Retired producer for NBC Nightly News; freelance writer
The single greatest threat to the United States is not joblessness,
foreclosures, another recession or skyrocketing debt or health care
costs. Nor is it terrorism, China or declining influence abroad. No, the
single greatest threat to our country is today's Republican Party.
That's because the GOP is relentlessly pursuing a policy of the
American public be damned, so that next year Republicans can regain the
national political dominance they held from 2001 to 2006. Their sole,
selfish aim is to complete the transformation of the U.S. to a
government of, by and for the rich and the far-right.
Veteran reporter Robert Parry, a retired correspondent for the Associated Press and
Newsweek, accurately summed up that policy
this way:
Modern Republicans have a simple approach to politics when
they are not in the White House: Make America as ungovernable as
possible by using any means available...
Control as much as possible what the population gets to see and hear;
create chaos for your opponent's government, economically and
politically; blame it for the mess; and establish in the minds of the
voters that their only way out is to submit, that the pain will stop
once your side is back in power...
Republicans and the Right... are well positioned to roll the U.S.
economy off the cliff and blame the catastrophe on Obama. Indeed, that
may be their best hope for winning Election 2012.
George W. Bush's presidency, with Congressional Republicans in
lockstep behind him, made an excellent start on the destructive
transformation of this country: two unpaid-for wars (one based on lies);
failure to prevent the worst terrorist attack on the homeland or punish
its instigators; waste of tens of thousands of U.S. and foreign lives,
and worldwide diplomatic failure.
At home, approval of torture, warrantless wiretapping and ineptness
and indifference in the face of Hurricane Katrina created a permanent
stain. Economically, Republican tax cuts created few jobs and increased
the national debt by 75 percent. What the
Washington Post
dubbed "executive grandeur" made income inequality the worst since the
1930s Depression. Finally, the GOP's failed stewardship of the economy
resulted in a crisis that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testified was even
worse than the Depression.
When national revulsion against Republican misrule drove Democrats
into power in 2008, the GOP resorted to today's strategy. It became
evident even before the new Democratic president took office when the
Republican Party's de facto leader, Rush Limbaugh, declared: "I hope
Obama fails." And since the inauguration, Republicans have done
everything in their power to assure that failure, although it's meant
misery for millions of Americans.
"I wish we had been able to obstruct more," says Senate Republican leader
Mitch McConnell
who succeeded brilliantly in keeping his members in line in opposing
every important measure that's good for this country including
presidential initiatives for health care, financial regulation, economic
stimulus and a dozen executive appointments and even more judicial ones
needed to keep government functioning.
Given the frightening record of business and financial deception and
fraud that led to the economic crisis, who in their right mind could
possibly oppose increased regulation of business and enhanced protection
for consumers? The answer: almost all Republicans. Elizabeth Warren is
too committed to consumer protection to win the votes of Senate
Republicans acting for their paymasters at the chambers of commerce.
President Obama's new law extending health insurance to 30 million
more people is too good for working Americans. Beaten in their attempt
to vote it down, Republicans are now suing to kill it. Remember the GOP
plan? It proposed health insurance for one-tenth as many people. Is it
any wonder that people in all other industrial countries, where health
care is a right, laugh at us.
American business hates government -- except when it needs government
help. Which is just about all the time. And it's just fine with
Republicans whenever business goes to the government for help. In fact,
GOPers are almost always corporate-friendly, as opposed to
people-friendly. And they have a right-wing Supreme Court majority that
helps them buy legislation by equating money with speech and
corporations with human beings.
But heaven forbid the average citizen should try to get a government
benefit, or a job or more unemployment insurance or aid in taking back a
home seized (often illegally) by the bank, or getting health care for a
gravely ill child with a pre-existing condition. Republicans are happy
to vote overwhelmingly against him, ignoring the Constitutional command
that government "promote the general welfare."
Ronald Reagan, a president with rich friends and poor instincts, did
this country an unforgiveable disservice by encouraging Americans to
hate and distrust their government. Remember when he declared:
"Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the
problem," and joked that: "The nine most terrifying words in the English
language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Contrast
that with Reagan's almost religious reverence for "the magic of the
marketplace."
But my own life experience, like that of millions of Americans, tells
me that in important ways the government is more reliable than the
marketplace. I spent a good part of my career working for one of the
largest, most triumphant examples of American capitalism: General
Electric. When I retired late in 1997, GE shares were selling for
$68.56; when GE CEO Jack Welch, the greatest corporate genius of them
all, quit 11 months later, those shares had dropped to $39.66. In 2009,
under his successor genius, they fell as low as $6.66. And they closed
the other day at $18.49 -- only about a quarter of what they were when I
retired. Needless to say, those shares formed a large part of my now
badly-depleted retirement assets. Fortunately for me, GE was one of a
declining number of companies that still provided an additional defined
benefit pension plan for employes like me -- something the company is
now proposing to drop for new union hires.
In contrast to my GE stock disaster, Social Security hasn't missed a
monthly payment to me for more than 13 years, or to my wife in nine
(imagine the value of our Social Security stock portfolios if
Republicans had succeeded in their privatization scheme). Medicare
enabled me to have spinal surgery, a hip replacement, cataract
operations in both eyes and radiation that cured my prostate cancer; and
my wife to have a hip and knee replaced, without breaking us
financially.
Maybe that's why I call Reagan a liar and a fool for his
denunciations of those benefits from our government to me and millions
of others. And you should, too. But Republicans regard him almost as a
saint. And those same Republicans just voted almost unanimously in
Congress to kill Medicare and replace it with Rep. Ryan's pathetic plan
to replace single payer with cut-rate vouchers for money-hungry private
insurers. And they're now holding a critically important increase in the
debt ceiling hostage to measures that would weaken the recovery.
The Republican Bush administration destroyed our standing abroad and
our economy at home, and killed and maimed thousands of our young men
and women for no good reason. Since 2009, Democrats have done their best
to clean up the Republican mess -- something that unfortunately takes
time. Republicans have fought those national cleanup efforts -- and the
vast majority of the American people -- every day. And they say they're
proud of their obstruction. As for solutions, they offer none, except
for tax cuts like those that created record-low jobs under Bush, and
spending cuts that would cripple the government.
These policies failed before and would inevitably fail again, and
might well drive us into a real Depression. That's why the Republican
Party is the single greatest threat to the United States of America. It
cannot be allowed to win in 2012.
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