“The single most important thing we want to achieve
is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, quoted in National Journal,
November 4, 2010
“
Nothing
sweet about heckling Obama in the Rose Garden
·
Text Size
Text Size
What does conservative pundit
Tucker Carlson have to do with an outhouse in Montana?
More than you might think.
Over the weekend, the Montana
Republican Party proved wrong those of us who believe our political discourse
has gone down the toilet. In fact, our political discourse has gone to a place
where there isn’t even plumbing.
Outside the Montana GOP convention
in Missoula stood an outhouse labeled “Obama Presidential Library” and painted
as though it had been shot full of holes, according to the local paper. Inside, a
fake birth certificate for “Barack Hussein Obama” was stamped with an expletive
referring to bovine droppings. A message in the structure gave fake phone
numbers for Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi “For a Good Time.”
The state party chairman, Will
Deschamps, said that the structure was not in “real good taste. We do have a
president of the United States, and we have to honor that.” But he also
dismissed the matter as a “sideshow” and “not something I’m going to agonize
over.”
“In
the age of eight-figure checks to super PACs, is it time for a constitutional
amendment that could end this dangerous farce?
“The
notion of fiddling with the First Amendment should make anyone nervous —
especially anyone who has spent a career benefiting from it.74
“Then
again, so should Sheldon Adelson’s $10 million check to
Mitt Romney’s super PAC.
“The
mere “appearance of influence or access,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in
striking down the ban on corporate independent expenditures in Citizens United, “will not cause the
electorate to lose faith in our democracy. By definition, an independent
expenditure is political speech presented to the electorate that is not
coordinated with a candidate.”
“Take
a look at the incestuous staffing of any super PAC, and consider whether you
think it operates truly independently — and whether it bolsters your faith in
democracy…”
Cassi
Creek: The Citizens United ruling
by the Roberts SCOTUS should be recognized as a clear signal that the
GOP/teavangelists are willing to go to any extreme in order to retain
power. When they are handed apparently
limitless financial backing, in concert with the other changes in the election
process it becomes all too easy to write the obituary for our nation.
McConnell laid out the game plan for
the 2008-2012 electoral campaign. The
GOP, the political bastion of bigotry and inherited wealth, aided by the
teavangelists, who further object to intelligence, reason, and who also wish to
initiate theocracy, intended to overturn the 2008 election by any means possible. Failing that, they plan to remove all respect
for the office of POTUS because the current occupant is a black male.
I find it highly disturbing that the
publicized intent to do away with the will of the people expressed in the
election of Obama as POTUS was not met with an immediate and overwhelming call
for the recall of the elected officials who plainly choose to ignore the popular
vote of 2008.
The plan to discredit the President
bothers me, too. While I had nothing but
disdain for Nixon and Reagan, I had and have respect for the office they
held. That it was degraded by their
actions is a given. But they were
afforded civil treatment by Congressmen and Senators. Even during the last days of the Nixon presidency,
no member of the press interrupted him.
I believe that we invaded Iraq for falsified reasons. I think Bush lied to the nation, probably
with too much pressure from Cheney and the money machine. Still, I had and have respect for the office
Bush filled and that Obama now fills.
We are at grave risk of seeing our
electoral process destroyed, to be replaced by a purchased head of state. In other years, this might not be such a
risk. The underlying core belief in a
democratic republic might hold enough voters to retain the nature of the
government we now have. Unhappily, the
oligarchs who want to buy the nation are aided by the racism, religious
intolerance for non-Christians, anti-intellectualism, limited educational goals
and opportunities, social safety nets, anti-contraception/anti-abortion rights,
and other remnants of the GOP southern strategy that have been used and re-used
as wedge issues to divert popular attention from the real problems the nation
faces. If the public is stirred up about,
who marries whom and who is allowed contraception; if the voters are fighting
censorship as well as imposed theocracy at every turn, it becomes less noticeable
when someone walks in with a fortune and buys the government.
Like fish in a school, we swim and
turn at the smallest flicker of potential urgency. Our carefully sculpted Constitution is not an
unchangeable Aegis. We must all work
together, with compromise a primary tool. in order to maintain the strength of
the system we were handed by the founders.
We must avoid the efforts to drag the nation backwards to make it a
theocracy. Our GOP/teavangelists are
horrible frightened of the Muslim Brotherhood’s electoral win in Egypt. They acknowledge that a retrogressive
government would by a disaster. Yet,
they are quite willing to allow teavangelists to impose similar regression upon
our citizens and government. How stupid
have we become? What we can’t impose by
legislation we will allow by oligarchic acquisition.
No comments:
Post a Comment