General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFormer Republican: How the GOP Turned Into a Racket Ripping Off Vulnerable Americans
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/former-republican-how-gop-turned-racket-ripping-vulnerable-americansAs with many religions, political parties have a tendency to start as a movement, transform into a business, and finally degenerate into a racket designed to fleece the yokels. One organization which has gone out of its way to illustrate this evolution is the Republican Party. And it has done so with a national scope and fundraising apparatus that would have made Jimmy Swaggart or Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker mute with awe.
By "Republican Party" I mean both the formal party and its extended apparat: talk radio and the Fox News empire, pressure groups like the Family Research Council, allegedly "educational" 501(c)3 organizations like the Heritage Foundation, direct mail outfits descended from the original Richard Viguerie mother ship, polling firms like Rasmussen's, and the Tea Party itself (the latter nevertheless asserts its non-affiliation with the GOP despite its having sponsored the Florida Republican presidential candidates' debate in 2011).
True believers in this multi-faceted scam are usually careful to make a (false) distinction between the institutional GOP and the so-called conservative movement. The Republican Party and its grandees, according to this fable, are not "true conservatives." By 2008, the operatives of the racket were already saying this about George W. Bush, but that assessment required them to perform the mental gymnastics of forgetting that only a few years earlier, they were eager to nominate Dubbya to the next available vacancy in the Trinity.
Having abandoned the apostate Bush, the true believers were off on a quixotic hunt for the next messiah: Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Hermann Cain, the resurrected Newt Gingrich. Each pasteboard messiah having eventually fallen to earth with a thump, the congregation settled for the colorless but ostensibly electable Mitt Romney (Romney may have been the purest true conservative in the operational sense, given his genius for separating rich donors from their money). That pragmatic decision came to naught in November 2012, but it wasn't long before the faithful, and all the movement's con artists who cling to the faithful like flees to a dog, were off on a pilgrimage to find the next conservative Wunderkind. Chris Christie, maybe? On second thought, perhaps he lacks the soothing, good-natured bonhomie of Dutch Reagan. Would it be Marco Rubio, evidently qualified to rebrand the party for a rising demographic because both his names end in vowels? Perhaps not. Or maybe even Ben Carson, who, like Herman Cain, has never been elected to public office, but who generates (also like Cain) the required evangelical fervor? The search continues for the anointed one, much to the amusement of satirists.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
calimary
(81,459 posts)The ones yanking the curtain back on the republi-CONS and calling them what they are. CON-artists. Because EVERYTHING, and ANYTHING they offer is a CON-job.
xtraxritical
(3,576 posts)they want the 99% working for them, cheap. Their goal is to play "chicken" with the economy and force reductions in Social Security and other "safety net" programs. Employers hate paying their half of Social Security even tho they can take a deduction for it where employees can't. They have no patriotism only profit aspirations. VOTE REPUBLICONS OUT. Their going to ruin this country.
Edit spelling.
lark
(23,155 posts)They really want to have SS invest our money in the stock market so they can raid it and steal everything we have like they did in 2008-2009. That way we will be so poor we will work for next to nothing and they will be even richer and more powerful. There were no downsides for the ultra rich last time, they are encouraged to try it again.
Too bad so many Dems are on board with this just as much as the Repugs. There are a few good apples, Warren, Franken, but not many.
Some Dems are just as bad but they maintain the pretense that they are just no match for the mighty GOP and therefore, gosh darn it, they have no choice but to allow the GOP to steamroll the country. Po thangs.
Doesn't matter the why. All that matters is the result. IMHO.
randome
(34,845 posts)Where have all the copy editors gone?
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Eye no! Thay seam two half disappeared!
tblue
(16,350 posts)Haha! I noticed that too. 'Flees.'
valerief
(53,235 posts)Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)Wurks liek a charrm, two!
johnnyreb
(915 posts)ErikJ
(6,335 posts)The evangelicals are really going crazy for him.
Dr. Benjamin Carson's Amazing Speech at the National Prayer Breakfast wi
trof
(54,256 posts)Jefferson Beauregard "Jeff" Sessions III (born December 24, 1946) is the junior United States Senator from Alabama. First elected in 1996, Sessions is a member of the Republican Party. He serves as the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee.
President Ronald Reagan nominated him to a judgeship on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama in 1986, but the Senate confirmation failed after it was alleged that he had made racist remarks to a colleague.
Sessions was ranked by National Journal in 2007 as the fifth-most conservative U.S. Senator, siding strongly with the Republican Party on political issues. He supported the major legislative efforts of the George W. Bush administration, including the 2001 and 2003 tax cut packages, the Iraq War, and a proposed national amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sessions
ErikJ
(6,335 posts)He is always on Face the Nation et al and he always turns my stomach.
LuckyLib
(6,819 posts)ultimate scam artists -- we watched them in the 70's as camp entertainment. Fleecing their faithful non-stop. Complete criminals -- just like the Rethuglicans.