Obama and the Democrats, with their strange style of negotiating, offered to give the Republicans nearly everything they asked for in the recent debt ceiling negotiation, but the Tea Party wing pressured the Republican leadership to turn the offers down. What do the Tea Party members—aka, the radical wing of the Republican Party—hope to accomplish by their willingness to plunge the country deeper into a recession?
Of course, the obvious comes to mind. The worse the economy, the less likely it is that Obama will win another term. But this could be a very risky process. If they go too far and their intransigence is blamed for the worsening economy, most voters would likely vote for Obama. But this is not a concern for those behind the scenes.
The ones pulling the strings of the Tea Party—the Koch brothers and others—feel they are in a position of win-win. If a Republican wins the presidency back, great; if not, they still have the black guy to keep the Tea Party in line.
Obama is the Tea Party’s worst nightmare and serves as a glue to hold together the working and middle class members (the old Reagan Democrats) who are willing to vote against their own economic well being just to, in their words, “take our country back”—racist shorthand for—dump the black dude.
They are so terrified that this man would do so well that Americans would be anxious for another black (even a black woman) to win the presidency—continuing a trend that said race, gender or religion has little or no role in determining who gets elected—they are willing to do whatever it takes to make Obama’s term the worst in history, even if it means a complete and total surrender to the corporate interests. As long as Obama is president, the Koch brothers have complete control of the Tea Party.
So ironies of ironies, why shouldn’t a good ol’ Southern Tea Party boy, Rick Perry, run against Obama? If Perry miraculously wins, fine, the corporate interests already own him; if he doesn’t win, they still have the black man president to terrify the Tea Party (nice alliteration).
As secessionist leader of the state of Texas, Perry is very good at speaking the language of a minority party that knows how to tap into the total failure of the public education system to educate average Americans. As an example, Perry has quickly moved into third place in the polls by citing the increase in jobs created during his tenure as governor. He claims there have been more jobs created in Texas than any other state.
But if you look carefully at the type of jobs created, most are low level, minimum wage—the kind found in Wal-Mart, Target and other non-union shops or they are government jobs associated with the military industry and bases that dot the map of Texas.
Like most corporations during a recession, the bad economy is used as an excuse to get rid of most high paid employees so that later new employees can be hired at half the price. The result: an increase in jobs, but jobs that pay radically less than before.
What most working or middle class Americans don’t realize is that the Republican party, heart and soul, is dedicated to unfettered, laissez-faire capitalism (let us do, Le Gendre answered when ask how France can be of service to merchants) and this means that anything goes—everything is legal—so long as you make a significant profit.
To Republicans, laissez-faire means no restrictions of any kind, no government agency inspecting food, no agency protecting us from shoddy products like cribs that collapse and kill our children; no agency that makes sure planes are serviced regularly so they don’t fall out of the sky; no agency protecting our National Parks, No EPA protecting the air we breathe, no agencies protecting our money and keeping the banks from becoming total usurious agencies; no safety net programs of any kind, like Medicare, Social Security, or Medicaid; no government at all except for—hold now for the sound of trumpets—the Department of Defense.
The best example I can give of what Republicans hope to see America emulate one day, ironically, is China. Remember, it was the Republican Richard Nixon, who accomplished detente with China. Could he have foreseen the future of America as the United States of China?
China is a country that has no regulatory agencies of any kind. Free enterprising merchants can add sawdust to meat, lead to paint, use cheap designs in cribs; everything and anything goes in the new China and thousands of people die every year from food, air, or chemical poisoning. The rulers of China only regulate a few products exported to Americans because we, funny people that we are, don’t like to be killed by the products we buy.
The Republican Party has persistently and unrelentingly tried over the years to create a regulation-free America, a United States of China, if you will. Recently, they started exporting companies to 3rd world countries like India and the Philippines so that they could hire workers willing to work for less than Wal-Mart wages, thus laying off thousands of American workers, but they immediately began discovering problems—such as middle level company executives who didn’t want to live and work in a state like India or the Philippines when they could be living high in America.
Another problem soon emerged—how does the company get all the extra money it made from hiring cheap workers in these counties back to America without paying taxes, which they avoided doing in the first place by exporting their companies? They’re still working on that problem.
The Tea Party discovered, or I should say—stumbled—over an answer. They realized that if they continued to be intransigent, they could totally destroy the economy of America and facilitate its becoming a new 3rd world country. All the jobs could then be brought back to America and desperate Americans would work for less even than Wal-Mart pay. The executives could come home and not have to live in unpleasant, overpopulated and primitive 3rd world countries.
Why not be like China? The wealthy lose nothing. They can afford their own private schools; can hire their own fire brigade to protect their homes and their own private security to police their property; they have no need for government in any form except as defense against other countries, and they will have out-of-work employees joining the military in droves to fight anywhere just for a little combat pay to support themselves and their families.
By following such a path, the wealthy will always have good American-speaking, military serving, public school educated Americans who, even if it is against their own economic self-interest, continue to believe in and vote for the Republican Party.
The Republican Party is, after all, the party that already speaks to the ignorant and uneducated. It is the party of God (who talks to them everyday); the party of the white race (a few smart Asians exempted); the party of guns (every member is required to have one in case progressives find some balls); the party of no women’s rights (who the hell let them out of the kitchen anyway); the party of the end justifies the means (a necessity to be able to lie, cheat or steal for the party) and the party of anything-goes, no-rules capitalism (we don’t care if your child eats contaminated food or not).
The working and middle class tea party, like the turncoat Indian scouts who worked for the blue coats against their own people, truly believe that they are going to be accepted into the new ruling class of the United States of China.
It is sad, really, at how desperately the members of the Tea Party believe that they are going to be welcomed into the club of the ruling elite. But look, guys, you have to ask yourself, what kind of club would want to have somebody so stupid as a member?