Finally, finally, finally, Barack Obama said some things I thought I would never hear from him, and frankly from most Democrats.
IMHO Barack Obama got played for most of his first term. Like many Democrats, what Republicans said to them in the cloak rooms and the gymnasium or behind closed doors, led them to believe that Republicans were simply a loyal political party with differing policy beliefs than Democrats, and not the authoritarian anti-democracy cult that I’ve believed them to be since I was glued to the TV watching them cover-up for a corrupt president Nixon during the Watergate hearings.
Despite Ronald Reagan busting unions, selling weapons to our enemies, using “welfare queen” dog whistles, and refusing to spend money allocated by congress, or Newt Gingrich’s lies and propaganda attacks on Bill Clinton that led to a REAL WITCH HUNT followed by a fake impeachment, or GWB’s thugs pounding on the windows of the Broward county elections office to stop the vote counting in a state where his brother was governor, and his lying us into a war, and all of their appointments of justices to the Supreme Court who would interpret the constitution to meet their political agendas, or authoritarian voter suppression laws and gerrymandering in every state where Republicans could get away with it, or the unbelievable Benghazi witch hunt, Democrats continued to believe that Republicans believed in democracy. Now we are seeing who Republicans truly are and it has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with complete and total power.
It pleased me to no end to finally see Obama speak out and tell the world that this isn’t just about Trump, it’s about who Republicans really are and have been for decades.
Here are some excerpts from Obama’s speech:
It did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause. He’s just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years, a fear and anger that’s rooted in our past but it’s also born out of the enormous upheavals that have taken place in your brief lifetimes.
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But over the past few decades, the politics of division and resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the Republican party. This Congress has championed the unwinding of campaign finance laws to give billionaires outside influence over our politics. Systematically attacked voting rights to make it harder for young people and minorities and the poor to vote. Handed out tax cuts without regard to deficits. Slashed the safety net wherever it could, cast dozens of votes to take away health insurance from ordinary Americans, embraced wild conspiracy theories like those surrounding Benghazi or my birth certificate, rejected science, rejected facts on things like climate change, embraced a rising absolutism from a willingness to default on America’s debt by not paying our bills to a refusal to even meet much less consider a qualified nominee for the supreme court because he happened to be nominated by a Democratic president.
None of this is conservative. I don’t mean to pretend I’m channelling Abraham Lincoln now, but that’s not what he had in mind, I think, when he helped form the Republican party. It’s not conservative. It sure isn’t normal. It’s radical. It’s a vision that says the protection of our power and those who back us is all that matters even when it hurts the country. It’s a vision that says the few who can afford high-price lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions set the agenda, and over the past two years, this vision is now nearing its logical conclusion.
So with Republicans in control of Congress and the White House, without any checks or balances whatsoever,
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They’re undermining our alliances, cozying up to Russia. What happened to the Republican party? Its central organizing principle in foreign policy was the fight against communism, and now they’re cozying up to the former head of the KGB.
Actively blocking legislation that would defend our elections from Russian attack. What happened? Their sabotage of the affordable care act has already cost more than 3 million Americans their health insurance, and if they’re still in power next fall, you better believe they’re coming at it again. They’ve said so. In a healthy democracy, there’s some checks and balances on this kind of behavior, this kind of inconsistency, but right now there’s nothing. Republicans who know better in Congress, and they’re there, they’re quoted saying, yeah, we know this is kind of crazy, are still bending over backwards to shield this behavior from scrutiny or accountability or consequence, seem utterly unwilling to find the backbone to safeguard the institutions that make our democracy work.
This is who the Republican party has been for decades, and I’m thankful Obama can express it in his usual elegant style.
OTOH: Steve Schmidt is one of the Never-Trump Republicans who feel betrayed and suckered by a party that they helped build. All the things they thought the Republican party stood for, they now realize was an illusion simply for the Oligarchs who run the party to use as an excuse to get their mob of ignorant and racist base followers to march lock step to their commands.
These Never-Trump Republicans don’t hold back. To hell with elegance, they now know what the base they helped build is like, and they use the right tone to try and reach them.
2) This National emergency has every potential to cause a disaster of immense proportions. Should that happen generations will look back with wonder that people didn’t proactively understand the causal effect of the emergency to the disaster. There is also a crisis in America.
3) The crisis is different than the emergency. There is a crisis of cowardice. The GOP majority are complicit quislings enthralled to a dime store Mussolini who they know is morally, intellectually and mentally unfit for his office. This crisis of cowardice is making the emergency
4) Worse because these cowards have chosen their tribe and personal ambitions over America and have failed their oaths to defend the Constitution. They refuse to fulfill their oversight obligations as a coequal branch of government and have effectively obliterated the system of
5) Checks and balances that makes the American Republic work. I think it is important to think about the nature of the Emergency, the nature of the crisis and the possibility of real disaster as three distinct but interrelated metastasizing cancers . We don’t at our collective peril.
Two patriots on opposite ends of the political spectrum, using two different styles of speech to wake up America to one of the greatest threats our country has ever faced. In these dark times when it’s easy to fall into despair, days like yesterday and words from people like these, give me great hope that we will fight the Republican attack on our democracy with all our strength, and when that fight is over, we are going to find ourselves in a more progressive America dedicated to protecting the principles of democracy our country was founded on.
RESIST!
RESIST BY VOTING!
RESIST BY GETTING EVERYONE YOU KNOW TO VOTE TO SAVE DEMOCRACY!