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2012: What is the GOP Really After? It’s the Congressional Seats

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Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 09:39 pm

Perhaps we have been too dismissive of the strategy that currently prevails both in Congress, the current Tea/Republican primaries and in the Presidential campaign warm ups.

Surely within the halls of the Grand Old Party there had to be someone who doesn’t look and sound like the caricature of a clown from a bad comedy. My first thought was that these presidential candidates were the foil for the real candidate who would show up just in time to save the Tea/Republican party from being the global laughingstock of the 2012 presidential elections.

Then I wondered if all the smoke and noise was really just a ruse to cover for the real game: the Tea/Republican party doesn’t really want the 2012 presidency. In fact, I’ve posted that notion more than once on various online outlets. But here we are, totally focused on Rush Limbaugh’s most recent verbal vomit and the latest nonsense from the crowd presenting what is apparently Breitbart’s last great conspiracy event: “Huggate.”

I don’t think Limbaugh and company expected this level of outrage or the current and future loss of revenue that’s resulted. While I hope Sandra Fluke will use her education to file a nice, fat defamation and libel lawsuit that will hopefully discourage media pundits from such egregious behavior in the future, I wonder…

There’s been a lot of rumblings about the connections between Limbaugh, Koch brothers, although there is no clear path down which one can follow the money. However, what is crystal clear is the connection between Limbaugh, Clear Channel Communications and Bain Capital – the company Mitt Romney founded and the company that is part owner of Clear Channel.

So I am wondering if the whole Rush Limbaugh crapalooza isn’t really just a distraction or a test of what a huge distraction can do. Further, the reaction from the candidates and party alike has been weak to nonexistent which is curious to me. Women’s rights are important. In spite of Bill O’Reilly’s misological opinion the notion that somehow insurance payment for birth control translates into taxpayer dollars spent and “payment for other people’s activities” just made no sense to me.

My immediate question to him, Congress and the Catholic church is this: Viagra is already covered by most if not all insurance companies. If having children is considered God’s will that one should not interfere with, why then is it permissible for men to take Viagra? Why isn’t erectile dysfunction a spiritual sign that a man isn’t to have any/more children? Bill, why isn’t coverage for Viagra considered “payment for other people’s activities?”

But I digress from the original topic. (See how easy that was?)

I have absolute confidence in President Obama winning four more years. What I believe the strategy of the RNC and the Tea/Republican party will be is to totally focus on winning Congress. We need to start paying attention to and focusing strategy, dollars and public consciousness on the Congressional seats that are in play this November. We’ve seen what’s resulted in the last two years.

The Tea/Republican party was able to wrangle the majority in the state and national congressional offices, mostly because many of us chose to sit out the 2010 elections, buying into the notion that the Tea party had more voices, simply because they screamed so loudly and consistently. We bought into their protracted tantrum, mistaking it as power. The truth is that in spite of what the Tea Party members believe, the Tea Party was and is no less a Republican party marketing strategy than the Christianity and family values meme during G. W. Bush’s run for re-election. Christianity and family values were never their ideology although they did an excellent job of selling that particular brand of snake oil to their followers.

The Tea Party, which was funded by the Koch brothers, was initially intended to contain/control the conservative, far right members of the Republican party without appearing to do so. As a number of them found their way to the political stage, the GOP found themselves challenged by Tea Party candidates who conservative celeb Elisabeth Hasselbeck labeled as the “bedbugs of the Republican party.”

When the Koch brothers met with other like-minded power brokers earlier this year, pledging millions to beat Obama, they were likely not intending to focus on the Presidency. It is a far better strategy for the right to focus on Congress in order to keep President Obama embroiled in the same nonsense he’s had to deal with for the last four years. In Indiana one can already see the heavy hand of big money from the US Chamber of Congress paying for nasty, aggressive television ads on behalf of Incumbent Republican Richard Lugar.

It is up to each of us to look at the bigger picture, the greater strategy being implemented. Acknowledge the distractions, yes. But pay closer attention to what’s going on elsewhere while we’re being misdirected. We need to understand who is running for congressional seats, who isn’t returning to Congress, who the Blue Dogs are, who the faux Democrats, who the old guard Republicans are and vetting the candidates you support as their replacements.

Al Franken’s Midwest Values PAC is working to elect more women into Congress by supporting longtime champions like Dianne Feinstein, Claire McCaskill, Kirsten Gillibrand, and, of course, Minnesota’s own Amy Klobuchar and fighting to elect more women like Tammy Baldwin and Shelley Berkley and Elizabeth Warren to the Senate, and women like Christie Vilsack and Tammy Duckworth to the House. The key voters this election will be women, youth, the elderly, all minorities and the poor.

We must engage people in every community, assuring every voter has the required voter identification needed to vote in their respective states; the states each of you live in. While we don’t have Super Pac money, we each have individual voices that can educate ten people and make sure they vote this fall.

President Obama needs a Congress that is willing to work with him to benefit you and me. Our futures depend on it. And you.

How are votes counted? ONE at a time. When you don’t vote, you’ve voted by omission. You matter, your vote matters.

Next 2012 Primer: What, does the media think we can’t handle the truth? Because when Israeli President Shimon Peres, in an interview with Barbara Walters said that security for Israel has been the best under President Obama, his comments got NO MSM coverage. So why doesn’t the US media cover certain important newsworthy events?

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E. Joyce Moore

A Renaissance woman defined as an artist, writer, poet, author, community activist and advocate of the arts, E. Joyce Moore's book "Ramblings Through the Attic of Thought" garnered the 2009 SORMAG Poetry Book of the Year award. Her most recent book, "SHIPS," a non-fiction book on relationships, was published in November, 2011 and now available on Amazon. Joyce has written for numerous publications and contributed to several books. Her most recent work was a chapbook for tweens and teens - "Like Air, I Rise" and she has just completed a dramatic screenplay and is working on two novels. Moore also writes about abusive relationships for the Baltimore Examiner, http://www.examiner.com/abusive-relationships-in-baltimore/ View her websites at mybooksmyvoice.yolasite.com and moorhamenterprises.yolasite.com.

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