Republicans and responsibility

Republicans in positions of power, and the corporations that support them, remind me an awful lot of misbehaving two year olds.

From my latest article on Outraged Citizen:

Republican leaders and talkers say they want to get the government off your back, lower your taxes, and – of course – allow you the privilege of handling your own problems without help from the government. They say they believe in "personal responsibility," and the implication always is that Democrats who want government to provide assistance to those in need do not believe in personal responsibility, and ordinary people who need help are not acting responsibly (neither of which is true).

My observation, however, is that what Republicans are really saying when they talk about personal responsibility is that they don't believe in being responsible for and to each other. They don't believe in "being their brother's keeper" and they don't care to consider how their behavior impacts negatively on others. They believe in the individual's right to do what they want, not the individual's responsibility to care for and acknowledge the needs, rights, and comfort of others.

If Democrats were Republicans.....

In an interview on Nightline, Hillary Clinton said:

If we had the Republican rules, I would already be the nominee.

And as her good buddy James Carville famously says :

If ifs and buts were beer and nuts, we'd have a helluva party.

Let's take this thinking a little further.

If Democrats acted like Republicans:

We would threaten to obliterate Iran.

We would dismiss people of color and treat them as less important than whites.

We would support a gas tax holiday so we could lose more American jobs and put more money in the pockets of oil companies.

We would brag about our love of guns.

We would give George W. Bush authorization to obliterate Iraq.

We would cravenly pander to people whom we secretly despise.

We would care more about the votes of the "white working class" than the votes of the black working class.

We would pretend we were just plain folks even though we were multimillionaires.

We would lie about everything.

These are, after all, things George W. Bush and his Republican cohorts have done and continue to do.

Look closely, everyone. It is also what Hillary has done and is doing.

Perhaps Hillary Clinton should change parties.

Time to go, Joe

Former Democrat Joe Lieberman is bashing Obama and wondering whether he might be a Marxist, even though Obama once campaigned for him, and suggesting he (Lieberman) might get to give the keynote address at the Republican convention.

These things follow his endorsement of John McCain, and his recent trip with McCain to Iraq and other places in the Middle East, when he had to gently correct the old man every time he couldn't remember the facts.

And that follows Joe's refusal to accept the will of the democratic voters of Connecticut, who rejected him in the 2006 primary, and his decision to go forward anyway and run as an Independent. (How did Gore ever pick this guy to be his running mate in 2000?)

In each of these instances, Lieberman has shown that he has no loyalty or love for the Democratic Party and that he is willing to do anything to stay in the spotlight, no matter how it makes him look and no matter what voters think.

Joe Lieberman is an independent in name only. In his heart he is a Republican and should declare himself so.

I can think of only one reason why he doesn't. It would mean that, come November when the Democrats are likely to win a veto proof majority in the Senate, he would be relegated to a very powerless position.

Were Joe to declare as a Republican now, of course, the Senate would return to Republican hands. He could be a hero, it would seem. But a one-vote majority in the Senate would be no better for the Republicans than it currently is for the Democrats and Lieberman and his Republican brethren know that, so they are probably not pushing for him to switch sides.

Far better for Joe to continue to caucus with the Democrats. This way, the majority Dems are blamed for the Senate problems, the Repugs have a spy, and Joe can still have a committee chairmanship come next election when the Dems are sure to increase their majority.

I think, however, that if the Dems gain five or six seats in the next Congress, they ought to take away Joe's chairmanship. After all, he isn't really a Dem anymore, in name or in sentiment, and so he should not be rewarded. He probably won't go on his own, so it will take Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership of the Senate to take him aside, thank him for his service, and say:

"It's time to go, Joe."

Seeing things not as they are, but as we are

While the outcome is by no means certain, today's primary may bring two candidates much closer to securing the nomination of their parties.

John McCain is favored to win the bulk of delegates today, yet some powerful voices in the Republican Party oppose him because they see him as too liberal, an assessment which thoroughly amuses Democrats.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is favored to win more delegates, but the race is presumably much closer than on the Republican side.

It is interesting that what divides supporters of the two major Republican candidates, McCain and Romney, is ideology, while what divides supporters of the two major Democratic candidates, Clinton and Obama, is identity.

Among hard core conservative Republicans, ideology is the only true guide to voting. Many, though not all, Republican voters see Romney as more conservative than McCain, mainly because McCain opposed Bush's tax cuts at first, proposed a comprehensive immigration plan, and is apparently not sufficiently pro-life (although I'm not sure what he would have to do to prove he was sufficiently pro-life.) They believe this in spite of the fact that Romney, the man they believe is more conservative, once campaigned on a pro-choice platform, while to the best of my knowledge, the pro-life McCain never has. So while each candidate has changed positions on one or more issues, the radical base of the GOP believes and trusts Romney more than McCain, and trusts Romney's flip flops more than McCain's.

As I have said before, elections are national Rorschach tests: we see things not as they are but as we are. Maybe the Republicans are really voting on the basis of identity, character, likeability, etc. but they want to believe they are voting on the basis of their ideology, because ideology is paramount in the Republican Party. Ideology trumps practicality, compassion, unity, reality, history, and common sense. If it did not, how else do you explain the Bush administration, whose foreign and domestic policy, whatever the reality, is explained in conservative ideological terms by its apologists?

Then again, maybe the blowhards like Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity and Hewitt favor Romney over McCain because they believe he can be controlled much easier than McCain, and the story they are putting out about Romney being more conservative is simply a well-crafted bit of propaganda.

The Democratic candidates, on the other hand, are not that different ideologically, and their supporters aren't voting for them based on ideological differences, real or imagined. In fact, most Democrats see their positions on the issues as basically the same, and so most Democrats will support either of them in the general election.

What divides supporters of Clinton and Obama is not ideology but identity. Woman of a certain age (mostly those over forty) are supporting Clinton, while younger women support Obama. White voters are more apt to vote for Clinton, while black voters favor Obama. Of course, it isn't true across the board. I am a white grandmother and a feminist who supports Obama, and I know some young women who support Clinton.

There is some truth, however, to the conventional wisdom that women are hungry for female leadership and many will vote for Hillary only because she is a woman. While that isn't a good enough reason for me to support someone, I don't think it should be criticized. Neither should the fact that some Democrats will vote for Obama because he is African American or because he is from a younger generation or simply because his words move them.

People vote for candidates for all kinds of reasons having little to do with their capability or positions on the issues. (A great many Americans voted for George W. Bush in 2000 based only on his supposed religious beliefs, ignoring the fact that he was totally unqualified on several fronts including intelligence and experience, and a great many Americans voted for John Kerry in 2004 just because he wasn't Bush.)

So we will see who comes out with more support at the end of the day, but we will probably not have two solid nominees. It is a primary season full of surprises, mainly because the electorate knows it wants something completely different from George W. Bush, but isn't sure who best offers that.

It is true, I believe, that we see things not as they are but as we are.

Today may not determine our two party nominees, but it will tell us a great deal about who we are.

A tale of two parties

In just a few short weeks we may know who the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees are – or not.

This is a strange election year. There is no clear front runner in either party, as the voters in each party are divided.

However, what divides the voters in the Democratic Party is very different from what divides the voters in the Republican Party.

Read entire article at Outraged Citizen.

Knock it off!

Nothing, nothing, nothing,..... in the upcoming presidential election is more important for this country than kicking the Republican Party out of the White House.

Whether the nominee is Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, or Al Gore in a white cape coming to rescue us from the current nonsense going on in the campaign doesn't matter. Any of them would be better than any of the Republicans including McCain, who may be moderate on some issues, but cannot be considered a moderate on the war in Iraq, where he wouldn't mind staying for 100 years.

So two things need to change or Democrats will destroy themselves before the national election.

First, Hillary has to get Bill and her supporters and campaign advisors to stop with the coded language about race and the trashing of Obama. I was also going to suggest Obama do what he could to cool things off but it seems he has already done that. The media seems to be itching for an Obama vs. Hillary fight, so both of these candidates need to pull back from the attacks on each other and focus on their own policies and campaigns. We don't want one of them so wounded going into the general that they can't recover, with the supporters of their Democratic opponent so angry at the destruction of their own candidate that they refuse to show up at the polls. This is the reason Ronald Reagan instituted an 11th Commandment (Thou shalt not attack a fellow republican) in his party.

Second, Democrats need to look beyond race and gender in deciding whom to support. It seems there are many women who are supporting Hillary Clinton just because she is a woman. I think that's as big a mistake as not supporting her because she's a woman. If she's the best one for the job, and electable because of her policies and character, great. If she's not the best one for the job and the American people decide to vote for a Republican as a result, then ladies we will not end up with the first woman president but with the first female nominee and that is not good enough - for feminism, for women, but especially for the country. That's simply not a risk any of us should take because nothing, nothing, nothing is more important than electing a Democrat this time around.

Likewise, Barack Obama should not be supported or opposed just because he is black, or not "black enough." While I think it is very important for our country to finally electe a black president, just as I think it is important to finally elect a woman, these aren't more important than dumping the Republicans. The mess we are in because of a criminal Republican administration, an illegal war, a failing economy, and an attempt to make the president a monarch, makes it crucial to restore the Constitution - and sanity - by electing a Democrat.

I ask all Democrats - and especially Hillary, Bill, and Barack, as well as their supporters and advisors, to knock it off and restore some dignity to this campaign so that whoever wins the nomination will have the best possible chance of defeating the insane party that has nearly destroyed the Constitution and the country.

Hope for the New Year

If David Brooks is right, this is the best news ever and a hopeful note on which to start the new year:

The Republican Party is more unpopular than at any point in the past 40 years. Democrats have a 50 to 36 party identification advantage, the widest in a generation. The general public prefers Democratic approaches on health care, corruption, the economy and Iraq by double-digit margins. Republicans’ losses have come across the board, but the G.O.P. has been hemorrhaging support among independent voters. Surveys from the Pew Research Center and The Washington Post, Kaiser Foundation and Harvard University show that independents are moving away from the G.O.P. on social issues, globalization and the roles of religion and government.

More dirty tricks

I just came back from Target where there was a young man gathering signatures for a ballot initiative to fund children's hospitals. At least, that's how he got my attention.

Since these paid signature gatherers do not usually have only one petition with them, and since I was suspicious that he was collecting signatures for the initiative to change the way California awards its electoral votes, I asked if that was his only petition. He said no, there was one on eminent domain, and one on the electoral college. I told him I would not sign his petitions and he made a snide remark, confirming what I knew: the children's hosptial petition and the eminent domain petition were not his main interests. He was going to use people's compassion for sick children and their fear the government might seize their property to get signatures for another Republican Party attempt to win an election they cannot win fairly and squarely.

These ploys (this one and the nonsense in the past two elections in Florida and Ohio) are signs of desperation. As the failed policies of the Republicans in power are exposed and people turn to new leadership in the Democratic Party, the Republican Party will resort to anything to stay in power. If it means rigging voting machines, they will do that. If it means scrubbing the voter rolls of legitimate voters whose names kinda sorta resemble the names of felons, they think it's a jolly good idea. If it means making African Americans - who mostly vote Democratic - stand in the rain for hours to vote, causing many of them to give up because they had to get to work, they'll do that too.

If the American people really want to keep a Republican in the White House for another four years, even though the dollar is dropping, gas prices are at an all time high, the stock market declined again today, the real estate crisis is causing tens of thousands to lose their homes and even more to lose their jobs, and we are on the verge of total meltdown in the Middle East with crises in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, then I will accept the will of the people as I believe in our system of government. But at least I want to know the vote was fair and that the parties respected the process. This latest ploy of the Republican Party isn't just dirty tricks, it's completely undemocratic.