Can This Party Be Saved?

Can this party be saved?

The GOP is in bad shape.  Republicans are now so ill informed that something like 49% believe that ACORN, which no longer exists, stole the election for Obama.   Are Republicans that out of it?  In other words, half the GOP is living in a fantasy world of delusion created by the far right media.   A Texas church is offering firearms classes to help people defeat armed bands of Mexicans that are invading our country. We’re dealing with people who actually believe the FOX Tabloid News that Obama is a Marxist. Republicans are so brainwashed, that 73% still think Obama is not an American citizen.  A restaurant owned by LA GOP John Fleming refused to serve Muslims.

Tuesday was just another in what is becoming a long line of embarrassing days for the GOP.  The US Senate voted to reject the UN treaty that would protect the disabled, world-wide.  Evidently the idiots on the far right listened to Rick Santorum, now a columnist for World Nut Daily.  The Pink Flamingo feels the only way to get these idiots to approve it would be for one of the Kochs to have a serious disability.  The GOP only does what the monied class tells them to do. Evidently, the UN treaty would impact home schoolers.

On the very same day that the far right humiliated itself, once again, Ted Nugent has managed to take things to a new low. He doesn’t think that anyone who receives an entitlement (including Social Security & Medicare) should be allowed to vote!

“…Following President Barack Obama’s re-election last month, Nugent opined that welfare recipients were “gluttonous, soulless pigs who feast on whatever Fedzilla provides.” “And you thought ‘Planet of the Apes’ was a movie,” he wrote. “Too many Americans have become entitlement chumps who have been convinced by Democrats and other liberal scammers that they are entitled to the sweat and hard work of other Americans. Free cellphones aren’t free. Food stamps have become vote-getting extortion vouchers.” In 2009, FactCheck.org debunked the myth that the Obama administration started a program which provides free cell phones to low-income Americans….”

There are some conservatives who say that Nugent was not including either Social Security or Medicare is the drawing that accompanied Nugent’s article.

Nugent wrote:

“...The three sacred entitlement cows in the room that no politician wants to poke are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. A blinding statement of the obvious is that we are never going to get our financial house in order until these sacred entitlement cows are not only poked, but slaughtered. Until the slaughter is over, everything else is just taxation window dressing.

In addition to slaughtering the three sacred entitlement cows that consume a vast majority of the federal budget (and I use the term budget generously), let’s truly spread the pain around and raise taxes on everyone, including the nearly 50 percent of Americans who pay zero federal income taxes. Those Americans need to have some skin in the game, too. I recommend at least a 5 percent federal income tax bracket for them. The insane free ride needs to end….”

This is beautiful, and appropriate. Nugent wants the very poorest to pay at least 5 percent in federal income taxes.  Well, let’s start with the very rich.  There’s a billionaire in Oklahoma who paid about 2% last year.  He made about two and a half billion bucks.  Yea, let’s start at the top, first.  Did you know that the financial sector does not pay any form of sales tax on high speed trading, etc?  Why do these people get a break, pay very little in taxes and idiots like Nugent want to stick it to the little people?

Nugent is displaying the same ignorance that Mitt Romney displayed.  They think that the poor, who don’t pay income taxes, pay no federal taxes.  Well… that’s just plain wrong.  Yes, I agree with my Congressman, Steve Pearce, that we need to do something about debt.  We need to take care of things, now.  And, yes, we need to stick up for the  small business owner – who, as Steve recognizes, is the real job creator.  The problem is the fact that the cowards of the House can’t do anything because of the organizations that are basically controlled by the Koch Brothers.  What is rather fascinating is that John Boehner has purges some of the most conservative panderers from key committees, angering the Club for Growth.

What is fascinating is that, according to PPP, only 23% of the GOP think that members of the House and Senate should bend to Grover Norquist and keep his tax pledge.  If this is the case, and only 26% of the GOP supports Bowles/Simpson, then let’s assume that, if the GOP continues on its current projected course, of doing what Paul Ryan wants, and bowing to the Club for Growth and Grover Norquist, that they can’t even pull in the bare minimum of 35% approval for any of the current extreme actions.

“…Norquist repeated a conservative lie that since President Obama has been in office, “We got four bad years of higher taxes” that are stifling the economy, and that “instead of higher taxes, we need economic growth.” For nearly four years, Republicans and their teabagger acolytes have complained they were “taxed enough already” despite the President reduced taxes to their lowest levels in nearly 60 years to jumpstart economic recovery and help struggling families survive the Republican economic devastation still plaguing the nation. Where Norquist seriously lied was his contention that what will save the economy and spur unprecedented growth is returning the nation to Reagan-era taxation levels that would promote growth and pay down the debt racked up over the past four years.

The problem with Norquist’s assertion is that under the Reagan administration, tax rates were higher than under President Obama, and he proposes keeping them lower for 98% of Americans as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations and to continue growing the economy.  It is curious that Norquist cites Reagan’s tax policy, because although he initially cut taxes within three months of taking office, within weeks he asked Congress to close loopholes that resulted in the largest tax increase in four decades to cover revenue shortfalls, and over the course of the next eight years, he raised taxes 9 times. The simple truth Norquist, and most Republicans, will never admit is that under President Obama, taxes are substantially lower than under Reagan…”

All of this is terribly important.  If things continue on the current course, then the GOP, being pushed off the cliff by the Kochs and company is completely misreading things.  For one thing, if the information produced by one of the new studies on high-speed trading is correct, the big money backers of the extreme right – the ones who don’t want to pay taxes, are seriously damaging our economy.  According to Eliot Spitzer:

“…a tax on financial transactions. It will give us gobs of revenue. It will fall on a sector that has generated enormous and unwarranted profits for a very few, who at the same time have benefited from huge bailouts and regulatory help and largely escaped any responsibility for their central role in creating the financial cataclysm that we are still struggling with.

Here is the idea: A tax of less than half a percent on every $100 of stock sales or sales of other financial instruments including bonds, derivatives, and options. The tax could raise anywhere from $170 billion to $350 billion per year depending how it was applied. Extend that over 10 years, and we are raising almost what the White House and Republicans agree needs to be raised in order to accomplish the objectives of a grand bargain.

But there is an added benefit here: Trading in the equity and debt markets has gone wild over the past few years. High-speed trading and speculation have overtaken the economically legitimate reasons for our desire to have highly liquid markets: the capacity to raise capital and then allocate it efficiently among sectors and companies. The trading that has emerged over the past few years is not serving that purpose—it is a casino enterprise driven by hidden pools and computer algorithms that do not seek to hold capital for longer than an instant.

To the extent that a financial-transfer tax drove some of those trading practices out of the marketplace, that would be another good outcome….”

Where do we go from here?  Does the GOP become even more indebted to the ultra wealthy, twisting themselves like a pretzel to agree with Rush, FOX, Beck, Medved, Hannity, O’Reilly, and the usual conservative brainwashing, lying scum or do Republicans realize they’ve allowed themselves to be turned into abject fools?

Do Republicans even bother thinking on their own?  If they don’t smarten up and start using their heads, the GOP is DOA.