Wednesday, October 31, 2012

OH, I Get It!

Recently, on another blog, I responded to the following remark, and several others:

"Your little game of 'them bad, us good' is blinding you to the fact that both the Repubs and Obama are working the same game plan."

Here's my preamble to my response:

I'm under no illusion that both the Left and the Right are manipulating policy outcomes--and, before the coming of TeaPublicans, they did so from the sharp point of a bayonet where one side (primarily the Left) proposed to capitulate to the demands of the other to prevent something worse from occurring, or to score a minor (but necessary) victory on a particular front.

The political wrangling over the raising of the debt ceiling fits that category of threat avoidance by capitulation.

What makes this approach so attractive is that each side is allowed to be seen as supporting the values and wishes of their respective bases, when it fact they're abandoning them.

Nevertheless, I don't believe that we can conclude that, in every instance, Democrats and Republicans are following the "same game plan," as the comment above states, and to which I responded thus--and not without a sprinkling of humor and a smattering of irony:

Using your bizarro logic, Democrats are Republicans and Republicans are Democrats--one big happy party--without one shred of difference between the two: "Obama is playing along with the Republicans and dancing to their tune," or they're dancing to his tune.

One never knows does one?

Obama's plan is to leave Afghanistan by 2014, but that's not a Democrat plan, but a Republican one, which means that if Romney is elected and he stays past 2014, as the RomRy team has suggested, then it's not a Republican plan but a Democrat plan.

Oh, I get it!

Obama repealed DADT, which wasn't a Democrat plan, but a Republican plan, although it was Republicans whose whine could be heard "from sea to shining sea."

Oh, I get it!

We don't owe the suppression of votes in key battleground states to Republicans, but to Democrats, as that's what both sides really want, but aren't telling the rest of us.

Oh, I get it!

Ending the enforcement of DOMA wasn't a Democrat plan, but a Republican plan as there's no light between their policies on this issue, they just want us to think so.

Oh, I get it!

So when Republicans say that they'll introduce legislation to outlaw same-sex marriage, or to defund Planned Parenthood, or when Republicans engage in a contentious brouhaha over contraception, or the passage of legislation to force women to undergo transvaginal or transadominal ultrasounds, it's really the Democrats who're supporting this, although it's Republicans who're pushing it.

Oh, I get it!

When Democrats passed the Lilly Ledbetter Act, or the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, it wasn't really Democrats who passed that, but Republicans. Republicans just whined about it to keep us all in the dark about where they really stood, but supported it with all their pachydermic might, from tail to tusk.

Oh, I get it!

So when Republicans said that they wanted to make Obama a "one-term president," and repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, they didn't really mean it, but were just playing a little joke on the nation, pushing, instead, their candidates, Team RomRy, just for the political exercise--push up and sit ups to strengthen the abdominal muscles and biceps of Democrats and Republicans alike.

Oh, I get it!

When Democrats bailed out GM, and passed the stimulus plan, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, it was Republicans who really wanted it passed, as it was their plan, too, but didn't want to crow about it.

Oh, I get it!

"Relative thinking is foolish, ignorant and dangerous in that we elect Republicans...like Obama."

Instead, we should elect a Democrat like Willard Mitt Romney.

Oh, I get it!

"Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it."

So we should elect a Republican that's a Democrat, or is it a Democrat that's a Republican.

Oh, I get it!

"You don't even understand that it was Obama who first suggested the cuts to Medicare, not the Republican party."

It was, then, Obama the Republican who suggested the cuts in the first place, but not the Republican party that's really the Democratic Party.

Oh, I get it!

"Your pied-piper is pushing Republican policy, again."

What we need, rather, is a Republican that's "pushing Republican policy," or is it Democratic policy. It's hard to tell since, as you say, "both the Repubs and Obama are working the same game plan... and it's certainly not for the public good."

4 comments:

steve p said...

We just need less government... plain and simple.

Everyone seems to hate the people on capitol hill... why should they have more power.....

Black Diaspora said...

You're right: We "need less government" of the kind that we've grown accustomed to.

What's needed is better government, and better governance, where those who're entrusted with the "general welfare" of this country actually place the welfare of this country above their own interests, above their political survival, and ambitions, and above their unbridled lust for power.

"why should they have more power"

Power isn't intrinsically bad; what people do with it renders it either good or bad.

Government is about "people power," collective power, about "general welfare" power.

Rather than reduce the people's power, we should expand it, but expand it in ways that actually benefit people--all the people--rather than the hundreds of special interests, and lobbyists who're now sitting in the people's chair, wielding the people's power.

steve p said...

yes but the question is how to do it.

What you are asking requires a government that is not run by humans which is totally unrealistic.

there is no government in the world that works in the way you have described, and there never will be one.

however a smaller government is possible, you have to realize that shrinking the government gives the power BACK to the people.


Anonymous said...

If you shrink the government, then corporations, that is, Big Business will exert its power, the power of the purse. the power of jobs, the power of the cost of that upon which we all depend, food, clothing, and shelter.

We shouldn't shunt the ideal government just because, as you say, "there is no government in the world that works in the way you have described, and there never will be one."

If Big Business can build a government which promotes its selfish and greedy ideas, surely we can build a government that supports the people, the little guy struggling to have an existence within the throes of a Big Business monopoly.