Making The Case For Sabotage

Posted on June 22, 2011 at 5:30 pm by JM Ashby

Around here, Republican obstructionism and backpedaling on the economy has been rightfully called what it is — sabotage. And up until today, Democratic members of congress have avoided describing the Republican’s strategy in such explicit terms.

Today, Senator Chuck Schumer and Senator Dick Durbin took to the podium to reverse that discrepancy and call things as they see them.

In a Capitol press conference Wednesday, the Senate’s top Democrats argued that Republicans don’t want to pass measures like a temporary payroll tax holiday for employers because they’ll improve President Obama’s re-election chances.

“Our Republican colleagues in the House and Senate are driven by putting one man out of work: President Obama,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL).

The harshest denunciation came from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the man who crafted the Dems’ new “jobs first” message.

“We are also open to hiring incentives, perhaps in the form of a payroll tax cut for employers that was floated by the administration…. That might not be our first choice, that shows how willing we are to work with the Republicans to create jobs. It’s pro-business, it’s a tax cut, and many Republicans have been for it in the past. But now all of a sudden they’re coming out against it,” Schumer said.

Republican efforts to obstruct and sabotage do not stop at the borders of the economy, and it’s a salient point to make that the pro-tax-cut Republican party is all of a sudden opposed to a tax cut, because they’re also the pro-war-party and they’re all of a sudden opposed to war. Not because of some tectonic movement of ideological boundaries, but because there is a Democrat currently occupying the Whitehouse.

I don’t have to stretch my imagination to reach that conclusion. Just take a look at what Mitch McConnell had to say today.

McConnell admitted that his party is divided over President Obama’s military action in Libya, but that you’re only hearing about it because Obama’s a Democrat. Many of these same divisions, he said, existed under President Bush, but party loyalty “muted” the dissent.

“I’m not sure that these kinds of differences might not have been there in a more latent form when you had a Republican president,” McConnell admitted. “But I do think there’s more of a tendency to pull together when the guy in the White House is on your side.”

And if a Republican were in the Whitehouse right now, they may very well be all-in for a second stimulus, all-in for another war either in Iran or Pakistan, and certainly all-in on privatizing the whole of government.

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  • incredulous72

    “I’m not sure that these kinds of differences might not have been there in a more latent form when you had a Republican president,” McConnell admitted. “But I do think there’s more of a tendency to pull together when the guy in the White House is on your side.”

    Spoken like a true asshole.

    Hey there Grumpy, it shouldn’t matter who’s side the president’s on as long as everybody’s DOING THEIR GODDAMN JOB FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!!!

    Remember your job? That thing you were elected to by your constituents to speak on their behalf and pass legislation that is favorable to them their wellbeing?

    UN.REAL.

  • http://twitter.com/puppy_cat Julie B.

    It all comes back to race. All of it. If Barack Obama was white and his name was John Smith, I’d wager that most of this BS wouldn’t be happening. And they’ll deny it all day long. I posted on some thread the other day for some local school funding politics and a lady went off about “the illegals” and when I brought up racism, some guy tried to defend her by saying “illegal immigrants come from everywhere”. Don’t even try to pretty up “the illegals” to me. Bottom line with these wingnut blowtards: scary brown people are ruining everything. If Obama gets elected to a second term, I feel pretty certain that there will be true civil unrest in parts of this country. Guns and all. And it will be bad news.

    • Scopedog

      “It all comes back to race. All of it. If Barack Obama was white and his name was John Smith, I’d wager that most of this BS wouldn’t be happening.”

      Well, that is the elephant in the room…and a lot of folks still don’t want to acknowledge this.

      Well, at least Ishmael Reed to a crack at it…

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsI37CyZLzY&feature=related

      …I mean, they should just put on their white hoods and call the President the N-word. Just get it over it and show us what they really mean.

    • GrafZeppelin127

      No, it’s because he’s a Democrat. A white Democrat named John Smith would get the same treatment. Obama’s race is just a bonus for them.

  • holyreality

    The GOP can only sabotage Obama’s run if the Democrats do one thing that is anathema to the conservative appeal to centrist voters.

    What is this Kryptonite to the GOP superpowers?

    LIST THE FACTS.

    h/t to Bartcop.com

    • Scopedog

      “LIST THE FACTS.”

      Yeah, that would be nice…but some would rather bitch and moan about how Obama sucks and that he’s worse than Bush.

      Just sayin’.

      • holyreality

        See the irrelevant record thread for this.

        Dems want to play fair, hell they won’t even compete.

        They may accept victory if it falls on their lap, but will refuse to fight.

        Listing the facts is not nice, and for some insane reason; Dems, Obama especially, want the GOPers to LIKE them.

  • Corebela

    That conclusion is so obvious that it hurts.

  • mrbrink

    Their goal is to make governing so miserable and so cynical, impossible and frustrating, we’ll have no choice but to vote for a republican president simply to make the terrorism stop. It’s like, “don’t blame us because we hate the President’s guts, blame the president for making us reveal the fact that we’re insufferable racist jagoffs who never take a terrorist insurgency holiday.

    It’s called “Obama fatigue.”

    “Getting tired of all the pain and suffering, obsessive bitter partisan divide? All you have to do is vote Republican and it’ll all stop.”

    Weary electorate: “Here. Here. Here’s a fucking Bush, or a fucking Romney, or a fucking Cheney, or a fucking Bachmann/Palin!”

    “Now can we please get on with governing and problem solving?”

    Take our whole fucking country, right wing America. Go ahead. We love this country so much we’ll set it free again! You obviously want it and need it more than the rest of us and we foolishly respect that bull-headed ambition and phony salesmen confidence to allow you to do really important things. American things! Like deny women their reproductive rights and equal pay. Deny gays the right to serve openly and marry. Deny the separation of church and state. Deny the elderly some affordable dignity, deny children of the poor a chance at an education, or healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt the unemployable. Deny your contempt for democracy and minorities who vote as you institute defacto poll taxes and invest in more machines to count the leftovers. Deny the fact that you already own the great majority of the courts, the corporations, the TV media, the think tanks, the newspapers, the radio, natural resources, air and water, the food supply, the narrative. Deny you’re feeding the fat cats by stealing from the poor.

    Lie to us over and over. Mischaracterize the facts. Sugar coat the falsehoods. Create more fear and division between caring, sensitive people and the innocently naive. The ones who believe in the ideals of American government. The evolving U.S. Constitution.

    Manipulate public opinion, thwart democracy, undermine progress to protect your power. Make us hate government. Show us how ineffective it can be. Prove your point with actions!

    Kill us with incompetence!

    Tell us how the Civil Rights Act is outdated and make sure you send an old school affirmative action baby like Rand Paul to do it. Tell us how Social Security and Medicare needs to be abolished and privatized. Tell us why we went into Iraq. How to capture Bin Laden. Tell us how to balance a budget. Show us how to promote innovation to keep up with the progress of the mind and times, or to create jobs. Tell us how diminishing labor and repealing labor laws is a step forward. Tell us how you’re going to pay off $10 trillion in debt accumulated by three republican presidents. Tell us how you’ve never had a chance to get really medieval with your conservatism because liberals and RINOS are always getting in the way.

    Your collective story never seems to get old, your actions always protected by willful ignorance, your manufactured outrage and “freedom and liberty” bullshit is as good as the gold standard.

    Just make the pain and suffering stop.

    And that is how you waterboard America.

    (edited)

    • muselet

      Bravo, sir. Bravo.

      –alopecia.

    • BuffaloBuckeye

      Whoa, well said.

    • GrafZeppelin127

      Whoa, indeed.

      I think it’s pretty clear that the GOP has been relentlessly punishing the nation for voting Democratic in 2006 and 2008, and for the grotesque failure of the disastrous Bush presidency. They’re holding our collective head in a full-nelson, until we cry “Uncle!” and give them their White House back.

      • dildenusa

        “They’re holding our collective head in a full-nelson, until we cry “Uncle!” and give them their White House back.”

        What? The republicans and the democrats both can take the white house and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. Not to mention that My Head is not in a full nelson, and I will never cry uncle.

        Both political parties have staged an assault on reality that will end when we push back with an assault on the unreality that politicians have created for their own self interest and have foisted on us to force us to think in unrealistic ways.

        Oh yeah, I do vote and I’m registered non-party and have been for 40 years.

        • GrafZeppelin127

          The republicans and the democrats both can take the white house and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.

          That’s not the point. That may be how you feel. It’s not how they feel.

          I was merely echoing mrbrink’s point that the GOP is punishing the country for voting Democratic, threatening more punishment if it doesn’t vote Republican next time, essentially trying to bully the nation into doing so. That’s not to say that they will succeed vis-à-vis every single individual.

          I will not vote Republican either, at least not until I get the sense that they have something to offer, which at this point I don’t. The Democrats at least have something to offer, even if they’re incredibly bad at actually delivering on it.

          I don’t think there’s an equivalence between the GOP’s “assault on reality” and the Democratic Party’s. I saw the country vote Republican in 2010 based on pure fiction; on things that had not actually happened or were not actually happening, to solve problems that did not exist, to oppose policies that had not been proposed and laws that had not been enacted. I do not recall seeing the country vote Democratic on a similar basis.

          • dildenusa

            You’re correct except for one thing. People who vote republican don’t feel anything and don’t think anything. If they did feel and think they wouldn’t vote republican.

          • GrafZeppelin127

            Perhaps, but I wasn’t talking about people who vote Republican. I was talking about the actual Republican party.

            And I don’t agree that they don’t feel or think anything. On the contrary, I think they feel and think a great deal. That’s not to say that their feelings are valid or their thinking is rational.

            A lot of GOP voters, it seems to me, feel aggrieved, resentful, selfish, and cruel. Others feel frightened, threatened, panicked, and hateful. They think that something that was always rightfully theirs has been and is being wrongfully taken away from them by, oh I don’t know, you name it: blacks, Latinos, gays, feminists, Muslims, environmentalists, organized labor, academics, the “liberal media,” etc. They think they are the ones who have been victimized, oppressed, ignored and scapegoated, now and throughout history. They think supply-side economics will produce long-term, widespread economic prosperity.

            Being wrong doesn’t mean you’re not thinking. Being vicious doesn’t mean you don’t feel anything.