| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
16 Nov 2006 08:26:23 PM |
| Object: |
Nice Ted Rall article |
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20061115/cm_ucru/whenisawinnotawin
.
|
|
| User: "stoney" |
|
| Title: Re: Nice Ted Rall article |
26 Nov 2006 06:47:57 PM |
|
|
On Thu, 16 Nov 2006 20:26:23 -0600, "bugo@hotmail.com"
<bugoNOSPAM@hotmail.com> wrote in alt.atheism
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20061115/cm_ucru/whenisawinnotawin
OPINION
Ted Rall
WHEN IS A WIN NOT A WIN?
Wed Nov 15, 12:21 PM ET
When It's Democratic
NEW YORK--Live every day as if it were your last. It's good advice.
Modified for politicians: Treat every term in office as if it were your
last.
Republicans get political existentialism. When they campaign for office,
they promise to be uniters, not dividers. Once they win an election,
however, talk of bipartisanship promptly sails out the window. They
freeze out the Democrats, elected representatives and constituents
alike. Rather than compromise to accommodate the millions who voted
against them, Republicans play to their right-wing base: racists and
Christianists. The GOP belligerently promotes the most extremist items
on its legislative wish list by declaring their victory to be a broad
manifesto for radical change and wholesale rejection of the other side.
They nominate judges whose conservatism is far to the right of the
average Republican. Sure, they want to unite the country--by forcing
everyone to go along with what they want.
"Back in December 2000," recalls Lincoln Chafee, a Republican senator
from Rhode Island, "after one of the closest elections in our nation's
history, Vice President-elect ***** Cheney was the guest at a weekly
lunch meeting of a small group of centrist Republicans." Many people
expected Bush, who'd received 48 percent of the vote and had been
anointed after a controversial Supreme Court decision to halt the
recount, to make good on his campaign promises to reach out to Democrats
in a spirit of bipartisanship. But Cheney had something else in mind. "I
was startled to hear the vice president dismiss suggestions of
compromise and instead emphasize an aggressively partisan agenda that
included significant tax cuts, the abandonment of international
agreements and a muscular, unilateral policy."
Cheney and Bush understood that they might only have one four-year term
to accomplish their goals. Knowing that they might never get another
chance, they insulated themselves with a staff of likeminded ideologues
and got to work at remaking America in their image. Drawing on bluster
and hubris, they bullied Democrats into going along with the transfer of
the federal tax burden from the rich to the middle class. Next they
skillfully exploited Americans' fear and anger following the September
11th attacks to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. By 2004 they had eliminated
civil liberties that citizens of Western countries had enjoyed for
hundreds of years, emasculating Congress and the Courts to create a
"unified executive" form of government.
Most of the changes carried out by Bush's neoconservatives during his
first term--new tax rates, USA-Patriot Act, two wars, pulling out of the
Geneva Conventions, torture, domestic eavesdropping--will probably
remain in force for decades. Their strategy of running roughshod over
the Democrats worked.
It helps to enjoy the complicity of the media. Whenever Republicans win
an election, mainstream pundits cite the results as prima facie proof
that the American people have handed them a mandate to do whatever they
want.
When Reagan won in 1980, Newsweek hailed his triumph as "an idea whose
time had come," "a rousing vote of confidence in him and his politics,"
and posited that the results spelled "nearly certain death for liberal
causes." When Republicans picked up seats in the 1994 midterm elections,
House Speaker Newt Gingrich drew upon media support to stampede Clinton
into a year-long "copresidency," resulting in welfare reform and
free-trade pacts.
When is a win not a win? When it's Democratic. When a majority of
Americans cast votes for the Dems, the results are invariably
interpreted by the media as a public desire for moderation and
bipartisanship rather than some "radical left-wing agenda." Democrats
are told to abandon their campaign promises and ignore their liberal
base. The pain and divisiveness of the (Republican-ruled) past must be
healed by big-hearted (and soft-headed) Democrats. Democrats don't get
mandates.
The double standard isn't new. "For all the records it broke," Time
editorialized in 1996, "[Bill Clinton's 49-to-41 percent win] was a
victory for studied modesty; for a willingness to swallow his pride to
preserve his power, embrace his enemies to steal their ideas and march
into history as the first two-term Democrat since F.D.R., not with great
leaps forward but one baby step at a time. It couldn't be clearer if
they had spelled it out letter for letter: voters elected a moderate
Democratic President to carry out a moderate Republican agenda."
Clearly.
For the first time since 1994, Democrats find themselves in control of
both houses of Congress. They picked up 28 seats in the House and six in
the Senate--a stunning sweep considering that congressional
redistricting has made it more difficult to unseat incumbents. But the
facts that a lot more Americans voted Democratic than Republican and
that Bush's approval rating has hit a record low (31 percent) don't mean
much to the official media--or, it seems, to the winning Democratic
candidates.
Time's post-election cover story was called "Why the Center is the Place
to Be." The incoming freshmen representatives, reported The New York
Times (house organ of the Clinton-style centrist Democrats) in its lead
story on November 12, "say they were given a rare opportunity by voters,
many of them independents and Republicans, who were tired of the
partisanship and gridlock in Washington."
"Now, they say, they have to produce...to find a bipartisan
consensus...to avoid the ideological wars that have so dominated
Congress in recent years, to be pragmatists, and to change the tone in
Washington after a sharply partisan campaign."
"They've set a bad example in not working with us," incoming Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid said of the Republicans. "We're not following
that example."
Blech. The fools are already running for reelection.
The New New Democrats need to study the calendar. Two years from now,
they may well end up back in the minority, reading passionate speeches
no one will ever hear to an empty chamber for the benefit of C-SPAN.
Rather than triangulate or moderate their views, Democrats should take
that two-year time limit seriously and go gangbusters, emulating Cheney
and Bush's balls-to-the-wall style to pass as much legislation as they
can before 2008. That means unraveling as many GOP accomplishments as
possible. Cancel the tax cuts, close the torture camps, restore habeas
corpus, get the NSA out of our email, yank our troops out of Afghanistan
and Iraq.
It's high time for vengeance. Impeachment is essential, to cleanse our
national soul, as a downpayment of good will toward the rest of the
world, and because they did it to Clinton for far, far less. And we need
investigations--lots of them. Special prosecutors ought to track down
everyone, up to and including Bush, who lied about WMDs in Iraq, chose
not to pursue Osama in Pakistan after 9/11, deliberately withheld help
that could have saved lives during the Hurricane Katrina, and signed off
on warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. Law and order starts at
the top.
At the same time, Dems ought to ram through such long overdue (and
popular) liberal agenda items as national health insurance, pulling out
of the failed NAFTA accord and a big hike in the minimum wage. If any
Republicans object, do what they'd do: call them terrorists or traitors
or some other smear that forces them to sit down, shut up, and vote yes.
Of course, there's an alternative. Bill Clinton wasted his entire
political career placing short-term victory at the polls over achieving
his political goals. Sucking up to moderates and Republicans got him
eight years in the White House, but for what? He never signed a major
bill that could be described as liberal.
If they govern like there's no tomorrow, Democratic lawmakers will be
able to say that they represented their constituents, who will have
gotten what they voted for. That's how democracy is supposed to work.
Remember?
(Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central
Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis
of America's next big foreign policy challenge.)
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
|
|
|
| User: "Al Klein" |
|
| Title: Re: Nice Ted Rall article |
26 Nov 2006 07:43:37 PM |
|
|
On Sun, 26 Nov 2006 16:47:57 -0800, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
If they govern like there's no tomorrow, Democratic lawmakers will be
able to say that they represented their constituents, who will have
gotten what they voted for. That's how democracy is supposed to work.
Remember?
Or we could all send them email telling them that we voted for them to
be Democrats and, if they act like Republicans, we'll vote for real
republicans next time and they'll have "bipartisaned" themselves out
of office.
.
|
|
|
| User: "stoney" |
|
| Title: Re: Nice Ted Rall article |
28 Nov 2006 04:19:50 PM |
|
|
On Sun, 26 Nov 2006 20:43:37 -0500, Al Klein <rukbat@pern.invalid> wrote
in alt.atheism
On Sun, 26 Nov 2006 16:47:57 -0800, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
If they govern like there's no tomorrow, Democratic lawmakers will be
able to say that they represented their constituents, who will have
gotten what they voted for. That's how democracy is supposed to work.
Remember?
Or we could all send them email telling them that we voted for them to
be Democrats and, if they act like Republicans, we'll vote for real
republicans next time and they'll have "bipartisaned" themselves out
of office.
I'm sure they're flogging Diebold and ES&S now.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
