In my thirty years as a politically sentient human being, I have thought over and over to myself, "Well, at least it can't get any worse."
And it keeps getting worse.
We all thought Lee Atwater was destructive. We all thought the cynical, politically-driven impeachment of President Clinton did terrible damage to the nation.
Then along came Karl Rove. And Mitch McConnell. And Sarah Palin. And the Tea Party. And Citizens United.
Now money is gushing like a broken fire hydrant into the coffers of independent groups who are producing the most repulsive, dishonest television ads in American election history. This raging river of money is literally drowning our democracy and polluting our society.
And it's working beautifully. Tragically beautifully.
There now seems little doubt that the Republican Party - specifically, the most extreme right wing of the party- is, as Sean Wilentz puts it in the recent New Yorker, "on the verge of securing a degree a power over Congress and the Republican Party that is unprecedented in modern American history."
To what end, exactly? Not much, as far as I can tell. The TeaPublicans are driven primarily by two things: 1) Hatred - an incomprehensibly profound hatred of government, President Obama and people who don't look or talk like them; and 2) A naked desire for power.
There was a small, but pleasant surprise here in Minnesota the other day. A barely discernible glow of light in the poisonous darkness created by the masters of evil in the GOP advertising department.
The St. Cloud Times, a conservative-leaning local newspaper here in Minnesota, endorsed Michele Bachmann's opponent, Tarryl Clark, in the race for the congressional seat currently held by Bachmann. What the editorial board of the St. Cloud Times wrote is worth repeating because their brave words - this is a very red district we're talking about - so accurately characterize the entire Republican Party of the past two years.
Sadly, after four years in office, Michele Bachmann has proved with unabashed consistency that serving 6th District constituents is essentially her last priority.
[In April 2009], we cited...three years worth of her rash, ridiculous, unsubstantiated, misleading and fear-mongering statements about national issues. We also noted — and this is important — her lack of any realistic solutions. In the 19 months since then, Bachmann has only refined an age-old political recipe: mix equal parts of fear and blame that raise your personal profile yet yield only sound bites, not solutions.
She does it so effectively (and relentlessly) that she’s become a grass-roots tea party heroine even while supporting a public policy agenda that helps entities that are anything but grass roots. Best example: In the wake of America’s financial collapse, do you really think Bachmann’s push to leave Wall Street alone was in the best interests of 6th District voters?
Also, look districtwide and we challenge you to find something — anything — that Bachmann has helped achieve or a cause she has helped advance. Much like her legislative ideas, we see nothing of substance.
That just about says it all.
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Also, in case you missed it before, please check out the song and video I created that highlights the tragic results of Republican economic policy: