Republicans Have No One to Blame But Themselves

Republicans are starting to panic. The probability of an Obama landslide looms large, as McCain-Palin crash in the polls. The cable news networks, notably MSNBC, have become one long infomercial for Obama-Biden. The late-night comedians are having a field day with the GOP ticket. And the fear tactics Karl Rove used so successfully over the years have become pathetic duds with all but the Republican faithful.

Barring an October surprise like another false flag domestic terror attack, the courts indicting Obama for criminal activity or ruling him ineligible for lack of a certified birth certificate proving US citizenship, or unless GOP vote fraud efforts prevail over Democrat vote fraud, Obama will be sworn in as President in January. Perhaps, as some suggest, the doubts about Obama will prevail, with McCain winning in a close race, but time seems too short for that. Interestingly, UrbanSurvival.com reported last week that the Time Monks are forecasting the election outcome will not be decided until January.

The implications of an Obama Presidency, with a Congressional supermajority and mandate of the people, should scare the daylights out of any person who cherishes the ideals of life, liberty and property guaranteed by the Constitution. Expect Congressional liberals, led by their Marxist Dear Leader, to ram through every social engineering, carbon-taxing, wealth-redistributing, world-governing, gun-grabbing wet dream they ever had. Ominously, “the economy crashes, war looms, a savior appears – haven’t we been here before? The main reason that can happen is because George W. Bush has spent eight years preparing the way for Obama.

Bush now has the lowest approval rating (19%) of any modern President. Support for his handling of the economy is 17%. Voters showed strong disapproval of his wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan by giving the Democrats both houses of Congress in 2006. Bush has set up all the mechanisms of a police state at home, thrown away our moral standing in the world, turned Clinton’s small budget surplus to the highest deficit in history, and set up an economic dictator to preside over the final looting of America. He's destined to be known as the worst President in history.

Political blowback threatens to set back the GOP as far as the first Depression set them back after Hoover. The American people want nothing to do with Republicans or their ideas. They will unfairly blame the “free market” for our economic disaster, when the truth is that there was no free market left to blame. How ironic that five years ago the GOP was crowing about decades of political dominance. I guess no one told them that wars can have unintended consequences.

Obama’s original slogan, “Change We Can Believe In,” says everything. Crafted on the basis of extensive polling and focus groups, it addresses Americans' disgust with, and distrust toward, the current Bush administration. Obama’s Slogan 2.0, “Change We Need,” furthers the idea that McCain is really McSame. People are so desperate for a change from Bush, that they’re ready to vote for the most overtly socialist major party candidate in history.

In a perverse, unintended way, Bush’s often-repeated mantra (“If you’re not with us, you’re against us”) from the early days of the “War on Terror” is backfiring on his administration and the Republicans in general. The vast majority of American people are certainly not “with” Bush. So, they’re against him, and most everything Republican.

The brutal truth of the matter is that we wouldn’t be in this situation if it had not been for the Christian, limited-government conservatives that make up George Bush’s base. In the name of “fighting terrorism,” or “party unity,” they have supported Bush every time he proposed a new violation of the Constitution, expansion of the war, budget-busting increase in Medicare, "No Childe Left Behind," or any number of other nutty schemes. Time and time again I encountered personally what happened on a national scale. Conservative friends and acquaintances repeatedly supported actions they would have found detestable if taken by a Democratic President.

Republicans seemed to think that repeated violations of the Constitution were okay if their guy was in charge. And they thought their guy would always be in charge. When I asked how they would respond when the police state created by Bush was handed over to the Democrats, all I got was blank stares. Now we get to find out. Notably, Obama has not promised to dismantle one bit of it.

Many times I’ve told Republican activists that if Al Gore had been elected President in 2000 (he really was, wasn’t he?), and had done what Bush had done, Republicans would be marching on Washington. They’d be demanding that their Senators and Congressmen lead the charge to preserve the Constitution, and all its protections, in response to the events of 9/11. Instead, they’ve rationalized and justified everything, refusing to see reality, or to demand a change.

The image that comes to mind is the stereotypical abused wife that can’t leave her man, no matter how much he bullies, cheats, beats and violates the integrity and spirit of their marriage vows. The man she thought would be a decent protector and good provider, has violated her in most every conceivable way. Yet, she won’t leave. She still stands by her man.

She thinks someday he’ll change, and everything will turn out all right. It takes too much courage and effort to admit her mistake, make a clean break and start over. That woman is the GOP party faithful and conservative base that has stayed with Bush most of his Presidency.

I recommend Oliver Stone’s great new movie, “W.” Consider it your bounden duty to take at least one of your die hard Republican friends. Think of it as an intervention to break through their denial, in much the same way Allied forces took townspeople living near the Nazi concentration camps on tours to see the evil they had intentionally failed to recognize. While this movie pulls a lot of punches and actually seems sympathetic to Bush, it clearly depicts how easily Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rove and other NeoCons manipulated him into pursuing the Iraq war on false pretenses for control of oil and second term re-election.

Will this election signal the death of the GOP? Who knows? The NeoCons controlling the Bush administration have certainly dealt it critical blow. If I have learned anything in politics, you can’t predict the future with any certainty. But it is hard to see how the GOP will be able to recover from the damage inflicted by the Bush administration. The public is not very bright, and certainly devoid of much historical and economic understanding.

If Obama wins, the GOP will be blamed for every ill in society, including granny’s goiter. Just as FDR irreparably changed the nature of American government and the character of the American people by changing many crucial societal incentives, so will an Obama administration leave its mark long after we’re gone. And as Obama inevitably backtracks on his anti-war stance and other promises as his true handlers take control, look for his own faithful zealots to go through the same process of denial and rationalization as Bush’s base did.

This didn't have to happen. But it has. When Republicans and conservatives start trying to pin the blame for an Obama landslide on the liberal media, McCain, Palin or whatever, gently remind them that they have no one to blame . . . but themselves.