Assuming you've seen the original film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (or any of the remakes and/or the film simply entitled "Body Snatchers") you can consider me the Kevin McCarthy character who is one of the few last humans alive not yet replaced by a body-snatching clone who is part of a single-minded invasion force from another world here to take over our world without the violence usually associated with "invasion". To those who have not yet been "snatched", I may appear a hysterical alarmist running around trying to tell you something that is so incredible you'll lock your car doors and hope the traffic light changes in a hurry so you can get away from the apparent crazy man. Those already "snatched" however, react to me with unanimous indifference which implies an ability to convey "group think" without having to verbalize anything--they just know not to give themselves away and that no one will listen to me the more alarming I sound. But it is something I must do given the knowledge I possess. They are here. And they are coming for more.
The ouster of republican moderates from Congress has been a long, slow process which has often been characterized in the media as "moderate has become a dirty word in republican circles". But no hair-on-fire alarms or suspicion of linkages to any deliberate over-arching plan is asserted--just "matter-of-factly" mention as if this is all just a coincidental political trend which just tends to result in the replacement of long-serving republican Congress persons of character and independent rationale with those unified in ultra-partisanship. But what if it's not just a matter of unrelated happenstance which just appears to be a political trend? What would it be about republican moderates that would make them targets for "body snatchmentation" (in a manner of speaking), where despite often multiple decade-long careers where they have been re-elected several times, something has happened that has them in the way of objectives shared by those who observe the new special "group think". If one varies from the secret group-think script, similar to the movie, the snatched suddenly give themselves away and start squealing and pointing their fingers at the dissenter and that republican is set upon by the industrialized animosity machine that is right wing partisan media where the demise of their political careers is always the same--they are done on the very next cycle.
So what is it about so-called moderates that has made them targets for replacement?
It is their grounding in American democratic tradition of fair and reasonable negotiation, abiding by both the outcomes of elections and the outcome of processes, win or lose, where it is still held that we are fundamentally on the same team where politics is just a temporary process in which we take sides in matters of direction and progress after which we resume collective cooperation in national progress. Moderates have had to go because they are genuinely intelligent and were not in Congress because they acquiesced to blind totality pledges much less signing them eagerly with conviction that Ronald Reagan's ill-considered moment of politically rhetorical bluster that "government is the problem" would be taken by some as the word of god that is always true and must never to be questioned. The moderate-snatchers are real. And they have been at it well before the name Barrack Obama became a household word. Those who assert that the obstruction and contrarianism that President Obama has endured is predominantly racial have unwittingly become tools of the snatchers and hard right villains. Racism is not illegal in the context of a President who is black being disrespected by an opposition which is mostly white. It is despicable, disgraceful, saddening and ugly. But it is not something someone can get indicted for in this context. Every moment spent ruminating on that is a moment wasted barking up the wrong tree because that is what they want--it takes the focus off potential crimes and wrong-doing which can be solved with law and justice.
The plain truth is the President Obama is facing the brunt of a partisan "complex" which has seceded from representative democracy--American democracy. And because of The president's personal firm grounding in Constitutional law as a professor he makes for the perfect target of a break with democratic tradition which no American President has ever had to face. What complicates this even more is that this un-American break with our own traditions has been abetted by a runaway industrialization of political antagonism in the media which permits no adjusting to the outcomes of elections much less reconciliation leading to cooperation. Instead, it has turned American politics into a vengeance-crazy team-sport which begins it's scape-goating and finger-pointing before the election is even called. The ink on temporary settlements of those manufactured economic crises is not even dry before strategists working from a new playbook of their own design are at the work of winning the next round because they can count on the President to carry out his constitutional duty as if nothing has happened in the last 25 years to demand radical departure to new strategy. The seemingly never ending plague of budget crises are all arguably products of a power usurpation scheme tolerated as politics for so long no one even asks why is it so out of the question to raise revenue. If you think it "just is"--either you have been snatched or are too young to know that you live inside a footprint.
My commentary about the president in other diaries has been taken as criticism (if read at all). But it is not any kind of issue of competence. It is a question of being the first to bear the brunt of an American tyranny abetted by the growth and maturation of a partisan media industry in which careers demand heartlessness and bald-faced lies as every day mainstays. I find it stunning how easily the lies seem to flow. Ronald Reagan is lionized as the god of all republican wisdom, but I for one would bet my last meal money that he'd be ashamed of what he had wrought in termination of the Fairness Doctrine, de-regulation of the FCC and autographing that pesky kid Norquist's totality pledge which he himself paid no attention to in his own tax policy. Until the Obama administration comes (or is brought) to the realization that it is being "warred" on by a complex of people whom have removed the last elements of true responsibility in the republican side of Congress--Invasion of the Moderate Snatchers--I am sorry to have to suggest he will appear a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. The debate must be changed. The moderates aren't gone for nothing. Connect the dots. They are all there.