by Dee Newman
"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." – Mitch McConnell
Yesterday, in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation, Kentucky’s senior senator, Mitch McConnell, reiterated that his top priority was not to help President Obama put the nation back to work, but to defeat him in 2012.
For the past two years we have witnessed conservative politicians spewed out a relentless barrage of lies and exaggerations about President Obama and his policies, enraging their ignorant and fearful base, while the news media repeated their political propaganda, unchallenged. The onslaught was so ruthless and determined that any bipartisan outreach by moderate Republicans to President Obama in the future will be interpreted by their rabid supporters to be a conciliatory overture to the Devil.
In the atmosphere they intentionally created, no moderate Republican will risk becoming the next Bob Bennett or Charlie Crist. The Tea Party has already begun to malign Republicans such as Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. John McCain in a primary challenge from J. D. Hayward had to swerve dramatically to the far right in order to save his Senate seat in Arizona.
As House Republican leader John Boehner said yesterday, "This is not a time for compromise.” In short, Republicans created a propaganda monster that is now out of their control.
What we have witnessed over the past two years has been a willingness from Republicans to say and do most anything to regain political power, even at the expense of our nation’s economic recovery and well-being. It seems they believe that continuing their reckless pursuit of power will only bring them further success with an ill-inform and fearful electorate.
If they are “right”, I predict that this nation will suffer another decade long depression far greater than the one we were forced to endure during the 1930's that was spawned by the extremely conservative laissez-faire economic policies of the Republican controlled White House and Congress during the 1920's.
Like today, there was an increasingly uneven distribution of income throughout the nation. More and more of the nation’s wealth was being accumulated by the rich and powerful, leaving most Americans with less and less money to purchase goods and services. The collapse was inevitable.
The Great Depression wiped out not only individuals, but businesses and banks. Ultimately, 5,000 banks failed. During just the first three years of the Depression, an average of 100,000 workers were fired every week. By the end of 1932 approximately 13 million Americans, 1/4th of the nation's workforce were unemployed.
History will most certainly repeat itself if we allow far-right conservatives, once again, to control Congress and the White House.
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1 comment:
My grandfather told me of standing in the bread lines in the great depression, and now, perhaps I am going to have the same story to tell my grandchildren!
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