GOP Shutdown Postmortem

Standard & Poor’s estimates the Federal Government Shutdown of 2013 cost the economy $24 billion.

By comparison, NASA’s budget is $16.6 billion. We're no longer a nation reaching for the stars.

Politics in the US is busted. It's a sad state of affairs when a small but well-funded band of delusional opportunists and hate-filled nincompoops can orchestrate a bogus crisis for political theater of the absurd. Worse yet, both political parties use this theater to stuff their war chests.

It was shameful how many emails sullied my in-box from the DNC or PACs attempting to convert the daily fear & loathing fomented by the GOP into donations.

January 2015

The 113th United States Congress will prove to be one of the most ineffectual in history, particularly the ridiculously gerrymandered US House of Representatives. The Republican Party, and its self-serving leadership, are to blame.

Today's GOP is a small tent political party bereft of rational thinking, and burdened by vitriolic hatred and an irrational fear of the common good. The US will be shackled to the 113th Congress until January 3, 2015.

Let us count the days until November 2014.

November 2014

Come November 2014 many of us will have the privilege and responsibility to vote out all of the delusional opportunists and hate-filled nincompoops who held our country hostage during the Shutdown of 2013.

REFERENCES

• Here’s How Much The Government Shutdown Cost The Economy, by Eliana Dockterman, Time, October 17, 2013.

Enfeebled SS GOP

Bruno Gianelli from
The West Wing

I saw The West Wing episode where it was revealed that the sleazy Democratic political operative Bruno Gianelli had gone over to the dark side. We learn that Bruno is scheming and spinning for the Republican presidential candidate.

Bruno's challenge is considerably tempered by the fact that his candidate is a moderate. Yes, a moderate Republican - the kind of Republican that progressives like me pine for. Yes once upon a time there were electable moderates in the Republican Party.

The moderate Republican in Bruno's case despises the one-issue religious right who have hijacked reason and compromise from conservative discourse and have limited the flexibility of Republican members of Congress to negotiate and cut deals with their Democratic colleagues.

The tone of this year's Conservative Political Action Conference seems to be a re-run of the small-minded, hate-spewing dogma that dominated the Republican side of the 2012 Presidential election. Nothing has changed in dark and empty void that is the Republican brain trust. Both leaders and followers are inexplicably disconnected from reality. Party leaders are compelled to continually pander the basest of their base - The Hate Wing.

Costa Concordia. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

I liken today's Republican Party to a enfeebled luxury cruise liner taking on water. It is a luxury liner because it is an an extraordinarily well-funded vessel.

Some of the best minds on the right rely on the same tired bromides. I don't see shop-warn, extreme right-wing talking points as a winning formula for the GOP in the years to come.

How do Republican strategists fix this? How does a political party turn anti-people policy positions into something people can warm up to enough to support?

I would like to see a savvy political operative, someone like Bruno's character, in charge of the RNC, rather than a sniveling, incompetent lightweight like Reince Priebus. I don't see how the SS GOP luxury liner doesn't list and sink. On every issue of the day, Republicans have forced themselves to champion the unpopular position. How is this sustainable?

Part of me revels in watching Republicans do and say all the wrong things at every turn. However as a pragmatic problem solver, I'm very curious about The Fix.

GOP Animus Outed

I concur with the GOP's unofficial ministry of propaganda that Mitt Romney is, at best, a sub-optimal Presidential candidate.

However, Mitt Romney's metastasizing campaign says more about the message than the messenger. The oft overlooked story of the 2012 election cycle is this:

Once the animus and vitriol of today's GOP party slithers into public scrutiny, whether by words or deeds, we find the GOP vision for the country is wholly unpopular.

Scott Brown's staffers making war whoops and tomahawk chops in apparent
reference to challenger Elizabeth Warren's Cherokee heritage

From Todd Akin's inexplicable legitimate rape statement to Scott Brown's campaign staffers tomahawk chopping to belittle their opponent's claim to ethnic origin -- these egregiously insensitive, tone-deaf spectacles are not gaffs. Rather, they are the unvarnished expression of:

The GOP's regressive, hate-filled, anti-people world view

Few would argue that the GOP has been hijacked by wing nut nincompoops like Grover Norquist and Paul Ryan, whose political philosophy and vision for the country, by definition, exclude the best interests of large blocks of voters (e.g., women, seniors, students, Latinos, gays, etc.).

The GOP animus has been outed in 2012.

It is not so much that "Thurston Howell" Romney is a coin-operated doofus, as it is that the GOP's vision does not serve a majority of the people.

REFERENCES

• Wikipedia (8/19/2012). Todd Akin 'legitimate rape' and pregnancy comment controversy.
• YouTube Video (9/22/2012), Scott Brown staffers do "Indian war whoop", "tomahawk chop".