Kick’m While They’re Down!

Four Days after the 2008 Presidential Election, on November 6, 2008, James J Patterson had this to say, “The 2010 Congressional Election Campaign began on November 5th”…would that it had. A reprint of that column is here, and may prove insightful as we head into the stretch run…

Now that the Republican/Conservative era is at an end, it’s time to debunk, hopefully once and for all, some of the fallacies, obfuscations, and out right lies by which all Republicans live. Here are Patterson’s Ten Points All Democrats and Progressives should keep in mind and never forget!

Good Bye And Good Riddance!

There follows Patterson’s Ten Points to keep in mind as we move into the Post Republican Era, so we don’t have to go through all this crap again anytime soon!

1. If you give a wealthy person a tax break, all it means is that they will write a smaller check to the government at tax time. That’s all it means. Period. They don’t run out and create jobs, they don’t stimulate the economy, they simply keep the money by spending less on their taxes.

2. If you restore the relatively modest tax increase on people earning more than $250,000 per year, it actually affects them not at all. It takes not a single bottle of Scotch off their shelves, nor does it deprive them of a single gallon of high-test gasoline for the Lexus’s and SUVs in their driveways, nor does it prevent their children from going to the very finest schools. Neither will it prevent them from giving $28,000 to the right wing candidate of their choice next time around so they can write a smaller check to the government at tax time.

3. Conversely, if you give a person making a middle class wage a tax break, he or she will go right out and spend it to improve their lot in life, therefore helping the economy.

4. Government programs are paid for only one way, the rising tide that lifts all boats. Make your policies in favor of a healthy middle-class economy and the tax base will increase and deficits and debt will begin to reverse themselves. But if you follow the Republican method of taking an otherwise healthy economy and shape your policies to enrich a few sacred cows, i.e., the arms industry and your wealthy corporate constituents, you will get a situation identical to the one we have now: war, debt, and oppression.

5. There is no such thing as a “Free Market.” There never has been and there never will be. For as long as moneyed interests can change the rules of law and marketplace to give them an advantage they will do so. In this respect, the myth of the “Free Market” is as Utopian a right wing idea as Marxism is a Utopian left wing idea. Neither can work for the same reason; too much power in too few hands. History has proven that a regulated, managed economy is the only thing that makes any sense at all.

6. People love their homeland wherever they come from. A person from Ecuador loves their country as much as any American loves theirs. The difference is that America is supposed to stand for an ideal that was spawned in the Enlightenment period of Western Civilization. I have never met a Republican who understands or appreciates the difference. Republicans love America because it is their homeland. The problem is, they think it’s their homeland! They think the rest of us are merely visiting. The current Republican culture has betrayed their disdain for free speech, voting rights/democracy, other cultures, or anything outside of their narrow bourgeois sensibilities. And while we’re on the topic, a Republican is by definition supposed to be, among other things, conservative, a conservative is by nature a conformist, and a conformist cannot be an iconoclast, therefore it is simply impossible for John McCain to be a Maverick! And he proved that in his despicable campaign.

7. This one is important for Democrats to understand. Republicans hate you. They hate you with the same vitriolic loathing that most people reserve for child molesters (I’m not kidding, didn’t McCain attempt to brand Obama as wanting to teach sex to kindergartners? The right wing floated ads in Minnesota branding Al Frankin as a pornographer. Why? Because they know that their base will believe it.) Democrats simply don’t carry the same bilious hatred in their souls for anyone the way Republicans hate them. Most Dems refuse to believe that it’s true, but it is. When John McCain snapped at Tom Brokaw during a debate that he wouldn’t appoint Brokaw Secretary of the Treasury, it wasn’t merely a “towel snapping moment” as one pundit quipped, what he meant was, he wouldn’t trust the economy with a filthy liberal like Brokaw. The same contempt was seen in another debate when he couldn’t even bring himself to look at Obama, or when he referred to Obama as”that one” It was sheer hatred, pure and simple, naked and ugly. Liberals are just too nice to see it for what it really is. And now, after purging their party of all moderates, only the truly hateful Republicans remain. For that reason, Obama would be foolish not to purge the government, especially at the highest level, of every Repub he can find. If he doesn’t, sure as you are born, they will sabotage his administration the way they did Bill Clinton’s.

8. Remember this, Republicans think God is the cause of recessions and economic depressions, not their greedy ill-informed policies. They think God is responsible for the weather change and warming of the planet, not their filthy policies of pollution and devotion to the quarterly bottom line. They think they are defending God when they declare wars on the heathens from other countries while robbing them of their natural resources and their human labor.

9. It isn’t over. Now that they are on the run, it’s time to pursue them with great diligence and ferocity until they are forced to change and adapt their ideology into something useful in the world. Don’t let up.

10. The 2010 Congressional Election Campaign Began on November 5th! The first mid-term election, traditionally, goes against the newly elected administration. It was the first mid-term that delivered Gingrich’s uprising against Clinton. The Dems must reverse that and grow their majority, and to do that, they must start immediately.