Over two months ago, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said, in some interview, that poor people should "blame themsel[ves]" for their various travails. A lack of upward mobility stems from laziness, was the inference. This idiotic brand of true elitism is frequently espoused by Republicans when it comes to, you guessed it, taxes. I take a different approach, which refers to constituents, in this regard. I'm sick of politicians glibly saying that the American people are smart. No, they're not. They keep going back to Republicans when it comes to leadership. They elected Barack Obama for president, but when it took more than two years to fix the devastation left by George W. Bush, they turned back to the Party that started the whole mess. We are a nation of geniuses. If the sarcasm there is not immediately palpable, I'll say it quite plainly: the American people are stupid. As I have no aspirations to run for office, I'll say it again quite bluntly: THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE STUPID.
One needs to look no further than the presidency. This man was elected twice, & at least once without the voting intrigue surrounding the Supreme Court. How can someone have lived through that & not draw the conclusion that Americans are stupid? (I'll say it again: I will never run for office, so I could not care less about angering the electorate.) Now we have Barack Obama tasked with the unenviable charge of pulling America out of the ditch that it drove itself into.
True, Obama was elected, but this was because America had appointed an oligarch & plutocrat who, in eight years, had turned a record surplus into a record debt. I remember watching Bush get re-elected & resolving to get blisteringly drunk (this was when I still drank) in order to begin to deal with what we had just condemned ourselves to. Then, four years later, we elected Obama, &, when he didn't meet our unrealistic goals quick enough, we elected Republicans to Congress again. Why? Because Americans are stupid.
Yeah, I said it, as Chris Rock would say. I really don't like being subject to the whims of a populace that is as fickle as a toddler. The American people bounce from Republican to Democrat to Republican to Democrat. It's beyond maddening. One would think that, after several election cycles, we would have learned our lesson. I blame such volatility on Baby Boomers.
Yeah, I said it. Sure, the '90s gave us the Era of Clinton, but these voters also gave us the Eras of Reagan, Bush I, &, worst of all, Bush II. Clinton was successful because he merely(!) had to clean up after the disastrous '80s. Reagan was nothing when it came to Bush II. He ballooned the deficit by outsourcing our debt (mainly to China), but Bush II used the demagoguery of the horrific 9/11 attacks in order to legitimize his dismal record, & subsequently our surplus swung right back into a deficit, to a very disproportionate degree. Any graph of the national well-being of the country shows a surge when it comes to Democratic presidents, & a sharp nosedive when a Republican enters office.
After so many years of this clear bipolarity, you'd think we'd know better than to entrust our national health to the cancerous Right. Newt Gingrich, whose name sounds like a Dr. Seuss villain, is the Republican front runner. If you took all of the fat from the bountiful meat of the Clinton years, you'd have an approximation of Newt Gingrich. He always has resembled the pink blob left by Willow when he tries to use his wand on a troll, erroneously.
Seriously--that I even have to consider him as a viable presidential candidate should signal the inevitable implosion of the GOP. It's like the incorrect bolt that destroys a machine completely.
What should Republicans do? Blame themselves.
R
