Abortion has clearly become a deadly election issue for Republicans.
If you doubt it, look at the results of the November 6 elections.
So I was surprised to read, on January 24, a news story about Republicans’ continuing effort to deny women the right to control their reproductive organs.
This centered on a New Mexico anti-abortion bill that would force rape victims to carry to term the fetus of their rapist, on the “legal” grounds that this was “evidence” of a crime.
Click here: New Mexico Bill Would Criminalize Abortions After Rape As ‘Tampering With Evidence’
I decided to send my longtime friend Dave–who’s not exactly President Obama’s biggest supporter–a link to that news story.
I didn’t offer any commentary, other than in the subject-line of the email: “AND YOU WONDER WHY OBAMA GOT RE-ELECTED?”
It didn’t take Dave long to reply.
“No, we don’t wonder why Obama got re-elected. It’s because of the free-loading, lazy entitlement crazed society that worships their moronic scuz-bag messiah who brings and offers them FREE ‘shit’ if they vote for him ‘again.’
“Most of which are ALL the welfare reciprients, low income minorities in crime ridden ghettos and the great Mexican migration that he’s pardoned with the multiple offers of selling out the American people by awarding FREE visas, FREE education, FREE Social Security benefits (even though they’ve never worked a day in their lives) and FREEDOM from being asked, stopped or questioned by authorities.
“The democraps sold this country out long ago for nothing more than their greed to stay in office.”
As much as I love Dave as a friend, his reply leaves out–for Republicans–some highly unpalatable truths.
- The Republican party talks a great game of “getting government off the backs of the people.” But many of its members lust to ban abortion and even birth control.
- Women voters were outraged by Republican candidates’ stupid comments about “legitimate rape” and how even a rape-caused pregnancy was “something that God intended to happen.”
- After a party takes a bath at election time, it’s commonplace for its members to put the blame elsewhere than on themselves.
- As a result, Republicans are now blaming their nominee, Mitt Romney. Or (as always) Barack Obama. Or “the stupid voters.”
- Some Republicans (like Rick Santorum) argue that the party wasn’t “conservative enough” in its choice of nominees and thus deserved to lose.
- Other Republicans (a minority) argue that the party was too right-wing and alienated all those who were not.
- Echoing the Romney line that Obama “bought” the election with “free stuff” for voters ignores an ugly truth about the Romney Presidential campaign: The people who supported him expected to get rewards of their own. Rewards such as lower corporate taxes, weakened environmental protections and the legal right to discriminate in the salaries they paid to female employees.
- But by right-wing standards, “corporate welfare” is OK; only when welfare goes to needy individuals is it evil. The “Prescription Drug Benefit” of the Bush administration was a classic gift of corporate welfare to the pharmaceutical industry.
- And, actually, it’s normal for voters to expect something in return for their votes. The only question is: Is that politician going to do something for those who already hold great wealth and power—or those who have very little?
Consider the following from Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince:
.…One attains [the position of a prince] by help of popular favor or by the favor of the aristocracy [i.e., wealthy interests].
For in every city these two opposite parties…[arise] from the desire of the populace to avoid the oppression of the great, and the desire of the great to command and oppress the people….
Besides which, it is impossible to satisfy the nobility by fair dealing and without inflicting injury upon others, whereas it is very easy to satisfy the mass of the people in this way.
For the aim of the people is more honest than that of the nobility, the latter desiring to oppress, and the former merely to avoid oppression….
One, however, who becomes prince by favor of the populace must maintain its friendship, which he will find easy, the people asking nothing but not to be oppressed.
Of course, it’s natural for the losing party to look for scapegoats. As political columnist Mark Shields said on the PBS Newshour on January 25:
“As far as the Republicans are concerned, they are simply going through the terrible stages that every defeated party does.
“And one side says we lost because we didn’t stick enough to our principles. And the other side we lost because we were too dogmatic and didn’t reach out to the undecided.
“And so the first inclination is always to blame your own candidate. You blame Al Gore if you are a Democrat in 2000, or John Kerry in 2004. You blame John McCain.
“The Republicans want to blame Mitt Romney. That’s fine. But Mitt Romney is more popular than the Republican Party. I mean, he got 47 percent. The Republicans are dead in the water right now.”
ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ARIZONA, BENITO MUSSOLINI, CBS NEWS, CHRIS MATTHEWS, CNN, FACEBOOK, FASCISM, HARDBALL, ITALY, JOE ARPAIO, JOE THE PLUMBER, JOE WALSH, MSNBC, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TWITTER
THE HEIRS OF HITLER
In History, Politics, Social commentary on January 31, 2014 at 4:19 amIt seems so long ago now.
Eighty-one years ago–on January 30, 1933–Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Nazi Germany.
Six years later, on September 1, 1939, he ordered the invasion of Poland–and inintentionally ignited World War II.
Six years later, on April 30, 1945–in a war-ravaged Nazi Germany and facing certain defeat–Hitler shot himself in an underground bunker.
Adolf Hitler
But Hitler may be having the last laugh after all. His methods and goals are very much alive and flourishing–among the Americans who once drove literally drove him into the earth.
If you doubt it, consider the following from MSNBC’s “Hardball With Chris Matthews” for August 15, 2012:
MATTHEWS: Here is a group of less than average Joes. Joe the Plumber [Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher], Sheriff Joe Arpaio of [Maricopa County] Arizona, and [Illinois Congressman] Joe Walsh all spew insanity. But rarely do they go back to back to back.
Well, first up, you have Joe the plumber telling an Arizona Republican fund-raiser that he wasn’t worried about being politically correct. He was going to tell it like it is. The way to protect the border, he says, is to build a fence and then start shooting.
Samuel Joseph “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher
At that same fund-raiser, Sheriff Joe Arpaio…said his investigation [into] the president’s birth certificate is proceeding and [he] is convinced the document from Honolulu is a fraud.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio
And a few days earlier, Tea Party favorite Joe Walsh told a town hall audience in Illinois there were radical Islamists in the Chicago suburbs trying to kill Americans every week.
Congressman Joe Walsh
What do these Joes have in common? They [are] all trying to be as incendiary as possible and they all succeeded.
Turning to David Cantanese, a reporter for Politico, Matthews says:
MATTHEWS: These are heroes in the Republican culture. These are people like Donald Trump, he knows how to make money as least. They love these people, David. They’re the heroes.
DAVID CATANESE, POLITICO: I would actually put Joe Walsh in a bit of a different category….I think he’s a true believer.
This is a guy who says things on the record that most politicians would never do off the record. And again, he is an elected congressman in a very tough race. When he says something, I think he believes it.
I think…the Plumber and the sheriff are more showmen. They’ve got books to hawk. Joe the Plumber was revealed that he gets paid sometimes to go into these congressional districts.
Remember, Joe the Plumber is a congressional candidate running in Ohio, what is he doing in Arizona if he really wants to win that race? You know, it was revealed after her endorsed Herman Cain last year, Herman Cain campaign paid him $10,000.
MATTHEWS: We’ll skip ahead to Joe Walsh and what he’s been saying. He’s an elected an official, a United States congressman.
Let’s hear what he has to say about the near threat of radical Islam in this country.
REP. JOE WALSH (R), ILLINOIS: In this country, it’s not just over there, trying to kill Americans every week. It is a real threat. And it is a threat that is much more at home now than it was right after 9/11. It’s here. I’s in Elk Grove, it’s in Addison, it’s in Elgin. It’s here.
MATTHEWS: The specificity of this insanity, I guess it`s the old Joe McCarthy trick. The more specific you sound, the more credible you are. If you give a lot of details about the near threat of Islamic terrorism in this country plotting against us as a real threat — I guess it rings true to those people watching his pointer there as if he was the mad professor.
Well, there’s one common thing here. There’s a common thread in this insanity and it’s racial and ethnic. I mean, they go after people, Mexican-American, and other people who have come here to this country from Latin America, South America, they attack them. That’s Joe the Plumber.
Arpaio does the same thing. He’s going after the president because he’s African-American, go after his birth certificate. Let’s face it, he wouldn’t do it to a white guy.
* * * * *
Candidates like Joe Walsh, Joe Arpaio and “Joe the Plumber” (who isn’t a licensed plumber) don’t get on the ballot by accident.
They do so through the support of men and women whose hates and resentments they share–and exploit.
These voters are seeking a representative who will inflict their hatreds onto those they despise.
Adolf Hitler, for example, did not create anti-Semitism in Germany. He simply shared it–and exploited this poisonous hatred within his audiences to attain political power.
Postwar Germany, however, had an advantage that America now lacks.
The United States was determined to root out Nazism among the Germans. And, to a large extent, it succeeded: Germany today is a far different country from the one Hitler ruled.
But who will exorcise America’s own Fascistic elements?
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