I've been caught in a number of online debates recently trying, and failing, to express my frustration with the modern Republican Party. I tend to get three different kinds of responses. On says that I'm painting the whole GOP with too broad a brush, and that, even within the elected leadership, there's a lot more variation than I can appreciate as an outsider. The second says that, no matter how hard I try to be even handed, every attempt I make to describe the ideology and political strategy of the Republicans inaccurately casts them as calculating, nefarious, and cynical. The third rebuttal swallows every criticism I make and replies with an example of Democratic incompetence, cronyism, or political hypocrisy.
Then I came across this. It's written by a man who worked as a congressional staffer for GOP representatives for 28 years. His thesis; it is a concerted political strategy, it is nefarious and cynical, and the GOP is worse than the Dems. I know this piece is long, but please, take the time to read it and consider the possibility that the writer's experience might give him the authority to talk about this in a way that no other politician, pundit, or that whiny bald blogger ever could.
Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult
by: Mike Lofgren
Barbara Stanwyck: "We're both rotten!"
Fred MacMurray: "Yeah - only you're a little more rotten." -"Double Indemnity" (1944)"Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.
"But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP..." (Please continue
here)
