Monday, December 08, 2008

GOP Tricksters and Fabulists

Oo, ah. Watch closely as Bush reaches deeply into a balanced budget and extracts a huge recession! Look carefully as Condi and W. use prestidigitation to transform their lies and blunders into — Ta da! — faulty intelligence.

The Bush administration of magical fools have not even left the stage, but they're performing all the way out. They're strutting, not slinking, stage right.

In our glee to see these malicious incompetents off, we shouldn't lose sight of the less obvious forces at work. It is far too easy to note accurately that they, particularly Bush, have the fantasy that they can frame historical assessments of the past eight years. Somehow, Nixon the Evil did recast himself as a statesman, but he at least had foreign-policy achievements as a basis.

More insidious than trying to game history is the underlying lying, for the next Presidential election.

Already, our own smarmy elephant, Willard Mitt Romney, is raising money and doing well in polls (third behind Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee for 2012). He's hired staff and consultants too.

The next GOP go will depend on magic that John McCain lacked the skill to perform. Sure, the next candidates must separate themselves from the chaos and failures. Yet, to keep the core of the party's voters, they can't reject even the most disastrous Republican ploys. Those would include:
  • Tax cuts are sound financial policy that grow the economy
  • What's good for big companies is good for America
  • Borrowing and spending hundreds of billions and calling it defense is sustainable
  • Invading other countries will make us safe from terrorism
  • Redacting the Bill of Rights is the American way
  • Empowering the Executive Branch at the expense of the other two is good government
  • We can win every war and our economy will always return to an endless growth spiral if left alone
You really, really have to want to believe, beyond self-delusion, to accept that package.

Consider just a few examples of the 2012 harbingers. President G.W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would have us believe they were fooled into a trillion-dollar misadventure in Iraq by bad spy reports. Karl Rove, Bush's long-term chief adviser, holds that it was not bad ideas, merely a campaign-fund disparity that caused McCain's loss. On the economy, Bush's current ploy is that all the bad stuff that led to the terrible stuff took place before he was in office — not his fault or that of his party.

Shameful Links

Bad advice. Bush puts the onus on invading Iraq on the "intelligence failure" falsely claiming Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and the will to use them. Rice regrets reliance on "flawed intelligence" leading to the invasion of Iraq.

Economy? Not Mine. Bush has tap danced around the GOP Presidents' total financial failures. Then in his recent ABC interview with Charlie Gibson, he did the rich-kid finger-pointing avoidance thing:

GIBSON: Do you feel in any way responsible for what's happening?

BUSH: You know, I'm the President during this period of time, but I think when the history of this period is written, people will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived in President, during I arrived in President.

I'm a little upset that we didn't get the reforms to Fannie and Freddie -- on Fannie and Freddie, because I think it would have helped a lot. And when people review the history of this administration, people will say that this administration tried hard to get a regulator. And there will be a lot of analysis of why that didn't happen. I suspect people will find a lot of it didn't happen for pure political reasons.

Some of us bloggers and MSM types note (with unconcealed glee) that his time-line would place the blame on his father's administration. We can also add that he avoids the judgment that without great help by external economic forces at home and abroad, Reaganomics and its variants destroy economies.

Trust Us. More obviously for the regrouping of the GOP, Rove's outrageous spin on the loss to Obama is a call to return with vengeance and hope. He would hold that they didn't lose because their policies and plans were bad, rather they were just outspent. Hence, donate more next time and we'll show those filthy liberals!

Tricksters and fabulists

Let us not conflate the honorable and politicians. The battle for 2010 Congress seats and the 2012 head office are underway. It certainly was long before November, when McCain's weakness and Bush's irredeemable failures were too obvious.

Again, Democrats, even in their centrist and quivering kneed totality, have to try to rescue the nation from the other party's economic failure. Moreover, unlike previous administrations in which the GOP at least did a better job with foreign affairs, we face disdain, distrust and hatred from much of the world as Bush's legacy.

Already to hear their advance tricksters and fabulists tell it:
  • The economic problems were inherited, not the GOP's fault, and caused by companies not by government
  • We can, in fact, have guns and butter, regardless of they way it looks now (and in the past 20-plus years).
  • The tragic loss of thousands of American and tens or hundreds of thousands of others', plus the towering debt, was justified.
  • Republican politicians and bureaucrats are wise and pure of heart. Incompetent spies fooled them into bad actions (which continued for seven years unabated).
  • Give rich people more money and tax cuts, and they'll do the right thing by the rest of us.
  • Give the GOP enough money, and they'll not only smack down the Dems, they'll make American perfect again.
One astonishing take is that some voters, many in fact, will buy into that bundle of crap. Republican magical thinking is certainly much easier to deal with than the adult bearing of responsibility and working to fix problems. Another astonishing take is that we'll hear such absurdities repeatedly for the next four years.

Meanwhile, Dems will be busy trying to keep America afloat and steer it into calm waters. Some group of them must act as a truth squad though. If we as a nation are not to repeat stupid, incompetent and delusional blunders of recent years, the bad and terrible ideas need constant exposure.

Republicans need more than new candidates. They need workable ideas instead of fantasies.

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1 comment:

Matt Farmer said...

A few of us in Chicago offer our musical tribute to W's "legacy." We hope you enjoy the video and the song. Feel free to do with it as you please.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I9-BJtvQzE

CRAWL BACK TO CRAWFORD
(Matt Farmer)

VERSE
Well, for eight long years we've been payin' your rent
But now your lease done run
And all our money's been spent
So pack up your bags
And take a last look around
At how you drove a great nation straight into the ground

CHORUS
And don't let the door
Hit you in the ass on the way out
Don't bother with the goodbyes
Just make sure that you stay out
There ain't no need to call
No need to write
We don't even need you to turn out the light
Just crawl back to Crawford, brother
Promise that you'll leave us alone

VERSE
Every step of the way, your story's been the same
Just cruisin' through the world
On your daddy's name
You had the oilmen friends
You had the Skull and Bones
But it never would have happened if your name was Jones

REPEAT CHORUS

BRIDGE
Slam dunk, privatize, deregulate
Tax cuts, trickle down
The politics of hate
Flag pin, waterboard
Intelligent design
You were handed your throne by just five of the nine

REPEAT CHORUS X2