Cross posted on Texas Kaos.
The animator for the Simpson's and Family Guy created a brilliant video called "Why Obama Now." Thanks to The Troubadour over at Daily Kos for sharing it.
We will re-elect President Obama.
The reasons why are crystal clear. The Republican Party has Citizen's United on its side. Corporations can give unlimited amounts of money to political candidates and guess where their money is going? You got it. It flows in droves to the GOP. The Republican Party has Karl Rove and his super pacs with their dark and dirty money. Guess where the dirty money is going? It is not going to Democrats. And there are the famous Republican supporters Koch boys, Sheldon Adelson and 30 years of ALEC. In swing states Rovian vile attack ads run around the clock. The Republican Party has Fox "News" and much of the mainstream media in its deep pockets. Turn on any news channel except for maybe four or five shows on MSNBC and tough CNN journalist Soledad O'Brien. Most of the mainstream media, including NPR all but promote and parrot Republican talking points. All of the time. Just watch Meet the Press on Sunday morning. It's host David Gregory may as well rename the show Meet the Republicans.
And yet, despite all of its advantages and the 2010 landslide elections, Mitt Romney and his Republicans can hardly stay ahead of President Obama.
Now, why would a Party with so much money and a pervasive propaganda machine on its side have to struggle to prevail?
It's all about the Malarkey.
Maybe deep budget cuts in the states, thanks to the W./Cheney wrecked economy, inflicted enough pain on voters that many woke up to what voting R or not voting can mean. Small government might not be such a great thing after all. Small government sure as heck is not wonderful in Texas, a state in which so many workers have been fired that one has to wait 4-6 hours to get a driver's license renewed. That's 4-6 hours of docked pay for hourly workers.
Or perhaps voters realized the jobs promised by Republican candidates in 2010 never materialized. Instead the Republicans have engaged in witch hunts and obstruction in Congress, including the refusal to vote for the President's jobs bill. It engages in ruthless and cynical politics in which the Republicans will co-sponsor, let's say a veteran's jobs bill, and then vote against it because the President is for it. How low can they go? Apparently no low is too low where the GOP is concerned.
As a woman I have been horrified by the Republican Party's ruthless efforts to take my gender back to the 1950's era when abortion was illegal. Not to mention my revulsion at its appalling hypocrisy.
Cold and Cruel.
That or potential voters get it that the Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is a serial liar, flip flopper and phony. This perception will get worse when voters learn why McCain chose Palin instead of Romney as his running mate in 2008.
When on the campaign while Romney promises to punish China for cheating on trade issues, the cheater punishing Mitt oversaw the outsourcing of jobs to guess where? Romney's Bain forced the soon-to-be fired employees to train their Chinese replacements. The fired know who stole their jobs and who the real cheater is.
“Accordingly, Bain Capital expects to see an increasing array of high-growth companies available for investment,” the prospectus says, noting the relative dearth of private equity in China.
Among the companies in which the Bain funds have invested is a global auto parts maker that is in the process of closing a factory in Illinois and moving most of the equipment and jobs to Jiangsu Province, where the Chinese government has built it a new plant; a Chinese electronics retailer accused by Microsoft of selling computers with pirated software; and a Hong Kong-based Chinese appliance maker that was sued for copying another company’s design for a deep-fat fryer.
Romney must think 47% of us are stupid.
In short, the Party's ideas and policies are increasingly unappealing. The GOP latest policies and ideologies are morally bankrupt, cynical and show an aversion to the democratic process. It is more comfortable with an authoritarian rule that focuses like a laser on the agendas of the wealthy and corporate interests. People don't matter. The middle class can go straight to hell. Poor people can die in the streets.
The current day GOP extols the vices of selfishness and Ayn Randian greed. Not to mention intolerance and an it's my way or the highway pigheadedness.
It has become a Party of mostly grumpy and mean aging white people (I am a middle aged white woman, thank you, in case one should wonder) and angry white men, many of whom are racists and homophobes. Hence the Republican hysterical mania in its voter suppression efforts, most of which were downright unconstitutional. The Texas voter suppression efforts would have not been that much different from Jim Crow laws and poll taxes. Fortunately the federal courts shut down the efforts to return to the hateful and backward days of Jim Crow.
Far from perfect the Democratic Party has more in common w/the mainstream American. We have a firm and strong belief in the democratic process. We are a noisy and sometimes brawling big tent filled with donkeys but we embrace diversity and tolerance. We actually like people and we don't need to use fear and smear to win elections. We like to fix things. We also like to create things. We like to take care of one another, which is precisely why we strongly support programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Headstart, Pell Grants, food stamps and housing assistance for the poor. We don't like to see children go hungry nor do we accept the idea that seniors and the jobless should live in abject poverty. We do big and bold things like pass and implement an Affordable Care Act. To the GOP chagrin those who are benefiting from the ACA at this time, love it. Parents with unemployed kids are grateful they can provide their children with health coverage until they are 26 years old. Seniors appreciate having the Medicare doughnut hole closed.
The Republican Party does not care about unemployed young people and old people on Medicare. It's behavior during the summer of 2009 when the ACA was passed tells it all. Apoplectic, the puppet masters for the GOP (the Koch boys and Dick Armey) fomented hate, fear and turned town hall meetings throughout the U.S. into shouting hate fests. Remember? Some of the angry string puppets showed up with assault weapons. Amazing. When the puppet masters and their manipulated lackeys don't get what they want all act like petulant spoiled children. With fire arms.
And these are some of many reasons why I am a proud Big Bird Democrat.
The alternative?
The last thing we need is a clone of W./Cheney on steroids. At least W. pretended to be a compassionate conservative. Mitt Romney, a venture capitalist, makes no apologies for having fired people.
It all comes down to the vote.
And so my friends stop obsessing about Obama's botched debate. He has two more to go. Biden cleaned Lyin' Ryan's clock last night.
But most importantly we have one mean voter turnout machine, thanks to the tireless efforts of Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy, the 2008 Obama campaign and OFA.
We have work to do.
GOTV