Fear and Ignorance – GOP’s Best Allies
During the previous administration, Bush and his Republican chorus in Congress and the right-wing punditry exploited the fear and ignorance of most Americans to invade a country that represented no threat to us, establish what amounted to an offshore America gulag for our enemies, real or imagined, and to spy on United States citizens without judicial approval or oversight.
Today, the GOP and allies are doing it again to stir opposition to the agenda of President Obama and the Democrats as they seek to enact comprehensive health care insurance reform and steer the ship of state in a more moderate and progressive direction. And it’s clearly working.
Obama’s poll numbers have plummeted and Democrats have lost a senate seat in Massachusetts, of all places, and governorships in Virginia and New Jersey. Never mind that the two previous Democratic governors in Virginia had been instrumental in making it one of the best administered states in the union. Or that the seat won by a right-wing Republican with nothing to distinguish him save his abs was previously that of Senator Edward Kennedy, who accomplished so much for his state and his country and whose unrequited dream was universal health coverage for all Americans.
A grumpy and fearful electorate has bought into GOP lies and distortions to blame Obama and the Democrats for not fixing in a year what took the Republicans nearly three decades to break. Sure, some blame attaches to Democrats who foolishly bought into or lacked the courage to oppose the deregulatory fervor of the right. But it was the GOP, starting with Reagan and ending with George W Bush, who pushed the idea of the self-regulating free market and the notion that stricter government oversight unnecessarily and perniciously fettered our financial institutions. We failed to heed the warning of the savings and loan fiasco of the 90’s and the result, in time, was an economic meltdown precipitated by irresponsible banks.
Yet the GOP has succeeded in painting Obama as a typical big-spending liberal, ignoring the fact that junior Bush added three trillion dollars to the national debt after inheriting a budget surplus from his Democratic predecessor, and that the current deficit is partly the result of the $750 billion TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) passed under the previous administration. The Obama $787 billion stimulus bill, on the other hand, was a necessary response to the deepest recession since World War II that he inherited and it has helped to ameliorate what would otherwise have been a much worse employment picture.
As for the health care bill, Americans again have been guilty of both woeful ignorance and susceptibility to GOP propaganda. A Kaiser Foundation tracking poll found that whilst Americans are evenly divided on whether they support the Democratic bills, most have no clue what’s in them. Furthermore, when told of the bills’ specific key elements, support rises significantly.
Yet the GOP and the right-wing punditry have managed to convince Americans, falsely, that the Democratic legislation will increase the deficit, raise their taxes, and diminish the quality of their own health insurance whilst raising its cost.
Congressional Republicans may be a despicable bunch but their manipulations of the truth could not succeed without an American electorate too lazy to find out the facts for themselves.
