A diarist says that there is no 11th dimension for Obama. It's a solid argument, but it applies to the Republicans, too. August was bad for health care reform, but the Republicans don't get to be Buckaroo Banzai zooming across the 8th dimension, either. Their strategy was intellectually dishonest and it leaves them vulnerable.
Their position now is really very weak. I'm not saying that Obama's been playing a rope-a-dope strategy, but I do think our opponents have already thrown their best punches, including low blows and sucker punches. The bad guys showed us that they can't beat health care reform by telling the truth. To defeat health care reform, they have to lie.
Now we know that, and now they've lied. They've got nothing left.
If we tell the truth, we win.
It's time to come out swinging. It's time to bash. It's time to set the record straight.
Reagonomics failed. The Republicans' party is over. Their ideas put this country in a gigantic mess, and it's time to clean it up. It's time to end the lie that all big government is bad. Size is not the issue.
We need good government.
We need health care reform.
Watching the long, slow decay of American politics since Reagan got elected nearly 30 years ago has been painful. My own political awakening started in Utah, where Reagan was popular. I watched and listened.
I didn't hear what they heard. Here's what I heard
RACISM A lot of well-meaning but unsuspecting people I knew were persuaded by Reagan's apparent charm, but I don't think they realized what it meant when he went to Philadelphia, Mississippi and gave a talk about states rights. What Reagan was really saying was, I stand with all you white racists in the South.
The Republican party has a record of unbroken support for racism. You could hear it when Saxby Chambliss channeled his inner Klansman and warned Obama that he'd better be humble. You could hear it when the low-life Republican Congressman called Obama a liar. These rich white pricks think they have a right to say anything they want to a black man. He's a black man first, and President second. No matter what he does, he is below them.
This level disrespect comes from Republicans in the wake of Dick Cheney and George Bush's strategy of elevating the executive branch. If the Republicans really believed in a strong executive, where's their respect for the President today?
It's not just racism, the disrespect for Obama is the Republicans acting out their own self loathing. They know they've failed.
BAD GOVERNMENT The Republicans' open agenda has always been to make the government much smaller, but when Reagan opened his mouth, I heard a man telling people that government was bad. Small isn't necessarily bad, but the Republicans hate government so bad, they're willing to destroy good government. The strategy was to "starve the beast." They cut the operational budgets of government agencies that work until there wasn't enough money for the agencies to do their job well. Then, the complained about how well the agencies did their job.
They cut the funding for food safety at USDA and then complained about the food safety net.
They cut the funding for drug safety studies at the FDA. Drug companies funded their own studies, and bad drugs were approved. People died. The Republicans complained about the FDA.
They complained about civil servants, and they replaced the civil servants with workers who made less money and got worse benefits. The government paid more for those workers, and firms with connections pocketed the difference.
After years of eroding the civil service, Katrina came and finally exposed the rot. The truth was that the Republicans had been systematically destroying government.
WAR ON THE FAMILY Reagan talked about family values, but he never showed any signs of believing in those values.
If you want to build strong families, raise the economic status of poor families. If you want to adopt policies that discourage divorce, make sure dad has a job that pays a living wage.
Poor families have been hammered by Reaganomics. When democratic presidents were in office, real wages increased for the poor. When republican presidents were in office, real wages shrunk. The Republicans have been systematically working to increase the income and wealth of the wealthiest Americans and voting against minimum wage hikes.
A VISION FULFILLED: Bush was a true conservative. He gave the Republicans everything they asked for. Tax tax cuts for the rich. A war for the Neocons. Two supreme court justices to overturn Roe V. Wade.
What did we get?
Bush & Cheney told us lies about mushroom clouds and Iraqi connections to 9/11, and started an unnecessary war in Iraq. Young Americans died and soldiers spent months in a war apart from their families. Many came home broken. America became a nation that sponsors torture. Torture energized our enemies and undercut attempts to get real intelligence. Meanwhile, the war in Afghanistan was neglected, and most of the top members of Al Quaeda remain free.
The war was expensive. Budget deficits soared.
The cowboy diplomacy of the Bush/Cheney government alienated our allies and foreign policy stagnated.
Health care costs soared.
George Bush took an economy with budget surpluses from Clinton and handed Obama an economy heading for depression.
Bush enacted the Republican agenda, and we got racism, bad government, and a war on working families.
LIARS, WHINERS, & BULLIES: The Republican leadership has failed. During the election last fall, they stoked up the flames of hate and fueled militias.
Another word for militia is terrorist. These home-grown terrorists are gaining strength. They are carrying guns to political events to bully. The Republican leadership is complicit in this burgeoning domestic terrorism.
Republican leaders are lying and a bunch of whiners spent August being rude at civil discussions. Who knows if they're real people, or just the faces and voices of soul-less actors who have been paid large sums of money. Paid or not, these people are clearly speaking for the Republicans. Paid or not, they're whining.
To sum it up, Republicans are now the party of hypocritical, disrespectful, lying, stupid, racist whiners who are complicit in the rise of domestic terrorism.
WE WANT CHANGE: They've left us with an awful mess. They don't like it when we try and clean up their mess, but we've got to do it. First, we headed off another depression.
Now, we need to pass Health Care Reform.
I haven't got the patience to try and persuade the kitchen tables of the world. The Democractic party has a chance to pass meaningful health care reform, whether or not a single Republican votes for it. There are a million good reasons to vote for this bill, and as our opponents have made clear, the real opposition relies on deceit.
If you believe in families, HCR helps build strong families. If you're a Christian, HCR is a bill that brings relief to the sick and weary. It has a Christian soul.
If you're Keith Olberman or Rachel Maddow or anyone with a bully pulpit, forget about Glenn Beck and the lesser imps.
Go after Reagan. Get your writers and research staff to lay out Reagan's record in plain language. Show the world what Reagan really did. Reagan's economic policies waged war on American families. Reagan really did want to kill Social Security and Medicare. The economic mess happened because of Reaganomics. Connect the dots.
Tell them the truth -- Reaganomics was a ruse to destroy government and it nearly worked. We need to work hard to make government good again, but we can do it.