What Am I Missing?

What am I missing: a few brain cells? Perhaps a few synapses? Maybe some grey matter? Spark plugs? Maybe an oil change? I confess I absolutely cannot understand what is going on, with respect to the Republican plans for the 2012 election, that is. What on earth can they be thinking? Or are they even thinking? It is a complete and total mystery to me.

The Republicans announced long ago they would vote “no” for anything Obama wanted to do. They have been faithful to that pledge even though it has been extremely harmful to the country. They have alienated Black voters to the point where Obama is assured of the vast majority of their votes. They have alienated Hispanic voters with their stand on immigration. They have attacked the unions. More importantly, I should think, they have engaged in a war on women, on abortion, and even on contraception. They have consistently voted in favor of the 1% and against the Middle and Lower Classes. They have opposed universal health care, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the EPA, education, infrastructure, the arts, humanities, and anything that would in any way help ordinary people live more fruitful and happy lives. As I recall, we supposedly live in a democracy (even though perhaps merely a sham democracy) where one person equals one vote. The 99% represents just that, 99% of the voters. So just who do Republicans think are going to vote for them? Granted there are quite a lot of millionaires these days, and even some billionaires, but do they collectively have enough votes to elect the next President? Somehow they seem to think they do. I cannot understand this. I cannot understand how Republicans could possibly believe they are going to defeat Obama. I agree he is vulnerable, especially because of the unemployment problem. But really: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann, or Rick Santorum? Please, how about even a modicum of reality. But what is truly frightening is that large numbers of voters actually will probably vote Republican in spite of their absolutely abysmal behavior of the past few years. I find this every bit as mysterious as how the world was formed.

This current bunch of Republican clowns, and I mean that quite literally, have stretched my credibility to levels never heretofore even approximated. Romney a flip-flopper so extraordinary it almost amounts to a bad joke; Gingrich, every bit as much of a flip-flopper and almost surely the world’s greatest hypocrite; Herman Cain, a cartoon character mocking the system; Rick Perry, who doesn’t know when the election is scheduled or how old you have to be to vote; Michele Bachmann, only borderline sane, if that; Rick Santorum obsessed with sex and homophobic. You could shuffle all of these candidates together and still fail to have a full deck. The more mainstream Republicans (remember them) just stand by idly and let these nitwits represent them and their party, apparently just helpless and afraid.

President Obama seems to have finally outwitted them on at least one issue, the Payroll tax. If Republicans had not caved on this and apparently agreed to continue it they would have in effect raised taxes for some 160 million working class Americans. I guess that would have been too outrageous and too obvious even for those who would otherwise just as soon bury us as not. It seems to me that much of the American public has (finally) caught on the criminal conspiracy that has been ripping them off for so long and may well be preparing to make some much needed changes in the way things work, (up to now almost exclusively for the wealthy and the corporations). This is going to prove extremely difficult and will no doubt take quite a while, but I believe the worst may be behind us. True justice will probably never be attained, full accountability will evade us, but I am beginning to actually once again have hope for the future. In the meanwhile let’s get this charade of a democratic election over with, get rid of the morons that managed to get elected in 2010, and begin again with what will hopefully be a Congress of at least the moderately sane and a President in his second term, free of the Tea Party, more able to govern. Perhaps with a bit of luck we might be able to get Arizona and Texas to secede.

When it comes to elections I am usually wrong. With my record of predictions (Nixon, Reagan, George W. Bush, Schwartzeneger could never be elected) I wouldn’t be too surprised if we end up with a Gingrich/Cain ticket and a platform of adultery for everyone (but no Gay marriage, abortion, birth control, gender equality), and “a chicken in every pot,” two cars in every garage, and unsupervised erotic play on Sunday.

I think we agree, the past is over.

George W. Bush