Once again, we have reason to note, with rueful admiration, the success of dumbing down America by providing citizens with a steady stream of misinformation, channelled through right-wing media. Today's Republican party is a lot of things -- destructive, obstructionist, hate- and fear-mongering, denialist, science-rejecting, vote-suppressing, education-fearing -- but it isn't inept at seizing on strategy:
... The majority of Americans – depending on which survey you look at, between 60 and 75 percent – cannot name which political party controls the House of Representatives, which party controls the Senate, or either.
Because most Americans don’t know who controls Congress, when Congress misbehaves, as they have been doing for six years, most Americans aren’t sure who to blame.
Enter the Republican Chaos Strategy, based entirely on this statistical and political reality.
And common sense suggests that well over 90 percent of Americans know that Barack Obama is the president and that he is a Democrat.
The Republicans know this, too, and it’s the other half of their strategy.
Therefore, what the Republicans know, is that if they can cause damage to the American economy and to American working people, the average voter, not realizing it was exclusively the Republicans who did it, are going to assume that the president – and the Democratic Party he is a member of – must bear some or maybe even all of the responsibility.
It’s a brilliant strategy: Damage the country and you damage the Democratic Party...It's been obvious from the evening of Obama's first inauguration, when R leaders got together to map out their strategy for blocking every initiative the president might promote; and, when unable to block, to lie about them.
What sort of people, what sort of political party does this, puts their own political fortunes above those of the country? Deliberately damages the economy, hurts the most vulnerable, damn the consequences to the public weal or the future of our country. Votes. Power. That's what's important. Because the more power they have, the more money they'll reap from the corporatists and oligarchs who pull their strings.
This weekend somewhat fewer than the proclaimed thirty million Obama-hating patriots (the number rounds off near to zero) came to D.C. to regain control of "their" country. I wonder if any of them took the time to look around at what's really happening; and, if so, whether they were able to process what's obvious to anyone paying attention, looking through a lens not clouded by Foxolimbeckian propaganda.
Today's Republican party is literally (yep, that's the word) destroying America (those are the words, too). And they're not doing it in some mistaken ideological belief that they're doing the right thing; it's not just some blind following of pre-failed policies (although it's most certainly that, too.) It's deliberate strategy, the most cynical display of malfeasance and mendacity possible. They WANT to harm the country, to prevent President Obama, or Democrats, to get any credit for anything good.
It's as obvious as the stink of an open sewer.
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