There are a number of military analogies to apply to today’s GOP: being shot down in flames, a bunker mentality from being surrounded on all sides, on a suicide mission, launching all of their nuclear missiles hoping a few get through.
The national agenda the GOP has carefully and methodically assembled over the past 40 years is falling apart. Assault on women’s rights, including anti-abortion? The damn women are standing up and fighting back. Why, you can’t even call a young female law student a slut and a prostitute on national radio and get away with it.
Lower corporate taxes? A Democratic President has usurped that issue our from under their very noses by proposing it as part of his budget.
ObamaCare? They may have to live with most or all of it for another two years if the Supreme Court decides to kick the whole thing down the road. And the more they know about it, the more Americans like ObamaCare.
Fear of foreigners? Immigrants, legal and otherwise, are tired of being pushed around and having their children forbidden from going to college after graduated from the public schools system.
Gun control? Murder one black teenage boy in cold blood and they make an international incident out of it.
Starting with Occupy Wall Street, continuing with the successful online campaign to get censorship of the Internet set aside—for now—all of the oppressed groups and people just fed up with right wing Republican tea party politics are standing up and saying “No more!” And they’re fighting back. Florida governor Rick Scott has announced a special state task force will be looking into the Trayvon Martin shooting as well as looking at changing any state laws that allowed it to occur (Stand Your Ground). The Department of Justice will be investigating the Sanford, Fl. police department (who just lost their police chief, temporarily or otherwise) for possible civil rights violations, incompetence, corruption, and racism.
Even as I write this, the Republicans are making “Hail Mary” passes across the country: attempting to gather marchers for “religious freedom” from health care reform, attempting to pass a flurry of new anti-woman legislation, attempting to pass even more voter suppression laws.
But they look at Wisconsin and see their Republican governor and four Republican state senators up for recall. One of the senators decided to resign while the resigning was good and she’s gone, taking with her the Republican majority in the state Senate.
Lastly, the GOP looks at the slate of clowns with big shiny red noses galumping around the country in their big, floppy clown shoes while the President sits in the Oval Office laughing with enjoyment at their performances. You’ve got Mittens The Clown dressed in a top hat and doing magic tricks with an Etch-A-Sketch. You’ve the Rick The Clown with the painted-on sad face, crying because the Devil is in the D.C. details. You’ve got Newt The Clown wearing a moon rocket and leaping unsuccessfully into the air as he runs around the stage. And finally, you’ve got Ron The Clown with his head barely peeking out from his giant clown suit, always falling down onto the floor and refusing any help to get back up. After the performance, President Obama comes out onstage like Ed Sullivan saying, “Thank you Republican clowns for that wonderful bit of comedy.”
But truth be told, the floppy shoes guys are flopping all over the country. Hardly any Republican voters beyond the troupe’s base is coming out to see them. Voting is way down among registered Republicans where primaries have so far been held. These guys are the 2012 version of the Not Ready For Primetime Players. Who knew the Republicans had a Minor League?
So, the GOP plane is going down in flames while all on board are throwing gasoline on the fire and not one of them knows how to land that thing.
Politics has always been cyclical. Don’t like being shut out of power? Just wait a few decades until your turn comes around again. But the Democrats can’t afford to get too comfy with their anticipated victory. After all, the Democratic ship of state’s got a few leaky holes and is taking on a little bit of water. The Keystone XL pipeline Oklahoma crude and Canadian tar sands oils flow into one hole. The Afghan War is pouring water into another hole. But the largest hole of all, the leak that could sink the ship, is the hole that American jobs keep falling through. Yes, it hasn’t gotten any bigger, hasn’t shrunk by much, but it’s enough to possibly cause the Obama Administration to pull a Titanic.
But that’s where the Republican clown troupe comes in. They’ve proven themselves extremely adept at pumping water out of the ship and into their Clown Car as they perform their wonderful bit of comedy.
So, as the Republican Party sinks quickly on the Right, we bid a fond farewell to the presidential aspirations of the GOP as we mix metaphors and turn off our radar screens so we don’t see the search beacons leading us to the eventual crash site. The Republicans are big on the DIY (do-it-yourself) lifestyle. They got themselves into this mess, they can get themselves out. They’ve already begun eating their own to survive.
1:21 PM PT: Added Occupy Wall Street tag.
1:24 PM PT: Added Stand Your Ground tag.