Party of Pain
By Froma Harrop - Providence Journal, October 10, 2013
Fans of representative democracy know that there are ways to advocate one's beliefs short of threatening and delivering harm to the larger society. It used to be that one could blame the parade of manufactured crises not on the whole Republican Party but on its unruly tea party faction. That's becoming less and less so as what remains of the pragmatic leadership caves in to the extremists' demands.
The GOP's perspective on governing seems to have moved from enlightenment to medieval. It's become the party of pain.
Before I go on, let me salute some individual Republicans for standing up to the insanity within their party: Rep. Peter King of New York, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania. You represent the Republican Party of my father.
For all their patriotic posturing, the tea party bomb throwers don't like America very much. Worse, they don't understand how democratic governments or economies work. Some of their political leaders do know but don't care, using their electorate's confusion to enrich themselves off their bankroller billionaires and right-wing media.
There's nothing to do about these voters. They won't squawk until their own checks -- for Medicare, Social Security, farm subsidies, roadwork -- stop arriving. Tea party congressional districts tend to be poor, old, rural and on the receiving end. If anyone is a burden to productive America, they are. And irony of ironies, by holding the federal budget ransom, they are making it hard for productive America to support them.
(More here.)
Fans of representative democracy know that there are ways to advocate one's beliefs short of threatening and delivering harm to the larger society. It used to be that one could blame the parade of manufactured crises not on the whole Republican Party but on its unruly tea party faction. That's becoming less and less so as what remains of the pragmatic leadership caves in to the extremists' demands.
The GOP's perspective on governing seems to have moved from enlightenment to medieval. It's become the party of pain.
Before I go on, let me salute some individual Republicans for standing up to the insanity within their party: Rep. Peter King of New York, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania. You represent the Republican Party of my father.
For all their patriotic posturing, the tea party bomb throwers don't like America very much. Worse, they don't understand how democratic governments or economies work. Some of their political leaders do know but don't care, using their electorate's confusion to enrich themselves off their bankroller billionaires and right-wing media.
There's nothing to do about these voters. They won't squawk until their own checks -- for Medicare, Social Security, farm subsidies, roadwork -- stop arriving. Tea party congressional districts tend to be poor, old, rural and on the receiving end. If anyone is a burden to productive America, they are. And irony of ironies, by holding the federal budget ransom, they are making it hard for productive America to support them.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
What Harrop fails to realize (or chooses to ignore) is the amount of pain that will arrive if we simply stay the entitlement course.
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