Yes, I know. Can’t predict Obama will win or I’ll jinx it. Still 36 days to go till Election Day and anything could happen. That’s the current thinking among the liberal media. I bow to Rachel Maddow, Norman Goldman, Lawrence O’Donnell, Thom Hartmann and others of their high caliber in respect of their professional experience and expertise in analyzing political situations and trends. But sometimes, too much experience can get in the way. It’s like having a problem with the audio speakers connected to a computer. The husband, who knows all about computers, checks for missing drivings, file corruption, registry errors and decides the audio card has failed. His wife comes over to the computer and asks if he checked if the audio cable from the speakers became unplugged from the computer. He hadn’t thought of that. He checks and by golly, the cat must have pulled the cable out of the audio jack on the back of the computer. Problem solved.
Sometimes it takes someone with the lesser experience to clearly see the simple answer. That’s why I think I have an observation that all of the professional, paid political pundits missed. Obama will win the election because the Republican Party has decided to hand it over to him. Look at the evidence logically: they fielded the worst slate of candidates ever seen during the Presidential primaries. Either the candidates were flavors of the month or they never stood a chance. Every one fatally flawed and some were outright buffoons. Romney outspent every one of them and he was never able to attract more than about 25% of Republican voters. He simply outlasted everyone else. Then he picks a running mate who is poison to senior citizens and women. The team is quickly sinking into the dustbin of presidential campaign history.
Why is no one asking why Jeb Bush, the heir apparent to his brother, didn’t enter the race? The door has been held open for him since 2009. What about Mitch Daniels, the other much bally-hooed future front runner. Chris Christie? He would have been more at home in the clown circus of this past year and will I guarantee he will be no more than a footnote by 2016. But why no heavy hitters, no Republican stars running for President this year?
The answer is as simple as checking to see if the audio plug was pulled out of the back of a computer: the Tea Party. The movement started out in 2009 as a protest against the banks and taxes but for the most part what it was protesting was about as formalized as the Occupy Wall Street movement when it first started out. But the Republican Party fairly quickly saw that the Tea Party was driven by racism and fear and was composed of low-information people with easily malleable minds that could be controlled, and just as quickly subverted the Party to suit its own needs. The Republican Party set the agenda and funded candidates for state offices and for Congress after President Obama took office. It even promoted the birther offshoot. The Republican Party’s goals were realized when in January 2010, the Tea Party took over control of the House and de facto control of the Senate. This is what gave John Boehner the confidence to declare the Republicans would create jobs and Mitch McConnell to declare that the Senate Republicans’ most important job was to hold President Obama to one term. The mistake both men and the Republican Party made was in thinking the Tea Party once in Congress could remain under their control. They were wrong. Oh, boy, were they wrong.
I truly think that both McConnell and Boehner thought they could stymie Obama’s “liberal” agenda while forwarding their own. And why not? Hadn’t the Democrats, who had lost their spine after 1981 while voting Antonin, Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito onto the Supreme Court, also voted for TARP and to approve George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq? Hadn’t they always rolled over when it counted? The three things that scuttled both men’s grand plans were: 1. The no new taxes pledge. 2. The Tea Party had plans of its own. 3. Harry Reid grew a spine.
A despot learns early on that in order to retain absolute power that can be bequeathed to his/her heirs and to even become beloved among the people you have to give the people a little something. They may grumble about wanting more, but they will also fear losing what they have. This is the way you keep them under control. Every despot who after seizing power with the intent of taking everything away understood that in order to retain power he/she had to employ fear, violence, imprisonment, torture, and murder. And every despot—or his/her heirs that employed these same tactics, eventually was deposed. This is consistent throughout history. You gotta give the people something to keep them under control, whether it be steady job with decent wages and healthcare, homeownership, retirement, or welfare.
In January 2011, the Tea Party took over Congress and state governments with one agenda: to have it their way. Power, wealth, absolute control over every aspect of society that wasn’t signing on their agenda. And the Republican Party sat back and let them give it a try just to see if it would work. By the end of 2011 the Republican Party could see the experiment was a dismal failure, its approval ratings were in free fall, and people in and outside its base, were getting very, very restless. John Boehner tried to bring the Tea Party back under his control, but those horses had left the barn way back in January.
The Tea Party became the Republican Frankenstein’s monster. I don’t think Boehner and McConnell had planned to drive the U.S. to the brink of bankruptcy over the raising the debt ceiling, and I don’t think they had planned on the Super Congress which mandated would cut off the udders of the sacred cow/milltary budget, and the push to pass the anti-abortion bills might have caught them by surprise. What probably angered them was the Tea Party monster’s refusal to introduce or consider any jobs bills at all. In the entire history of Congress, both parties had typically found ways to compromise and work together for the greater benefit of the country. But the Tea Party refused to be budged off its ideology and it was plain for all to see that Boehner lost control of the House in 2011 and that Eric Cantor, who had re-made himself in the image of the Tea Party, was calling the shots.
As this rupture within the Republican Party widened, its approval ratings began to tumble. When the presidential primary season rolled around, it was clear Republican voters were searching for and running to the newest Messiah, only to find the person was no more than a snake oil salesperson. They rejected every one of them until the only non-Messiah left was Mitt Romney. The Republican Party has not so much embraced Romney as settled for him. Settling for has no deteriorated into writing off the Presidency and hoping to retain control of at least one chamber of Congress.
The Republican Party sees that the record lowest approval ratings for Congress in history coincide with the Tea Party takeover and the move so far to the right the base and independent voters are being made to feel like they’re liberals, a feeling uncomfortable and alien to them. It knows that if it ever hopes to regain control in D.C. and elect Jeb Bush president, it needs to kill (figuratively speaking) the Tea Party and its sycophants like Sarah Palin. So, it is allowing Obama to be re-elected and Obamacare to remain to be a thorn in the side of its base. The base will be riled up over how the Tea Party did nothing but gridlock Congress AND enable Obama to be re-elected that it will return to electing mainstream Republicans to Congress.
Yes, the Republican Party wants to the Tea Party to die so it can be the Republican Party again and start winning presidential elections. It’s like a phoenix which must die by fire in order to be reborn from the ashes. There is no other logical explanation why it has fielded two absolute incompetents to run against Obama. Romney’s falling approval ratings are bad enough but his most unforgiveable sin is that he is bringing down the ratings for Fox News, and that cannot be countenanced. The best evidence of the Republican Party abandoning Romney is Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS group moving money out of the Romney campaign and into selected Congressional races, like those for Todd Akin and Scott Brown. Of course Rove has aligned himself with the Tea Party and perhaps there are powers greater than him who want him gone with the Tea Party as well.
Remember that unlike the Democrats, the Republicans think long term. They were planning their takeover of American politics back in the 70’s and they achieved that goal. Even Bill Clinton was more Republican than Democrat. So they are perfectly happy to write off eight years of Obama, who is similar to Bill Clinton in quite a few ways. Their new four-year plan starts next year in preparation for the midterm elections in 2014. The Republican Party always believes, despite the panic it instills in its base, that it has all the time in the world. Except of course, if the Mayans were right about the world ending 12/21/2012. But I think Karl Rove bought the rights to the Mayan calendar and reset the date to 2016 if a Democrat wins the White House again.