You might think from the title of this post that I am referring to the impending demise of the Republican Party. Not so.
I am really attempting to describe the Republican Party's game plan when trying to confront anything they oppose, whether it be a man, a party, or a government.
Republicans are good at marketing. This is self-evident in how they have controlled the media and public discourse during the last eight years of the Bush Administration. Using marketing tactics, the Republicans attach a label to their opposition, and run with that catch-phrase, hoping that the public and the press will buy their ideas just from the sheer repetition of them.
That’s where we get such wonderful phrases as "Drill, baby, drill" to describe an energy policy. Attempts to diplomatically engage Iran are met with accusations that the Democratic Party is engaging in "appeasement" similar to Neville Chamberlain with the Nazis before World War II.
When there were discussions of gradual troop withdrawal from Iraq, we were met with cries from Republicans that Democrats are cowards and only want to "cut and run". The "cut and run" phrase effectively silenced the Democratic dissent and caused them to cower in response. After all, the Democrats did not want to seem weak on defense.
The modus operandi of the Republican Party is to "tag ‘em and bag ‘em". Apply a hateful or demeaning label to some policy, and demonize it so that everyone knows how awful, contemptuous, and dangerous the policy is.
An example of that now is that closing Guantanamo and stopping the hideous practice of torture has elicited cries that Barack Obama is making us weak, and inviting another terrorist attack on our country. Lovable Dick Cheney has been at the forefront of these discussions. This, despite the fact that our torturing of prisoners and the presence of Guantanamo was a remarkably effective tool used by Al Qaeda to bring in new recruits.
The bank bailouts started under Bush generated hysterical cries from the Republicans of Barack Obama as a "socialist", forgetting that they gladly accept their Medicare subsidies of health care and Social Security checks. Sarah Palin took the wealth from their oil industry and redistributed the funds to all Alaskans, without a single critic claiming that this was socialism in its truest form.
The tax policies protested in the Fox News-generated "Tea Parties", had people protesting either Bush’s tax policies that were in effect this year, or the planned 3% raise of the taxes on the wealthiest 2% in 2011 – not exactly things that a reasonable Republican would protest without being whipped up into a frenzy by buzzwords, name-calling, and the demonization of everything that Barack Obama does.
What was interesting when viewing the "Tea Party" rallies, is that people came out with various signs that claimed that Barack Obama was a socialist, fascist, and a communist. It does not bother Republicans that fascism is diameterically opposed to socialism, and you can’t be both. Many of the signs with Barack Obama shown as Hitler were professionally produced with graphics and lettering indicative of corporate involvement in the so-called "grass roots" protest.
Even with the Tea Party protesters not understanding the real nature of the Boston Tea Party, not understanding that their taxes were going to be lowered, and not understanding that only the wealthy would benefit from their protests, the common theme was that demonizing names and labels were applied to Barack Obama, calling him Hitler and Satan.
This demonization of everything that Barack Obama attempts to do, without considering the merits of his plans, is what made it acceptable for Rush Limbaugh and others to "hope that Barack Obama fails". If everything that Barack Obama does is evil, then, of course, you would want him to fail. If you criticized anything George Bush did, who was truly evil, you were called unpatriotic.
Now we have this from Alternet:
During the January campaign for chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele slammed his opponent Chip Saltsman's distribution of a CD with a song called "Barack the Magic Negro." "It doesn’t help at all," Steele said. "Absolutely, it reinforces a negative stereotype of the party."
However, while hosting Bill Bennett's radio show this morning, Steele laughed when a caller called Obama the "magic negro" and seemingly agreed with the characterization...
As Steele is facing an internal power struggle, he may be trying to shore up his radical right-wing credentials. Though he earlier refused to call the president a "socialist," this week he declared Obama was "moving towards a collectivist socialist approach to government."
Now we have to add racism to the mix of hate speech and demonizing labels as techniques the Republicans are willing to employ to try to persuade the public, not of the rightness of their ideas, but that the opposition is so awful and evil that one must back the Republicans as the only reasonable alternative.
Unfortunately, the Republicans are not behaving like a quality opposition political party. They are continuing their mass-marketing of hateful, deceptive speech to which the country no longer gives any credence.
People do not listen when a Republican like Michelle Bachman talks about Barack Obama wanting to send our kids to "re-education camps", or when N.C. Representative Virginia Foxx stands before Congress, the American people, and Matthew Shepard’s mother, and claims that his torture and murder was a "hoax", as she did this week.
Instead of offering constructive criticism or working responsibly to get the best compromise that they can based on what they believe is right, Republicans simply oppose everything that is brought up by the Democrats, voting en bloc yesterday against Barack Obama’s budget in the House and Senate, providing zero Republican votes in favor of the budget.
In a way, the Republicans have painted themselves into a corner. They know that they need to change, and that they are reaching fewer and fewer people with their hateful speech. However, how can you both demonize your opponent and then turn around and compromise with them, or work constructively with the Democrats for the good of your constituents?
No, the Republican Party has declared that Democrats are godless, anti-democratic, socialists/communists/fascists who only want to hurt our beloved United States. Having convinced their base that this is true, how could they ever explain to their dwindling numbers that they cooperated with the evil that is the Obama administration?
We need a healthy, vibrant Republican Party. The two-party system makes each party behave more responsibly, knowing that their actions will be exposed and questioned.
To do this, however, the Republicans need to become the party of Lincoln once again, not the party of the wormtongues so frequently heard on Fox News and right-wing talk radio. "Tagging and bagging" must stop if the Republican Party is to survive. They know this is true, but do they have the courage to act on this knowledge?