The Republican Party is headed down the wrong path.
Conman Karl Rove and Conman Dick Cheney carry flames fueled by Presidential Conman George Bush, Conman Sean Hannity, Conman Ann Coulter, Conman Bill O'Reilly, and Conman Rush Limbagh. Their flames light an all too familiar path for America; if we continue to follow these flames the morning sun will reveal a sad reality of regression to a pre-civil war America. Fortunately for the real patriots of our nation - liberals and conservatives alike who work hard to better themselves, their children, and their country - the fuel of white supremacy is running low.
White supremacy is a phenomenon of entitlement; it occurs when subsequent generations of wealth and power assume positions of wealth and power by virtue of "birthright" rather than "performance." An inability to perform combined with a desire to do better drives subsequent generations of wealth and power to undertake increasingly unethical and unlawful actions to acquire more wealth and more power. It follows that two generations removed from Lincoln's Gettysburg address, you do not have to be white to be a white supremacist, and you do not have to be black to be a slave to it.
After eight years of domestic and foreign policy spearheaded by the Republican party, our country is left in shambles - economically empty, socially backwards, and far more vulnerable to terrorism than we were prior 9/11. The marketing and PR spin machine of the Republican Party is working overdrive to diffuse and transfer blame to the left and sabotage the policy undertaken by the Obama administartion to stimulate our economy and unite our country. Karl Rove designed this machine and keeps it well oiled despite the ever increasing opportunity cost to America. The price of living divided in the United Sates of America continues to rise.
To look at the big Republican party picture, you may note one consistent trend: Opposition. In the recent Presidential election, for example, we saw two campaigns for "change;" only the strategy of the Republican party, when scrutinized, ran almost exclusively on oppostion to the Democratic party. Besides cutting taxes and remaining at war, we heard far too little Republican party policy and far too much Democratic apocolyptic mumbo jumbo. If you listend only to Republican Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, you might think that the Senator Osama Terror Hussein of Illinois were running on the Democratic ticket. As President Obama has quickly revealed himself to be the President of the people far more than Presidential Conman George W. Bush, the Republican party has been careful to sabotage the policy and stand by the man.
What the Republican party lacks, above all, is a cogent policy argument that comprehensively stands up to scrutiny and succeeds in practice. Even under President Reagan himself, Reaganomics - the cornerstone of all Republican policy - fails in practice. Reagan's economic policies inflated the national deficit from 700 billion to 3 trillion; Reagan himself called this new debt the "greatest dissappointment" of his presidency.
The failure of the thin platform of the Republican party in practice reduces their criticism to polemics. According to Wikipedia.com, "polemics is the practice of disputing or controverting religious, philosphical or political matters. It is often written specifically to dispute or refute a position or theory that is widely viewed to be beyond reproach. The word is derived from the greek word polemikos which means 'warlike,' 'hostile.'" Perhaps betting on widespread American stupidity, Ann Coulter is a self-described "polemicists." I guess polemics necessarily run deep in a party for Government that runs on a position, in the end, determined to destroy Government.
Since you can't legitimately run for an office that you're bent on destroying, you must make people think you stand for something different. Enter Karl Rove, and his blasphemous marketing machine. The machine is conceptually simple, designed to channel packages of misinformation, wrapped in themes of patriotism, freedom, and morality, to the public for consumption. Inherently the packaging often touches a nerve among a cross section of our country where indvididuals work ever harder for ever less; politicians generically call this part of the country "middle America."
So pretty is the packaging that we feel too often ungrateful (perhaps even unpatriotic) to question what's inside. Those who open the package often find nothing. There is a void in "middle America"; I know this void well because I grew up in it. The void is as much a part of me as my desire is to fill it with something that is real and meaningful. This void should not be confused with stupidity, a hypothesis occasionally pushed by glib and untimately small minded liberals. The void occurs in the absence of opportunity. The Rovian marketing and pr machine pumps this void full of empty packages devoid of meaning and often full of hostitility. It gives people stuck in the void many things to fight against (terrorism, homosexuality, abortion, gun control) but little to fight for (opportunity).
For far too long, Republican hopefuls campaign not to govern but to win. These campaigns are won by pitting one party necessarily against another on issues that in the end are of little consequence for those that fight against it. This is polemics in practice. And when our city falls from its great hill, we should not blame polemics, we should blame the polemicists behind these polemics.
We've been fighting for eight years, and what we've been fighting for has become all to obvious:
--We fought to make the rich richer, despite their performance. And then we rewarded them for driving our economy into the ground.
--We fought for Halliburton oil contracts in Iraq, while new terrorist cells rose up in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
--We fought for insurance and drug company profits, while our collective health deteriorated.
If we continue to fight blindly for empty packages of patriotism, freedom and morality, the morning sun may well reveal the shackles of a new reality in America that's as old as time।
