Media are filled with GOP caterwauling over what Donald Trump and his band of merry alt-right enforcers have done to the Republican Party and its chances of winning the White House and hanging on to the Congress.
You know what? Talk to the hand.
Republicans have no one to blame but themselves - - especially those hyper-loyalist partisans like Scott Walker and Paul Ryan who are sticking with Trump without principle so as to position themselves to pick up the pieces should he be fully ostracized come election day.
But like careless homeowners who let the basement mold get of control and find the entire structure infested and uninhabitable, honest Republicans should take ownership of this self-inflicted disintegration and acknowledge they brought it all on themselves.
They fell hard for Ronald Reagan and his divisive and negative message that government is the problem - - then elevated it into an ideological and self- defeating Holy Grail that favors people at the top and big-money power - - but is at odds with the real world that is about to send Donald Trump and the party which said 'come on in' packing.
They enabled and embraced and patronized a squad of talk radio hosts nationally and locally who amplified Reagan's corrosive, tear-down-the-public-sector message day in and day out, twisting it into an attack on policies aimed at extending democracy and equity more fully to low-income, female and minority citizens who are voting more heavily Democratic.
Republicans and their propagandists stood in unison with GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and similarly obstructionist leaders in the House of Representatives to block from day one every initiative proposed by the nation's first African-American President, and, worse, did nothing to tamp down Donald Trump's long, racist 'birther' assault on Barack Obama's citizenship and legitimacy in office upon which Trump's political career was based.
They morphed that meme of illegitimacy into a web of voter ID and other restrictive laws at the state level to suppress minority voting and make the party and government access even whiter, less-inclusive and more self-rewarding.
They invited in and exploited the Tea Party and the Koch brothers-funded 'grasstops 'movement' - - read local boy-turned-failed RNC chairman Reince Priebus' giddy embrace of the Tea Party on behalf of Scott Walker, here - - so the party cannot honestly be surprised that the monster its leaders helped create moved en masse to a Trump candidacy that overwhelmed the GOP which nurtured it.
Or that Trump has picked up and re-spun in this campaign the GOP's phony voter fraud meme by darkly predicting balloting irregularities in major cities with large urban and traditionally Democratic minority populations - - cementing as the party did with its one-dimensional undermining of President Obama its identity as the party of racial intolerance.
No wonder David Duke finds the Trump-era GOP a welcoming organization.
The GOP loved Trump the TV star at the beginning.
Republicans couldn't get enough of him.
People tuned in to watch the ratings'-smashing GOP debates.
He brought in voters.
He bashed the government.
He said our leaders were stupid.
He ripped President Obama and the Clintons and immigrants and Muslims and nasty women who didn't like the smell of his breath.
Yea!
And Republicans blistered their collective hands applauding Trump The Wonder Attack Dog - - and all his tricks.
But now...the reckoning.
He's gone too far - - surprise, surprise - - for some editorial writers and Republican office holders and millions of moderate, non-ideological, open-minded voters, and it appears as if the piper is about to be paid and the GOP is wringing its sore hands - - save for one finger pointed Trump's way.
Or at least talk to the hand.
You know what? Talk to the hand.
Republicans have no one to blame but themselves - - especially those hyper-loyalist partisans like Scott Walker and Paul Ryan who are sticking with Trump without principle so as to position themselves to pick up the pieces should he be fully ostracized come election day.
But like careless homeowners who let the basement mold get of control and find the entire structure infested and uninhabitable, honest Republicans should take ownership of this self-inflicted disintegration and acknowledge they brought it all on themselves.
They fell hard for Ronald Reagan and his divisive and negative message that government is the problem - - then elevated it into an ideological and self- defeating Holy Grail that favors people at the top and big-money power - - but is at odds with the real world that is about to send Donald Trump and the party which said 'come on in' packing.
They enabled and embraced and patronized a squad of talk radio hosts nationally and locally who amplified Reagan's corrosive, tear-down-the-public-sector message day in and day out, twisting it into an attack on policies aimed at extending democracy and equity more fully to low-income, female and minority citizens who are voting more heavily Democratic.
Republicans and their propagandists stood in unison with GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and similarly obstructionist leaders in the House of Representatives to block from day one every initiative proposed by the nation's first African-American President, and, worse, did nothing to tamp down Donald Trump's long, racist 'birther' assault on Barack Obama's citizenship and legitimacy in office upon which Trump's political career was based.
They morphed that meme of illegitimacy into a web of voter ID and other restrictive laws at the state level to suppress minority voting and make the party and government access even whiter, less-inclusive and more self-rewarding.
They invited in and exploited the Tea Party and the Koch brothers-funded 'grasstops 'movement' - - read local boy-turned-failed RNC chairman Reince Priebus' giddy embrace of the Tea Party on behalf of Scott Walker, here - - so the party cannot honestly be surprised that the monster its leaders helped create moved en masse to a Trump candidacy that overwhelmed the GOP which nurtured it.
Or that Trump has picked up and re-spun in this campaign the GOP's phony voter fraud meme by darkly predicting balloting irregularities in major cities with large urban and traditionally Democratic minority populations - - cementing as the party did with its one-dimensional undermining of President Obama its identity as the party of racial intolerance.
No wonder David Duke finds the Trump-era GOP a welcoming organization.
The GOP loved Trump the TV star at the beginning.
Republicans couldn't get enough of him.
People tuned in to watch the ratings'-smashing GOP debates.
He brought in voters.
He bashed the government.
He said our leaders were stupid.
He ripped President Obama and the Clintons and immigrants and Muslims and nasty women who didn't like the smell of his breath.
Yea!
Make America Great Again.Trump's coded, dog-whistling version of We Want Our Country Back (for you know who!).
It was talk radio talk/GOP talking points, tough guy talk, 24/7.
And Republicans blistered their collective hands applauding Trump The Wonder Attack Dog - - and all his tricks.
But now...the reckoning.
He's gone too far - - surprise, surprise - - for some editorial writers and Republican office holders and millions of moderate, non-ideological, open-minded voters, and it appears as if the piper is about to be paid and the GOP is wringing its sore hands - - save for one finger pointed Trump's way.
Bad Donald. Bad Dog.Republicans should point that finger at themselves.
Or at least talk to the hand.
Republicans were never powerful enough to do what you claim. To catapult the disinformation and propaganda you are referring to, but curiously without directly stating what it is, you need compliant mass media.
ReplyDeleteI guess my point is just semantics to some, as we could just say that the media is republican -- but that does not really describe how bad things have deteriorated and and why we are no longer a leading democracy in the world.
http://theconversation.com/american-elections-ranked-worst-among-western-democracies-heres-why-56485
Our 2-party system and its endless election cycles of voting for "the lessor of 2 evils" was not created by republicans. Right now, the media narrative is that republicans are so extreme that they may lose big in 2016.
The real story is that across America, our media is so dysfunctional that it is difficult or impossible to get accurate information about who is doing what to whom and how much money they are therein' to do it. Wisconsin's media is even worse than the national media as a whole -- so we have been hijacked years ahead of the tRump debacle.
But make no mistake about it -- the national media is capable of and aligned with the same interests that created The Badger State's divide-and-conquer. Who is responsible for it?
Only mass media can create fascism in a nation that was once considered a republic and representative democracy.