The Republican Party has made a disasterous transformation in the last forty years. The GOP, while it has peddled a "to hell with the poor, it's their fault they're starving" theology since the days of Herbert Hoover, it has since metastatized into a force for authoritarianism and for redistribution of the wealth- to the rich, from the poor.
This transformation came in spurts and jolts, from the introduction of fundamentalist televangelism by Father Coughlin to the mainstreaming of conservatism integrated into religion brought in by Billy Graham and the Southern Baptists to the solidification of neoliberalism thanks to Ronald Reagan. But, since the 70's, the Republican Party has taken on the policies outlined in George Lakoff's "Don't Think of an Elephant", the policies of intentionally benefitting the "more meritorious and disciplined" rich at the cost of the "undisciplined" poor.
Now, if I may move into an aside, we are to look back four hundred years to the ascension of the first settlement of Massachusetts. America tends to portray them as freedom-loving "Pilgrims", but it is a sanitation of our heritage to not address them as the more stigmatized "puritans". The puritanical settlers had a tenet of their beliefs that all men were preordained by God to either go to Heaven or to Hell. It was easy, they thought, to tell the fate of each person around them- the prosperous and lucky were such because they were preordained to Heaven, and the unfortunate damned to Hell. The puritans, however, were not satisfied to know the fates of their fellow man. They desired as a society to torment those who would burn in eternal hellfire. In turn, they regarded as superior and godlier those who were endowed with good favor and the resulting prosperity.
Fast forward to now. The Republican Party of Billy Graham and Ronald Reagan has been hyperidealized by the reactionary conservatives that comprise today's GOP, but I can't possibly believe that this hateful malignancy that calls itself the Party of Lincoln would be recognized by its creators. The GOP does not at least seem to believe that the rich are destined for heaven and the poor for hell, but at least are fighting to make life similar to the two destinations for their respective group. The Republicans are yet again fighting to, in the words of Grover Norquist, starve the beast. The GOP plan, sparked by the Heritage Foundation, is usually to raise taxes on the rich, simultaneously assisting the "deserving and worthwhile" upper classes and making further social spending politically impossible due to a deficit- the strategy now includes not freezes but draconian cuts to spending programs. Simply, the GOP would rather that dollar go to the CEO, not his secretary.
Of course, this alone couldn't spark the near- (and often literally) militant support of the GOP by the Christian right. And here comes the second and final tenet of the Church of St. Reagan- salvation, in that your social issue will be satisfied, if enough Republicans are elected. Running the gamut from a woman's right to choose to the right of a couple to marry indeterminate of their sex to the right of students to go to secular and effective schools, millions of Republicans flock to the right wing of the party for the promise that those rights shall be stripped away. In short, the Republicans garner support by the submissive yet hateful, those who believe that certain unalienable rights are "perversions" or "unholy" and instead choose to sacrifice the freedom of millions for their own personal "sanctity". The "sanctity" of a single ideology- fundamentalist Christianism coupled with neoliberal corpora-plutocracy. The Republican base also consists of other groups, the ever-lingering racists being likely foremost, but is formed primarily of those who sell out freedom for an extraordinarily warped version of Jesus Christ.
The Republican Party's rabid base is no longer a microcosm of what would happen if the fringe took over the Establishment. It is, in fact, the Republican Party. The takeover is complete, and the GOP is now more than ever a weapon of the rich to serve themselves.
So it's time for this Daily Kos-wide pie fight needs to end. This is, of course, the recent movement criticising the President over his percieved lack of liberality. I believe that the President has done as well as he could with a tough situation- a dithering Majority Leader in the Senate coupled with a nearly-unbreakable GOP filibuster in the last Congress and a Republican House that embodies the characteristics in the greater body of the post. I agree with one of the premises of the opposition to my view- the President could have used his marginalized position as President to whip up the base and possibly provide a reasonable, left-wing alternative to the Tea Party through his activism. However, with a GOP more malicious than ever and poised to continue the nonstop flood of attacks on the middle class in 2012 and further if they win the elections or if we insufficiently work towards crippling their power in state-houses. Let's lay down our grudges, and let's end this practice of rivaling factions of pro-Obama and anti-Obama Kossacks. You can oppose the President, but let's not detract from the missions of this website- More and Better Democrats.
To finish this inadvertantly-lengthy diary, I plea to you to stop this battle. Let us drop the terms Obamabot and such from our lexicon, and let's fight to assure his re-election. There is no realistic chance that a Democrat not named Barack Obama will find himself in the Oval Office come January 18th, 2012, and less chance that a primary challenge will strengthen his reelection prospects. Let's band together behind the Democratic mantle. I will not say that primaries are inappropriate for legislators- let's have as many Blue Dogs out as possible. I will say, though, that to match the GOP's unity, we must learn to build a broad coalition between the entire ranks of progressive America- let's start here by ending the Obama-wars.
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