Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 07:55 pm
My colleague Jason Easley (does he ever sleep?) has done a wonderful job in his two early post-debate features of documenting the lies, distortions and downright scary proposals heard in Wednesday night’s Mesa debate among the three Republican primary candidates for president. Ron Paul is out of the picture. I’m going to expand on the appalling disingenuous ramblings of the remaining debaters who are, as Newt Gingrich would say, “The most radical and dangerous presidential candidates in the history of the United States.”
I’m generally a glass half full kind of guy. But with the emergence of these easily manipulated candidate ideologues urged on and financed by a corporate oligarchy that is staging a bloodless coup d’etat of this country, that glass barely hosts a few drops of h2o.
In watching the debate, I marveled at the hostility of Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. Only guaranteed loser, Ron Paul, made an occasional shred of sense. Let’s start with flaming heterosexual, Santorum bragging about his support of the V-22 Osprey aircraft. It’s hard to imagine a development project costing more years, lives and money. It was decades in the making, suffered repeated fatal crashes and spent about $60 billion to get it right. Nobody can accuse these folks of knowing shit about what they’re talking about.
Unions were repeatedly trashed in the debate. Consider this. Union members often produce a sophisticated, expensive product, cars for instance, that require skills to build and apprenticeships and work probation periods to develop and master those skills. Then, the union member gets his or her official work imprimatur and, contrary to what these three, none of whom has ever belonged to a union, tell you, the great percentage of union members work damn hard for their money. Speaking of money, how many working hours do investors in auto stocks contribute? When those stocks fly, investors make collective billions. Do they spend one minute working for that money?
One more point about unions. During a break, CNN ran an anti-union ad with the claim that “just 10 percent of current union members voted to form the union.” First, you must know that this is one of a $10 million dollar quartet of anti-union commercials funded by the ‘Center for Union Facts’ (CUF). This radical right organization was founded by a lobbyist, the cheesy Rick Berman (look him up sometime). My wife immediately figured out Berman’s misleading 10% figure encased in this commercial. I’m sure you did too. Unions are institutions that have been around for a long time. So when the union was initially formed, the percentage was much higher in order to vote it in. In the ensuing years, great numbers of the original voters retired or died. So, in the case of older unions, if 70% favored the union and 60% of those folks are gone – that leaves your 10%. In fact, federal law mandates that at least 50% of workers must approve the formation of a union in the workplace.
As a final disgusting salvo, one of these radicals stated “The unions only care about protecting bad teachers.” I’ve addressed that issue in other contributions, but such hate-filled and totally erroneous rantings demeans a party that tolerates such drivel.
Let me just say this to the middle-class. As go unions, so go your wages and quality of life.
One of the three made the statement that the current government is a disaster. I agree. That’s because the republicans have blocked every worthwhile program that the democrats attempted to bring to the floor. The Mesa mess was pretty much about the same old chestnuts. Obamacare must be repealed, giving not a single reason why. To hell with all entitlement programs and a long segment about how Iran is going to nuke us any day now. No problem if one of our allies or the U.S. nuked Iran or any cranky middle-east country. These candidates could care less about their women and children. SCARE, SCARE, SCARE, SCARE and, please Lord, PULEEZE let us go to war…Syria, Iran – who gives a damn – just please let us fight MORE WARS.
The boys tell us that Obama ‘attacks’ religion. The attack, of course, refers to that straw man, women’s reproductive and contraceptive rights. I don’t really need to refute those nonsensical candidate positions. Women get it and it’s not only going to cost the republican the presidency, but they could even lose the house, something I didn’t think was a remote possibility with redistricting. State and local races are also at risk for Republicans. Would a reasonable women even remotely consider the possibility of voting for such a clueless good ole’ boy party?
The one theme all three obsessed on was assuring their minions that they were the biggest, greatest, most committed CONSERVATIVES on the planet. As if any hint of anything but the most strict adherence of the far-right, radical zealotry of what passes for today’s conservatism would be a one-way ticket to everlasting burning in hell. It’s really quite comical to watch and their brand of conservatism has not even the most microscopic of relationships to true conservatism.
In a future piece, I’m going to dissect the dialectic of today’s conservatism and true conservatism and contrast those definitions with the terms liberal and progressive. I’ll also try to convince fellow liberals to stop running away from those honorable titles.
The Mesa debate was bad, hyperbolic, campaign Shakespeare. Elect any one of these disingenuous toadies of the top 1% and America will draw its final breathe of world relevance within a few years. China, Japan and the European Union will sky over us like an Olympic Pole Vaulter.
Follow me on Twitter @demwriter
- Close Guantanamo? Don’t Rush to Judgment! - Wed, Feb 24th, 2016
- Marco Rubio Works the Friendlier Confines of South Carolina - Fri, Feb 12th, 2016
- More Questions And Few Answers After Iowa Caucuses - Tue, Feb 2nd, 2016
