Party’s current tactics. Rather than helping to cure the economic malaise, the Republicans have dusted off their credo from the days of the Great Depression: “If you can’t sit at the head of the table, piss in the soup!” The obstructionist tactics they employed at that time helped President Franklin Roosevelt get elected to four consecutive terms. And what did the Republicans learn from that? Well, they introduced the Constitutional Amendment that now prevents any President from getting elected to more than two terms.
It is no surprise that so many of the obstructionists are from the South. Although their bitterness over the Civil War would not let Southerners vote for a Republican, they were never comfortable with the economic theories or programs of the New Deal. In 1948 some very prominent Southern politicians formed a third party to oppose big government and desegregation. Those anti-government, socially conservative Dixiecrats won three Southern states in the Presidential election of that year. Harry Truman won the election in spite of them, but they had served notice that the South could no longer be taken for granted. The civil rights movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s finally caused the South to do the unthinkable and join the party of Lincoln. By the year 2000 George W. Bush could count on the solid support of the states in that region. During the last Presidential election, however, the vote in the South was surprisingly close, and the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, actually carried Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. Obviously, economic issues can trump social issues.
The governors who refuse to participate in the stimulus program are doing so at the expense of their constituents. Many of their constituents will realize that and vote accordingly. Whether this results in the Democratic Party winning more Southern states remains to be seen. Frankly, it does not matter. A Southern strategy simply will not work. The Republican Party will not gain any traction by insisting that the rest of the nation join them in embracing the fallacious economic theories that crashed in 1929 and are failing now. In fact, they will be committing political suicide. They might as well rename their party the Dixiecans.
The Republicans should remember that it took all of the prestige and popularity of General Dwight Eisenhower to bring their party to the center and make it viable after the Great Depression. Then, as now, their anti-regulation philosophy and trickle down economics had failed, and they had to accept many of the regulations and programs of the New Deal. The longer the Republicans continue to pander to the extreme right wing and obstruct the economic recovery the more important and difficult it will be for them to find an extraordinarily popular moderate who can move them to the center and convince a skeptical America that the Republican Party has become intellectually solvent.
One last comment: Them good old boys had two beers with George W., and he wrecked the car. They gleefully joined him in a ride that ended with a crash. The car will not fix its self. It is time for the Republicans to give some serious thought as to how they can repair it! They must learn from their errors and put the country first. They must act responsibly enough to assure the nation that they are a part of the solution rather than the problem.
