Married to the MOB

Last week the health care reform act was signed into law. This act had been the center of one of the most intense debates in recent times. There were several troubling incidents that occurred before and after the vote. Congressman Emanuel Cleaver was spit on. Several other minorities including congressmen John Lewis found themselves the victims of racial slurs. Senator Barney Frank was verbally abused due to his sexual orientation. After the health care vote, several offices of Democratic legislators were vandalized. Many congressmen, such as Bart Stupak received threatening phone calls. Republican representatives John Boehner and Eric Cantor were very quick to denounce these acts. Although I think they were right to denounce these actions, I think they were too little and may have been too late.

For the better part of the last eight years, I have watched the Republican Party use fear as a political tool. This fear became more pronounced during the 2008 presidential campaign. Sarah Palin used fear of Muslims to try to win votes. She tried to paint her opponent as an outsider. She tried to take the racism that this country was founded on and use it as a political tool to get votes. At the Republican convention, I watched speech after speech of people belittling education and community service. This anger and contempt gave rise to the tea party movement that claims to be a party concerned with the political direction of the country.

I don’t believe that all Republicans are racists. I think there are many legitimate policy debates that we should be having. I do think that many of them have used racism as a tool. My issue is that I have watched the Republican leadership cater to the fringe elements of their party to get votes. Even on the day health care was passed, several congressmen were seen waving a flag that symbolizes revolution to encourage the same crowed of protestors who would later be spitting on congressmen. They were encouraging the very ranks of the people who would perform drastic actions that they would later denounce. The Republican leadership fans the flames of hatred and then when it gets out of hand, they say they are appalled by the actions of the few and claim that they have no responsibility. They can’t try to use hate to get an advantage and then turn around and say they had nothing to do with it when someone gets hurt.

The other sentiment that the Republicans are cultivating is the idea that if they don’t get what they want, it is all of a sudden time to have a revolution. I contend that during the past 200 years of our country’s history we have had lots of disagreements. We didn’t have a revolution or a civil war every time there was a disagreement. What usually happens is once a decision is made we all move forward as Americans. We put aside our differences and do what we can to make it work. Instead of doing that, the Republican Party has decided just the opposite. They have decided that they are going to obstruct and even DISMANTLE the government. This idea may be coming from the fringe, but it is being supported by the main stream elements of the party. The governor of the state of Texas was talking about succeeding from the union. The Republican governor of the second biggest state in our union was entertaining talk of succession in an attempt to gain votes from the right wing fringe of his party.

In 2000, Al Gore lost a very controversial election. Did he stand up and try to secede from the union? He recognized that this thing called America is bigger than any political party. He conceded the race to George Bush in accordance with the Supreme Court decision. I had to watch George Bush wreck this country for the last 8 years and I didn’t want to secede from the union. For eight years I watched Dick Cheney and that group of nuts trash the very principles this country was founded on. I accepted that in a democracy sometimes my team looses an election. That does not mean I want to destroy the country. It means I have to peaceably persuade those around me to vote my way next time. I wish the Republican leadership would show the same respect for our history.

The Democratic Party also has a crazy left wing fringe. There will always be people who go to political extremes. The problem I have with the Republicans is how they are dealing with it. A perfect example took place during the 2008 elections. In the early part of 2008, the left wing fringe said that John McCain was not an American because he was born in Panama. He was born in Panama on a navy base while his father was in the armed forces. When the left wing nuts brought this fact up, Barak Obama, Hilary Clinton, and John Edwards all said “Of course John McCain is an American, this isn’t relevant and we are going to debate the real issues that this county is facing.” The Republican response to Obama’s origins is something very different. The Republican leadership gives ambiguous answers about Obama’s “certificate of live birth” to appease the right wing nuts in their party.

The Republicans cannot have it both ways. If they want to stoke the more radical elements of their party then they have to accept responsibility when things get out of control. All Mitch McConnell has to do is stand up and say “BARAK OBAMA WAS BORN IN AMERICA. I HAVE SEEN HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE. HE WAS BORN IN HAWAII. The leaders of this major political party could say “We may have political disagreements but Obama is probably not a Kenyan Marxist Communist and the Democrats probably aren’t the Nazis”. The truth is that the Republicans have not said that because they are trying to get votes. We had congressional elections and the people in office are the elected representatives. The majority of people in their states put them there. We have been a country for 200 years because of the rule of law. We are not some developing nation that fights a civil war every time a new king takes power.

My argument is not with the fringes of the Republican Party, such as the tea party movement. We live in a country where people are free to voice their political opinion no matter how weird those views may seem to others. We live in a place where people have the right to assemble and petition the government. Some of my own political ideas are on the fringe (like the Federal Reserve stealing our money, we are running out of oil and Cheney should be investigated for war crimes just to name a few). The ideas that are being voiced in this debate are being supported by the leaders of the party. Sarah Palin was the vice presidential candidate of one of this country’s major political parties. These are not a bunch of crazy fringe nuts. These are the so-called leaders of a political party who have disrupted our civil discourse, encouraged the worst parts of our national consciousness, and then want to have no responsibility for the repercussions of these actions. The Republican establishment cannot not have it both ways. They can either be a political party with a dissenting viewpoint who works within the framework of our system to advance an agenda, or they can be a mob.

In my opinion, the Republican Party has ceased to become a political party and has become a mob. They have tied their political future to the fringes of their movement. They have married themselves to the mob. This will make them increasing more irrelevant and eventually unelectable. They will have to go so far to the right to win their primaries that they will have no chance in a general election because they will loose the middle. They continue to alienate large parts of the country. They have already alienated black people, women, Latin@s, gays and people younger than 20. If the Republican Party wants to save itself then it needs to have constructive ideas. It needs to argue their position effectively. When they lose (and they are in the minority, so it will lose at least until the next elections), they must all put aside our differences and do what is necessary to advance our country. The Republicans are behaving like a kid who is loosing a board game so they just flip the table over. They should instead realize that since they are in a democracy they will have another chance to make their case to the American people. They should think about what they stand for instead of what they don’t.

TAKE THE POLL or leave comments!!!