Hello, fellow Meese! It’s been too long, please forgive my absence. I’ve spent the last year or more just agog at how craven yet simultaneously audacious our friends across the aisle have been. I’m beyond disgusted, and more than a little disappointed. I’m pretty nearly ready for war, and if any of you remember me or my general political demeanor, that’s not the Reaper you likely recall.
There are still sane Republicans, both voters and office-holders. There are fewer of both than there were a few years ago. I am not going to ascribe this change to racism, btw. I’m sure its there, but I don’t think its a factor important enough to really weigh here. The main issue is rage without catharsis. This is not healthy.
Plenty of Republicans and/or conservatives I know (or have known in the past) genuinely and sincerely hate the notion of an intrusive government and also equally hate ever-growing public debt. There is nothing inherently immoral about those beliefs – I still respect those points of view (even if I do not share them, for the most part). If I might be permitted a brief bit of armchair psychoanalysis, these folks have spent almost all of my life (I predate the Reagan administration by less than a year) watching their political party ratchet up the debt and (if you look at the trendline) grow government.
These folks are livid, but they very rarely spoke up against this sort of thing. They are tribalists, as are many on the left. These tribalists enjoy winning. As such they were willing to forgive Republican politicians for spending too much money (as they saw it) for the thrill of the win and the joy of tax cuts. I can understand this sort of thing. Its a bit of a high, not unlike what I imagine the really fun drugs provide. These victories, much like those highs, don’t last long.
So that brings us to the last few years. These Tea Partiers are raging relentlessly because they want a government that reflects their own views and values. There’s nothing at all wrong with that impulse. However, these folks have decided to actually try to hold Republican feet to the fire. Its working. They have actually changed their party. We should note this and remember it well – we may have to borrow some of their intensity some day.
For the present, this rage means that an elected Republican, even one in places like New England, runs a serious risk of electoral loss for bargaining in good faith and making the sorts of deals one has to make in political life. If they deal, or even come across as civil and decent, they are probably going to lose their seat.
We all know this stuff. It isn’t news. It hurts me to get this stuff out in the open because I’m having to accept that my vote for the President has been a huge failure. Oh, I voted for the right guy, and I would again (and will again) in a heartbeat, but what I called the Obama Premise, the idea that a President can treat us all like adults and bring us together to common purpose and benefit……well……..it may well be possible but it certainly hasn’t been actual.
I hope that the President can change the trajectory of this country, but I fear that this will be up to all of us, and few of us see what must be done. The Republicans cannot be trusted to engage in good faith or try to actual solve the problems we face! They benefit from festering unemployment and strife. They will drag their feet because their base demands it, but also because it could easily propel them to another satisfying high.
President Obama is a great man, by my lights. I saw his qualities well early on in the primaries. He is a thoughtful, broad-minded, inclusive professor who tries to make informed decisions based on what will actually work to accomplish meaningful goals. That’s all crackerjack stuff.
It isn’t working. We all knew we were in the economic ditch in 2008. I said then that if Obama won he’d be royally screwed because he’d eventually be on the hook for just how bad things were and would likely remain.
Yep. That happened.
Americans mostly remember that these problems predate the current Administration. They are beginning to blame the President for not fixing them yet. That’s fair enough, as we’re pushing three years at this point. However, the Republicans have fought almost every advance, tooth and claw.
We cannot go into 2012 reluctant, weary, and wiped out. I don’t care that the President isn’t the man you’d hoped he’d be. He IS one of us, he is our President, our standard bearer.
We were the ones we were waiting for, I think. And then we got complacent. Then we got our asses kicked. Now we have to make a choice. Do we take more of the same, or do we get up, dust off our boots, and kick some ourselves? I’m tired of losing. I’m tired of backtracking. I’m tired of being called a damned socialist because I believe in common purpose and common good (while still respecting the rights, creativity, and value of the individual).
I’m tired of watching good ideas die in Congress because of the Republicans craven audacity! We have slept too long, too many of us (me more than most). We must awaken soon, or forever dream of a future we ourselves might have made.
If we don’t win big in Congress whilst re-electing the President we have no chance of fixing much of anything.
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