Several dailykos writers have already written about this GOP whistle-blower, but I saw a frame here, which these others did not focus on -- so here goes. If you've already had your fill of this topic, feel free to pass by my observations, most people usually do.
First the credentials of this GOP-confidant who is calling 'BS' on the ever-more cynical GOP tactics -- the perpetual stonewalling that passes for "governing" in today's media analysis.
On June 17, Mike Lofgren retired after 28 years as a congressional staff member. He worked for 16 of those years with Republicans on the House and Senate budget committees, but until this week, few people knew who he was.
truthdig -- Sep 9, 2011
Mr. Lofgren has worked in varying capacities over his long career of public service, including serving for:
House Budget Committee [as a] Budget Analyst
[and most recently]
Senate Budget Committee [as a] Professional Staff Member
LegiStorm
As for the incisive frame that Lofgren weaves through his tell-all essay, let's just say there is a Roadmap in there which paints in stark relief the Cynical Highway that most of the Republican Party has been careening down for quite a while now.
From the sounds of it they really don't care who they 'run over' in the process ...
Here's the GOP dirt, from an insider who has watched it unfold like a bad Sci-Fi movie from the 50's ...
Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult
by Mike Lofgren, Truthout, News Analysis -- Sept 3 2011
[...]
A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.
A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s -- a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).
[...]
All these memes (ie. "thought slogans") have seen new life in recent years. Recent Congressional disapproval ratings around 88%, indicate the GOP has accomplished their goals aptly, especially when it comes to getting average voters, to distrust Congress.
The throw-away frame in vogue of late, from most political camps, has been a unified:
"We all know, Congress is Broken."
This may be true, but it does not make it right. Why is it that the Traditional Media spouting these GOP notes of despair, never follow up with the obvious journalist retort:
'Yes, we all know, Congress is Broken.' ... "But WHY is it Broken?"
Of course asking that, would mean digging into all the messy details of perpetual Filibusters, and Budget-blame-shifting, and Lobbyist-sausage-making, and Political-Ad-Windfall-profits
-- and "we all know" that the average Low-info Voter "has no interest in those topics" ... or so our hypothetical Cable News Programming Director would hypothetically reason.
Mike Lofgren continues:
As for what they really believe, the Republican Party of 2011 believes in three principal tenets I have laid out below. The rest of their platform one may safely dismiss as window dressing:
1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. The party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy. [...]
Republicans have attempted to camouflage their amorous solicitude for billionaires with a fog of misleading rhetoric. John Boehner is fond of saying, "we won't raise anyone's taxes," as if the take-home pay of an Olive Garden waitress were inextricably bound up with whether Warren Buffett pays his capital gains as ordinary income or at a lower rate. Another chestnut is that millionaires and billionaires are "job creators." US corporations have just had their most profitable quarters in history; Apple, for one, is sitting on $76 billion in cash, more than the GDP of most countries. So, where are the jobs?
[...]
Half of Americans don't pay taxes" is a perennial meme. But what they leave out is that that statement refers to federal income taxes. There are millions of people who don't pay income taxes, but do contribute payroll taxes -- among the most regressive forms of taxation. But according to GOP fiscal theology, payroll taxes don't count. Somehow, they have convinced themselves that since payroll taxes go into trust funds, they're not real taxes. Likewise, state and local sales taxes apparently don't count, although their effect on a poor person buying necessities like foodstuffs is far more regressive than on a millionaire.
All of these half truths and outright lies have seeped into popular culture via the corporate-owned business press. Just listen to CNBC for a few hours and you will hear most of them in one form or another.
[... and much more, including the other 2 GOP Guiding Light principles ...]
So there you go. Laid out in stark relief, just a few of the 'dominant frames' that the GOP professionals have been successfully selling us. And the average low info voter, for the most part has bought them -- as "givens" ... as "self-evident truths"; thanks to the non-existent critical analysis, that pervades so much of the 24/7 Media Carnival Barker Show. We all know, the Corporate Media's primary goal is to keep their lowest-common-denominator Non-Reality Show on the Road, and above all, to keep those various cyclic Ad-Revenue streams flowing. (It's about to be Election Season again right -- Cha-Ching!).
And you know IF CNBC said it -- it MUST be true:
'Warner Buffet can go stuff himself.'
'Those bureaucrats in Washington need to get out of the way of the American Entrepreneur.'
'You know, I never met a poor person who created a Job ...'
And back to my opening GOP Travel Planner map. They've gotten the public to distrust Government. Check!
They've been shifting the Budget-Mismanagement blame from themselves, to the Party with the Brooms and Mops. Check!
And now their final destination is within sight -- the outright Dismantling of Government Services (those Public Services and Public Assets), which were designed and legislated for the benefit of ALL.
In some GOP-dominated States (WI, MI, OH, NJ, FL), the Great GOP Govt Garage-sale is already taking place -- selling off these Public Assets to Private concerns has already begun -- to the sole benefit of the wealthy few.
Public workers and Union workers have already been partially demonized by these GOP operatives (and a lackluster defense by most Dems). And the Mr and Mrs Low-Info Job-clutchers, are each and everyday being more "dissuaded" into buying the GOP cynical plan -- to {wink-wink} 'salvage their dismal futures' ...
Buying into the systematic dismantling of the American Dream. Piece by piece. Brick by brick. Worker by worker.
Bill, by yet-another obstructed Bill.