From Daily Kos:
The current Republican Party is irrelevant to the national conservation. They want trickle down economics – well that’s a proven fail. They deny climate change – that’s a proven fail. The list goes on and on. They are irrelevant to every single national problem the country faces…
Yes they control the House thru gerrymandering. That’s made them politically relevant. But their politics is 100% obstruction; 0% productive ideas. That’s because their only goal is to serve the interests of the wealthy and big corporations. Nobody else matters.
Well, that is about right. Actually, it is 100% true.
The Republican Party is probably the last major political party on Earth that continues to push the lie of trickle down economics – that massive cuts will so stimulate the economy that deficits will vanish. They actually believe that the way to get rid fo deficits is via tax cuts! Starve the state of money via taxation and that will fix the government’s budget problem. It’s insane and it’s never been proven to work. If you lower tax rates, you starve the state of funds, as one would logically think. Tax cuts don’t do much to stimulate the economy when they are directed at the rich who don’t put much of their money into productive investment anyway.
We have had 30 years of tax cutting and where has it gotten us? To this insane hollowed out economy with the worst inequality in the Developed World, flat or declining wages for 30 years, massive floods of immigrants taking American jobs, a ruined safety net, decrepit infrastructure and a Depression brought on Finance Capital that wiped out 40% of the wealth of the average American.
Climate change is as real as the nose on your face. I am not aware of any large political party anywhere on Earth who denies that it is real. If you hear of one, let me know.
Serving the interests of the upper middle class, the rich and the corporations is not in the best interests of the vast majority of Americans.
We need a political project that lifts up as large a percentage of the American people as possible, one that benefits the American majority, not the small upper middle class and wealthy corporate elite. Neither party is offering anything like this as both parties are working only for the interests of the corporations and the moneyed classes.
We have two wings of the Republican Party now:
The conservative wing of the Republican Party = The “Republican Party.”
The liberal wing of the Republican Party = The “Democratic Party.”
Although the left wing of the Democratic Party is still a populist, pro worker group that represents the interests of the majority of Americans, they are hated by the elites who run the party. A common maxim in modern US politics is that the Republican Party fears its base while the Democratic Party actually hates its base. Recent comments by Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel about the liberal wing of the party (the party’s base) are instructive. See “fucking hippies,” “professional Left,: etc.
One problem is the reactionary nature of the American people, probably the most rightwing people on the planet. Although Obama’s Reaganite neoliberal party is just the liberal wing of the Republican Party, 53% of Americans are so insane that they think that this conservative named Obama is some sort of a Communist (53% of Moronicans say that Obama is a socialist in polls).
The hilarious thing about these polls is that no socialist or Communist thinks that Obama is either a socialist or a Communist. In fact, the socialist-Communist part of the US Left actively despises Obama.
Check out the rage-filled comments on Alternet these days. Alternet commenters are really just the left wing of the Democratic Party, but this is the most furious I have ever seen the US Left at Obama since he has been in office. Most commenters are attacking Obama from the Left in recent days, and they get anywhere from 50-50 to 100% up-votes. If Obama hates his base, its increasingly obvious that the feeling is mutual. Daily Kos on the contrary is made up more of Democratic Party loyalists, people who are politically active. The head of Daily Kos supports Obama, so a lot of his commenters fall in line.
It is also true that the Republicans have control of the House due to gerrymandering. The Democrats won the House election in 2012 about 51-49% if you count all of the votes cast. Therefore, logically, the Democrats ought to control the House in a fair system. However, Republicans won many governorships in 2010 and were able to redraw districts in lying, phony ways (Democrats do this too) so they end up with more Republican members than they are entitled to.
There is something sick and wrong about the way we vote for Representatives. While the voting for President and Senate is largely fair, the voting for the House is not. A state like California that votes 70% Democrat, 30% Republican for the House ought to send a House delegation to Washington that looks like 70-30 (if there are 50 California reps, 35 of them should be Democrats and 15 should be Republicans.
It is also true that they have done nothing but obstruct when they were in Congress. Congressional Republicans are on record saying that the bad economy is good for the party and that they will oppose any efforts to improve the economy since they will help Obama. That is almost treasonous, but rightwingers typically try to ruin economies when their progressive enemies are in office (see Venezuela and Chile). They have said repeatedly that they voted against things that they supported so as not to give a victory to Obama. That’s just sickening. I can’t imagine what sort of a partisan your average Republican is that they take delight in such treasonous nonsense.