Friday, February 27, 2009

GOP Playing Dress Up

Now look here, this is dress up time. This regalia is for cowboy action shooting and it's a cowboy outfit of the movie sort. You don't think I believe that this outfit makes me a cowpoke? It's a 'uniform' for a competitve game, that's all it is. Yes, the firearms are real.



A couple years ago the President of the US played dress up on an aircraft carrier with the message of "I'm a warrior chief". A lot of us shook our heads in disbelief, but they managed to win in '04. Well, the GOP is back to putting on their funny hats (tin foil isn't out of fashion).

The Republicans are now the Party of Fiscal Responsibility, despite all evidence to the contrary over the past years, they are. You might think that's an ill fitting hat, but they've donned it. Pushing back against that idea is somehow partisan. Well, so be it.

The Republicans have donned the hat of "Small Government" which really doesn't fit too well withh the "Theocracy" party hat. I don't know how you manage to jam one over the other, but they're trying.

One should never miss the rather large and colorful "Free Market" hat, this one is perhaps the funniest looking one and saddest one. Their version of free market is one that is managed to the benefit of large multi-national corporations and the crushing of labor, neither being alowed to function in anything like free markets. This neglects the issue of whether a free market has ever existed anywhere at anytime, but their management of it is what we have today.

The "Let You Keep Your Money" hat is the one that uses Lower Taxes as a chin strap. there's a dirty little secret under that hat, it means giving your money to the wealthy not keeping squat. From Ronnie Reagan forward, even under beloved WJ Clinton, you might as well have sent your betters a check of between $7K and $10K. You have been screwed to the wall for the benefit of 1% of the country's taxpayers. You have to remember that the check number comes from a Larry Summers who won't bother to tell you the real costs because you might just burn the whole rotten ediface.

They got themselves a really tattered hat, "Protecting Your Rights" and danced about with a manufactured issue of Fairness Doctrine. I will give them a fairly steady push back on the 2nd, though there hasn't been much to push against and they did take DC's side in Heller. They will, honest to god, plump their hat by talking about protecting the 1st in regard to right wing talk radio without say mentioning wiretapping your phone calls as an infringement of speech, much less the 4th and searches.

I'm just not going to say anything about the "Ethics" hat they've put one other than it keeps falling off.

Here's the thing about all these hats, they're sales tools having nothing to do with reality or concern for the nation. They do not have to take the interests of the nation into account, they are politically neutered. Certainly at the level of governors they do have to take some sort of account of the the good of their state, but even there it is limited due to the fact that the FED has already taken care of it so they can rail ideological talking points.

When I play dress up I have to take responsibility for some very deadly weapons, I have to exercise real care in consideration of the well-being of others. That my friends is a very different thing. My stuff goes bang and theirs just squirts out a flag BANG!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well stated, Chuck. Well stated!

t.a. said...

it's a bit like Frosty, Chuck: a bunch of frozen water animates as if a real person by putting on a magic hat. they really have nothing other than the talking points they spin. real conservatism has pretty much disappeared, as have the liberal/moderate Rs like Packwood (who doesn't look so bad in retrospect). take away the hats, and there's just nothing there.

Obama, otoh, works his magic bare-headed. i think he might be for real.

Chuck Butcher said...

Thanks Kevin,
My small coterie of commenters actually means something to me and praise - or damnation, means I'm doing something other than amusing myself with keys.

Chuck Butcher said...

you snuck in TA, thanks. Yes it is a bit like magic isn't it? I scalded a couple of folks on your article on BO. You're ever so much nicer than I am.