Can’t Do Anything Constructive? Then Ruin the Ones Who Can

Today, John Boehner (R-OH), the house minority leader, led a group of about 100 Republican House members in protesting against the Obama’s health care plan by giving one minute speeches that each included the question “Where are the Jobs,” according to an article on the Roll Call website. After about two hours of this, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) got up and reminded them that the job losses were worse under the Bush administration.
Boehner said that his constituents want to know about jobs, but I suspect his constituents also want to know how they’re ever going to afford health care. The truth is that this has nothing to do with what his constituents want. The Republicans just want to link all of Obama’s policies together, paint them as bad decisions and try to make them fail. They’ve even said as much in interviews, and it’s because they think if Obama’s efforts fail, more people will vote for Republicans in the next election.
Maybe this strategy will work for the Republicans, but if I were one of the 11.4% of John Boehner’s constituents who is unemployed or one of who knows how many that is working but can’t afford health insurance, I think I would be at least as interested in seeing some effort made to assure me that some disease or injury won’t leave my family bankrupt and homeless. The current Republican strategy has nothing to offer but a warm feeling because the GOP won. Hurray! The stimulus failed and we’ve lost everything in the recession. Hurray! My daughter has pneumonia but if I take her to the hospital, I can’t afford to feed the rest of my family. Hurray! The energy plan failed and I can’t afford gas or find any alternative fuel sources so I can’t drive to work or heat the house. Let’s all go vote Republican.

Boston or Madhatter's Tea Party

I happened to catch part of an interview with an historian who was talking about what led to the Americans' Declaration of Independence, when the interviewer asked him about the Boston Tea Party. The historian described what occurred to motivate the colonists to destroy the shipload of tea and, although I had heard it all before I hadn't made the connection, that the Republican Tea Parties have gotten it all wrong. If you haven't heard about the GOP tea parties (lucky you), they were designed to be rallies against the tax increases under the current administration and trying to harken back to our founding fathers' protests against unfair taxation.

I always thought that these obviously contrived parties masquerading as a grass roots movement were pretty silly since 90% of taxpayers were receiving tax cuts at the time and the only tax increases were actually roll-backs of G. W. Bush's tax cuts for the richest 10% of taxpayers. I sort of imagined corporate boards of directors wearing slogan adorned T-shirts over their power suits while waving tea bags in the air.

What I realized after listening to the historian is, the Republicans who came up with the tea party idea got it all wrong. The Boston Tea Party wasn't about taxes. What happened was that the East India Company had a huge surplus of tea warehoused in England that was killing the old quarterly earnings. The British government had a cunning plan. They loaded the tea on ships and sent them to the American colonies where they would sell all the tea cheaply. The surplus turns to ready cash, the colonists save lots of money on discount tea and everyone goes away happy, right? Wrong; a lot of colonists were involved in smuggling tea into America and selling it. They saw the situation as a big company coming in, selling tea at artificially low prices to put all the colonial entrepreneurs out of business. Therefore, the Boston Tea Party was a protest against business monopolies by big companies and not about taxes.

So, as I said, the GOP got it all wrong because they thought they were protesting taxes like the patriots at the birth of our republic. Actually many of the wealthiest 10% represent businesses that are much more like the East India Company in the way they eliminate their competitors and try to monopolize the market than they are like their forefathers struggling to stay in business, so the modern tea party attendees not only are protesting the wrong thing, they are more likely to represent the side whose tea got thrown over the side.

I Just Don’t Get It

I read an article today that said more moderate Xians are moving to Obama’s camp. To clarify, they point out those who attend church once or twice months are more likely to vote Democrat than last presidential election. Voters who attend church every Sunday are still solidly behind McCain. Why can’t Evangelical voters look past their religion to actually consider everything in the President’s job?
The evangelical right voted unwaveringly for W. the last two elections and what did they get? They got lied to: about the war, about tax cuts, about the budget, about the environment, and about Medicare, just to name a few examples. But the lie that should have had the evangelicals screaming for impeachment was the promise to overturn Roe v. Wade. There was a pro-life president, a pro-life GOP majority in both houses of congress, and a conservative majority in the Supreme Court. They are unlikely to have the deck so stacked in their favor ever again, but the Republicans didn’t even try. And the Evangelicals didn’t even notice.
I think I know why the GOP hasn’t tried to overturn Roe v. Wade. As long as they campaign on a pro-life platform, the Xian right will vote for them. If the amendment actually got overturned, Xians would look for a different cause to fight for. That could steer them toward the Dems or worse yet, they may look at the rest of the GOP platform and realize they’re getting screwed every 4 years. So why don’t these voters wake up to the fact that it’s never going to happen and start thinking about something other than zygote souls? Maybe it’s because, as things are now, it’s a win-win; the GOP gets guaranteed votes and the Xian right never have to think before voting.