Last updated on May 28th, 2012 at 03:01 pm
A few numbers, but mostly opinions and overviews about the November 6, 2012 general election.
I’ll start with my current state of residence, South Carolina where all you have to yell is ‘Tea Party, beer and hot dogs’ and you’ve got yourself a crowd. It matters not what the guest speaker says as long as it includes a healthy dose of gay-bashing and gun-glorifying. That’s the only bait you need to attract the average South Carolinian to vote Republican. That’s because the Evangelicals have pretty much taken over the state’s politics.
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Quoted in a recent New York Times opinion piece, Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition pegged evangelicals as the majority of Republican presidential primary voters. In the South Carolina vote, won by Newt Gingrich, 98% of primary voters were white folks. That pale/zealot combo resulted in the highest percentage of religious right primary voters in the history of the state. And of course those bible-quoting thumpers and thumperettes gave their love to serial adulterer, Newt Gingrich.
Lesson learned: It’s absolutely permissible for the goobers to vote against gay marriage because their bible tells them to. It’s also absolutely OK to ignore that same bible which banishes adulterers to everlasting hell and vote for an adulterer destined to be banished to everlasting hell. That’s how true evangelicals operate. Squeeze the bible when it’s handy; ignore it when it runs counter to the gut bigotry of homophobia, racism and hatred of the poor.
The supreme irony is that back in early 2009, the Tea Party was essentially formed when opponents of assorted financial bailouts from both the Bush and Obama administrations gave voice to their displeasure by mailing tea bags to Congress. The Republican power boys immediately recognized TP’s potential as a vessel to take over the government. The irony is that these same protesters of all things financial (Wall Street, the monster banks) are now in the back pockets of the very targets of their earlier ire.
So, we have the Tea Party as a factor in the upcoming general election. Fortunately, enough people have come out of the ether, that this oddball organization’s influence is on the decline and the TP might prove much more of a negative than a positive this time around.
Now, for something that needs to be said as primary season comes close to an end and the real politicking begins in earnest. Women are going to save the country. Virtually all polls predict a larger female turnout than male. That’s the best news since Tom DeLay’s departure from the House on his way (someday) to prison.
Hopefully, the 2012 women’s vote will keep the doors closed to the new breed of right-wing gridlock parvenus who came to prominence in gaining the House majority in 2010, virtually bringing that body to a halt and handing up an endless string of the nuttiest and most insensitive legislation in the 112th congress that will most likely never be duplicated.
For the sake of the nation, I’d prefer that the male gentry spend November 6th from about 7 AM to 7 PM hunting squirrels, checking out their favorite porn sites, working at jobs that pay more than women working the exact same jobs, listening to their favorite oxy-pumped radio talker or arguing sports at their favorite corner bar while hustling the waitress. That will leave the voting field open to women.
Women approach politics much more thoughtfully. You’d never know it to listen to the right-wing distaff likes of Bachmann, Palin, O’Donnell, Angle and Brewer, but the overwhelming majority of Democratic and moderate Republican women are much better informed and reasonable than their extremist male and female counterparts.
Women see life differently than men. It can all be boiled down to one distinctly female body part – the uterus, or, the name I prefer because it sounds more motherly – the womb! That’s where the process of life takes place. Where life is introduced and produced. And the product of that womb is precious and deeply personal for women. Not as much for men, many of who view marriage as a contract for steady sex. Women also like, even love sex, but for the most part it’s romantic sex, while men tend to make lust along with love in their marriages.
It’s children that give women the political depth men simply don’t have. What impact will legislation have on education, health, jobs and success for their kid’s futures? Men look at the power elements of laws. Will they get rich? That explains their unfathomable support for a 1% most can never get remotely close to. There’s the unfairness, welcomed by right-wing men of continuing to earn more than women in the workplace for same job. An embarrassing number of men still subscribe to ‘barefoot and pregnant’.
Will their big bad gun ownership be protected? Will the ‘sissy’ homosexual population continue to be repressed? And, you can almost guarantee that men will stray or think mightily about it when they hit their mid-life crisis. Insecure, selfish and horny. I’ve had nurses tell me that guys have made a grab for their uniformed posteriors with their dying breaths.
That pretty much describes the right-wing male. Right-wing females are an anomaly. Nothing in the far-right platform seems to make any sense for them. I think it’s the innate need to please their man and little else. Morals? Check out the Republican’s official moralist, Palin, who referenced her ta ta’s on her college t-shirt and was most certainly was pregnant when she married the guy who allegedly cottons to erotic massages.
Yes ladies, you can indeed do something the menfolk can’t. You can SAVE America. You can vote for those enlightened male and female candidates who believe that government is for all the people and who formulate legislation based on knowledge, need, practicality and the greatest good for the greatest number. They even do a great deal of their own research so they have an intellectual grasp of the issues, not the latest tally of contributors to their campaign coffers. Most of these people are Democrats. A few are Independents, but don’t be fooled, many Independents don’t think the tea party goes far enough. A few are Republicans, disgusted by Court Jester government.
The country is counting on the political wisdom of the modern day ‘Rosie the Riveter’ to once again step up and save the republic.
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Raised rural & small town, then lived in N.Y., Chicago & LA. Widely traveled. Returned from world wandering to pursue media life of anchorman/reporter and major, medium and small market talk radio. Highly active in politics. Once worked as orderly & security in Mens Lock Ward for the Criminally Insane at a state institution. Much more rational population than current Teapublicans. Great concern for country run by and for the extreme wealthy. The inhumane current running through this country has no precedent in modern history.
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