Repugnant Party Politics

by Al Falafel

The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court Justice is just one of the latest triggers to set the Repugnican Party trash-talk machine a-sputtering.

(Why is it that a nominee's personal experience, race or gender is only an issue when it is not a straight white male being considered? hmmmmm... Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito would never let their personal backgrounds influence the way they think or how they apply the law. No siree. It's a white thing. Minorities just wouldn't understand.)

Making such a significant decision that will shape the legal and social landscape of this country for years to come is one of the most powerful functions that the victor in any US Presidential campaign gets to perform. So it is perhaps no surprise that the biggest sore losers in the race would be going so totally spastic over Obama's pick, especially coming so soon as it does after the bruising the repugnant GOP took in the recent election.

Of course, you could pick any issue in the news of the day and relate this same observation about this New Repugnican Party: whatever the Obama-led Democrats are doing or proposing is automatically met by vicious knee-jerk opposition from the GOP's designated repugnant mouthpieces. And when it's time for a vote, the remaining elected Repugnicans in Congress, on orders from the home office follow the party line and "Just Say No."

In a democracy, the minority party (or more preferably parties) in opposition to the ruling party can always be expected to clash over differences in policy and ideology. But it is safe to say that no sitting President of any party has ever been so publicly vilified so quickly - starting from day one of this new administration. That Obama has not enjoyed the traditional "honeymoon" as prior Presidents have had with both parties is only undetectable because of the overwhelming support he has earned within his own Party - who, with the progressive independents who helped oust the despised Repugnicans eight months ago, now constitute the majority opinion of Americans.

Though not unexpected, the immediate full-blown obstructionist posture the New Repugnicans have adopted after the 2009 election signals something radically different in American politics from what we have ever seen before.

It is now obvious that their current stance represents no mere difference in vision among members of Congress in different parties and the Executive branch of government which can only be held by one party at a time. It is clearly the substance of a calculated political Master Plan devised by Repugnican Party strategists as a means to keep the extremist voter base emotionally engaged. Having let slip their monopolistic grip on power, they can ill afford to lose the only numerically significant voter base they have: those who can be easily manipulated to vote against their own self-interest simply by exciting their most irrational fears, prejudices, and undeserved feelings of entitlement.

The unconscionable political twist they have added is a provision of deniability to those elected members of Congress who actually have constituencies to whom they can be held accountable. You may have noticed that most Congressional Repugnicans, currently in office, tend not to speak out publicly with anything near the level of vehemence that their unelected mouthpieces do with no inhibition in the least.

In fact, most of the official rhetoric used in responding to the Democratic agenda - the floor speeches in the House and Senate - is empty at best. It is either pointless and bereft of any workable ideas or it consists of blatant regurgitation of the garbage that brought us to this point of desperation (i.e. "blah blah blah... don't tax rich people or corporations... blah blah blah.").

A look through the official Talking Points posted at GOP.gov is revealing in that it relays those points in the restrained way their party's legislators are commanded to address them in their official roles. You will not find there any off-the-wall sound bites like "We want Obama to fail!" But the crafty effect of the Talking Points overall is to frame every issue in baseless projections about the future effects Obama's agenda will have on the US economy if super-rich people have to continue paying taxes.

This provides the required cover for those schmucks who have the job of casting votes as elected Representatives to do so with no further explanation and the potential to say "I told you so" later when some of the measures do not fully achieve the goals set for them. At the same time the language in which they are stated allow the Talking Points to be picked up and run with by the designated mouthpieces at Fox News and elsewhere.

Of course, the Talking Points are primarily intended to have an audience of one: the syndicated Repugnican fathead, Rush Limbaugh, who has proved his seemingly super-unhuman capacity to cast the fearful projections in the most extreme light allowable within the rules of the FCC, which were compromised under the Bush Administration (for just this purpose?).

With few exeptions (the insane Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-MN springs to mind) Congressional Repugnicans are dutifully following the script and sticking to the role assigned to them. That is: to keep their mouths shut other than just saying "nay" (witness the totally partisan House vote on the first economic recovery bill).

As though by long-advanced planning it is now the function of those unbridled Limbaughs, Hannities, Becks and the whole Faux News gang of loudmouth idiots and unelected jerks WHO REPRESENT NO ONE but their commercial sponsors, to do the dirty work of keeping the base engaged until the next election cycle.

Even the token/puppet Repugnican leader, Michael Steele, was forced to bow his head in submission to the Master Plan and retract his critical remarks about the ignorant arrogance of Rush Limbaugh. Failing to bow down to Limbaugh would have thrown a monkey wrench into the plan and no doubt cost the hapless Steele his patronage job.

The unelected backroom Repugnican strategists - including their once-acknowledged evil-genius leader Karl Rove (Bush called him "the Architect") - have even applied a mid-level layer of deniability to their blueprint for rebuilding the Repugnican power structure.

Former office holders like the has-beens Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney are given a special role to play that ostensibly adds a level of credibility to the Repugnican cause since they have not yet signed any lucrative contracts with Fox News or another GOP propaganda organization. Since the Party cannot risk losing any more seats they currently hold, and since the ones filling those seats are only assigned one word to use ("no") these stand-in losers have to make themselves available to spout the party line on talk shows where they are interviewed by the has-beens who have signed up as talk-show "entertainment" hosts.

The Repugnican Mater Plan is a gamble, of course, that is firmly rooted in a confidence in the ignorance of the American masses. While the Democrats in and out of office have to look like they are actually trying to do something to fix the unfathomable mess they stepped into, Congressional Repugnicans just have to stand by and offer nothing but complaints about the partisan nature of the Democrats' actions (the nerve!) and just make sure to just show up and use their one-word vocabulary when the yay or nay vote is taken.

The only other complaint they make is that the President is trying to accomplish too much ("accomplishment" a forbidden word in their vocabulary and the idea of it is totally outside their realm of experience as highly paid "servants of the people").

The "unaffiliated" GOP mouthpieces on radio and TV are doing their part extremely well: conjuring the most extremely damaging, discredited and absurd fears about Obama's "socialist" agenda, among all the other ridiculous lies they make up on the spot. Of course, they are counting on the tried and true Rovian tactic by which the spewing of so much insipid crap, regurgitated as often as possible, creates solid truth in a calculated percentage of the thick ditto-heads of their listeners. This is how the Party will be guaranteed a reliable number of votes in the next election.

The rejected candidates who are assigned those stand-in roles in the game plan also deserve credit for dutifully mouthing and affirming the lies spread by those wired-in players on talk shows and taking the heat for those who still hold their seats in Congress. They have little to lose personally since they have been written off as potential candidates for office in the future, though this fact is contrary to the image they would like for themselves.

The Repugnican strategists are not interested in re-running those losers. Their past failures as politicians make them expendable pawns in the game. They can always find fresh meat heads to fill the roles of political candidates who can be thrust into the national spotlight that will be distracted by the novelty without having to repack all the known baggage of a Sarah Palin, say, or that dorky governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, who they suckered into following Obama's first major address and became an instant laughing stock.

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If you want to keep up with the Repugnican trash-talk sputterings but can't stomach the thought of actually listening to Rush Limbaugh's daily three-hour spew, the good folks at Media Matters for America are providing a real-time digest, dispatched by the hour, every day of the week. You won't believe this fathead's mind-boggling audacity! From what I can tell Limbaugh's role in the Repugnican Master Plan is modeled on that of Japan's Tokyo Rose during WW2.