There is a magical mirror in blunderland. It reflects the nihilistic, fearful image of the GOP. It is the Republican Party’s distorted view of the world. “That’s not us,” they cry. “What you’re seeing can’t be us. One look at us will tell you that. We look like the men on the money. We look like the men who set up this great democracy and marched boldly into the future. They created a living document called the Constitution. The fact that the document can be changed allowed those nasty liberals to extend the franchise to people who are not white male property owners. Since slavery was an important part of the financial structure of a powerful special interest it took a civil war to abolish it. We suppose that abolishing slavery was something we needed to do. After all, it was the Democrats defending that interest. But the struggle did not end there. Those damn liberals joined the Democratic Party, and they transformed it. They supported the civil rights movement, and the civil rights movement went much farther than we ever intended when we abolished slavery. Now we have a black President. That’s right, a black President! He wants to make more changes for the benefit of all citizens regardless of their race. Well, he won’t succeed. We will block him because the very image of him being our President tells us there has already been too much change.”
This strident and irresponsible obstruction is evident in the battle over health care reform. The Republicans caused a long delay by negotiating in bad faith, even to the point of opposing many of the things they had once advocated. They also used every procedural device they could think of to block the needed reform. They fought to preserve the insurance industry’s death panels, which consisted of actuaries and policy makers who denied medical coverage on the flimsiest of pretenses. And they hypocritically did this while falsely accusing the Democrats of trying to set up bureaucratic death panels. The Republicans felt comfortable doing this because they knew that very few people would actually read the proposed legislation and a large number of people would not know who to trust. Change always involves some risk. The insurance industry’s death panels are what we had and what we knew.
The Democratic Party has changed that. They managed to pass a health care reform bill over the unanimous opposition of the Republican Party. The bad news for the Republicans is that the bill prohibits the insurance industry’s death panels, and people like that prohibition. Many pundits are now predicting that the benefits of this reform will make it a prime example of the blunder the Republicans are committing by opposing virtually everything this President and the members of his party are trying to accomplish. Whether the pundits are proven right about that depends on how well the magical blunderland mirror distorts the image of the Republican Party’s unconscionable effort to make this President fail.
The Republicans are now insisting that they did not oppose the good things in the bill. “We were opposed to health care reform because of our concern about the federal deficit,” they say. They dismiss the fact that most of the deficit was created when they were in power. “A deficit is still a deficit, and it is bad.” All right, so the bill the Democrats passed actually reduces the deficit, but just look at how it does that. It repeals George W. Bush’s huge tax cuts for the wealthy. It does not matter that those tax cuts were largely responsible for turning a surplus into an outrageous deficit. “Taxes are taxes, and no one likes taxes,” the Republicans say. “We will repeal those evil taxes!” Of course doing that will require them to gain control of Congress and win another Presidential election, but a promise is a promise. It is not the fault of the Republican Party if the people do not give them that power anytime soon, or if the Democrats act like Republicans by filibustering such a repeal. It does not matter if reinstating those tax cuts increases the deficit either. “The damn Democrats should have thought about that when they passed that expensive health care reform,” the Republicans will say.
See how the magical mirror works. It is really powerful. Its distortions are capable of hiding a multitude of sins. After suffering devastating defeats in the last Presidential election, the Republicans decided to tap the negative energy of their right wing fanatics. They are doing this by fear mongering and making untruthful contentions about the Democrats and everything the Democrats are trying to do. Yet the Republicans deny that they are the ones who are inciting the violence or the threats of violence. Instead they are trying to convince us that spitting on lawmakers and shouting racial and homophobic epithets are just the actions of a few bad apples and a normal part of the political process. Using this logic means that calling for session from the union and for the violent overthrow of our government are also just the actions of a few bad apples and a normal part of the political process. It is just watering the tree of liberty, don’t you know? Silly me, I thought our Constitution provided a system in which we said it with ballets rather than bullets.
Do not misunderstand what I am saying. I am not accusing the Republican party of supporting attempts to succeed from the union or violently overthrow our government. What I am saying is that pandering to the fears of the lunatics empowers them. By doing this and by refusing to honestly address any of the real issues, the Republicans are ignoring their responsibilities as a major political party. Republican Congressman Cantor even blames the victims for the violence. When House Democrats reported vandalism of their offices, hate mail, abusive phone calls and other incidents after the health care vote, Congressman Cantor said: “It is reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain. To use such threats as political weapons is reprehensible. By ratcheting up the rhetoric, some will only inflame these situations to dangerous levels. Enough is enough. It has to stop.” I suppose this means that rape victims also incite the violence committed against them. Sadly, there are people who still believe that. I reject that flawed logic in regard to victims of rape and in regard to victims of political acts of violence. I find it outrageous that Congressman Cantor would stoop to such flawed reasoning, if you can call it reasoning.
In regard to the looking glass, all I can say is that Alice returned from her wonderland. Hopefully, what the independent voters of this nation will say with their ballets is that it is now time for the Republican Party to return from their blunderland. All democracies embrace the concept of the loyal opposition. If either party vilifies the other to an extent that it incites violence or makes reasonable compromises impossible, the democracy is threatened. We the people must insist that our politicians act responsibly, and we must vote them out of office when they refuse to act responsibly. That is how a democracy is supposed to work.
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