The act of singling out any individual, or party, for unmerited negative treatment or blame is scapegoating and it is a cowardly action to avoid taking responsibility for one’s own behavior. Conservatives and their supporters regularly blame all manner of the nation’s ills on groups such as immigrants, the poor, and minorities to cover-up their own inadequacies and failed policies. For the past two years pundits from the right and left blamed Republican intransigence on raising taxes on the wealthy on the lowly teabaggers in Congress, and now on Grover Norquist. In particular, Speaker of the House John Boehner is often praised for his willingness to deal, and cooperate, with President Obama on economic issues, but he is let off the hook for failing to deliver because allegedly, the tea party members will not go along with, or compromise, on any deal that does not reflect their values that are exclusively anti-Obama.
In the fiscal cliff negotiations, teabaggers are not the only scapegoats, and there has been no dearth of blame targeting anti-government advocate Grover Norquist who many blame for Republicans’ obstinacy in raising taxes on the wealthy, and it is curious that a man with no real authority or power is being singled out, with teabaggers, as one of the obstacles preventing Republican compromise on taxes and spending cuts to avoid the over-hyped fiscal cliff. A stranger to politics might think there is an ideological gulf between reasonable Republicans and ideologically intransient Norquist and teabaggers that prevents them from working for the good of the nation, but the absurd notion that Republicans are being coerced by Norquist or the teabaggers to reject a balanced approach to deficit reduction, or tax increases on the wealthy, is a canard to conceal the real culprits; Republicans.
For the past four years, Republicans have staked out their position as anti-government, anti-spending, and anti-compromise politics, and interestingly it is exactly the same political agenda espoused by the tea party and Grover Norquist. Of special note is Norquist’s anti-tax pledge Republicans have embraced that appears to be their reason for holding middle class tax cuts hostage, and that teabaggers have embraced since their inception in 2009. When the teabaggers first came on the national scene, they carried signs and proclaimed they were “taxed enough already” as a protest to President Obama even though the tax rates at the time were from the Bush era, and despite the President cutting their taxes as part of his stimulus program. However, the Republican anti-tax sentiment originated long before Barack Obama was elected President and prior to Grover Norquist entrance as an anti-government and anti-tax activist.
The Republicans’ love affair with an anti-tax agenda goes back before the Reagan era, and has persisted as the GOP embraced the lunacy of supply-side economics that claims economic growth is created by removing barriers for people to produce (supply) goods and services, such as lowering income tax and capital gains tax rates, and by eliminating regulations that explains the GOP’s frenzy to cut taxes, especially for the rich and corporations. The problem with the so-called “trickle down” theory of economics is that it has never worked; not in Reagan’s time and not now, but for some unknown reasons, only Republicans have never discovered the abject failure of tilting the nation’s economy in favor of the wealthy and their corporations.
What has occurred by continuing the Republican obsession with helping the rich and corporations is their share of the wealth is increasing as the rest of the population’s wages are at an all-time low. For example, in the third quarter of this year, “corporate earnings were $1.75 trillion, up 18.6% from a year ago,” and as corporations made more than they ever have since such records were kept, wages as a percentage of the economy are at an all-time low. The so-called trickle-down, supply-side economic theory has been a raging success, for big business and the rich while none of their wealth has trickled down to the middle class. Still, Republicans like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell claim that unless the richest Americans see lower tax rates, the so-called job creators will languish in economic darkness and despair and will not begin creating jobs.
As the fiscal cliff negotiations wind down closer to the end of the year, it is time for pundits and politicians alike to stop giving credit, or assigning blame, to the teabagger caucus in Congress or Grover Norquist because they have nothing whatsoever to do with Republican opposition to raising taxes on the wealthy. They are scapegoats, and if they did not exist, Republicans would still hold the middle class hostage for tax breaks for the rich and corporations, or as John Boehner so often refers to them, the job-creators.
There is little doubt Norquist is an ideologue whose claim to fame is as an anti-tax, anti-government, and anti-spending fanatic, but so are the teabaggers and they all are intrinsically linked to conservatives at the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Enterprise, and the Koch brothers who helped fund the earliest incarnation of the teabaggers and drive Republican economic policy. However, they are all part and parcel of the conservative movement that has quietly morphed into a libertarian party of anything goes so long as it is driven by anti-government, anti-spending, and anti-tax ideology that began over thirty years’ ago before there was a tea party, and before Grover Norquist founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985, which he says was done at the request of then-President Ronald Reagan who only latched on to the anti-tax movement in 1979 before he was elected president and officially began the GOP’s fanaticism and opposition to taxes; especially for the wealthy.
PoliticusUSA
G+
Facebook
Candra
Dec. 4th, 2012 at 11:37 am
Here’s what happens when taxes for middle class go up (at least for me).
* $2,000 less to put back into economy
* Loss of that $2k makes me “poor” enough to get insurance for free through the county where I live.
So, GOP, go for it!
loading...
fedded-up
Dec. 4th, 2012 at 12:40 pm
I keep hearing that word – “treason” – used to describe intransigent GOTPers, and, while my first response is – “Hell, yes, they’re guilty…” – my second response is always gonna be, “hmmm, wait a minute…”
Treason: “The betrayal of one’s own country by waging war against it or by consciously or purposely acting to aid its enemies.” Yes, you could make the argument that favoring the wealthy or obstructing the government’s business by attempting to block everything a POTUS wants simply to try to make him look bad is treasonous behavior. Or, it’s simply political gamesmanship of gargantuanally stupid proportions. Either way, I don’t think it’s gonna rise to the level of Fort Sumter, so to speak.
To put the best face on the never-ending pile of spew they go about, it’s an ideology. It’s a theory of government and economics that’s been proven ad nauseum to be not only fundamentally flawed, but also self-destructively stupid. BUT, it’s also ALWAYS gonna appeal to a bunch of people who, rightly or wrongly, view government as ‘the enemy.’
Also, haven’t seen ANYBODY mention ‘misprision’ since school days long, long, long ago!!! This is more of an act of negligence – failure to do a duty, failure to report a felony, etc. Technically, I think it comes closer to describing Repub intransigence, BUT must be predicated on the actual COMMISSION of a felony – no duty to report, no duty to act without the underlying felony of demonstrable treason!
Let’s face it – being stupid is not criminal.
Dammit.
loading...
Reynardine
Dec. 4th, 2012 at 1:01 pm
Furthermore, neither treason nor sedition contemplates either financial war or cyberwar. Treason, defined to an exactitde in the Constitution, cannot. Sedition, subversion, and sabotage, could do so, but such statutes would have to be carefully drafted and strictly interpreted in order not to become dangerous in themselves.
loading...
Andrew Rei
Dec. 4th, 2012 at 1:51 pm
I had my posting “privileges” blocked for 15 days starting last night on Facebook because I shared a link to a story that proves that the Norquist pledge signers are guilty of treason. The author of that online story wrote all the same things I did in making the argument, with one important addition. Not only did he mention “Starve the Beast” and the fact that Congress has the right to levy taxes, he also mentioned the conflict of interest regarding the two pledges: the oath of affirmation all politicians take and the Norquist pledge. The fact that Norquist claims that his treasonous pledge is not to him but to the taxpayers in the politicians’ district is actually irrelevant. The oath of affirmation is to the Constitution of the United States, not one person or a group of people.
The reason “Starve the Beast” is relevant here is that STB is a financial overthrow of the government; “The Beast” is the government, and, by “starving”, they mean systematic tax cuts until there are no taxes to pay, thereby reducing the size of government to nil or practically nil. That’s when the big corporations take over the functions of government, at a high cost to the poor and middle class. This is not rocket science, people. The GOP Conservatives and captains of industry that started STB in 1970 are probably laughing their asses off right now, knowing that the FBI and Justice Department don’t have the balls to arrest and try the traitors, including them.
If our government truly wanted to rid this country of traitorous extremists like the GOP Conservatives and Tea Party Militia, they’d have arrested all of the traitors a few years ago :( ssmdh
loading...
Shiva (Moderator)
Dec. 4th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
You wernt blocked because of the link, someone had to of tagged it as offensive. Popular move to keep people from posting on facebook
loading...
Reynardine
Dec. 5th, 2012 at 11:17 am
The problem remains in the definition of “waging war”, which has traditionally required actual combat with either a foreign sovereign or with organized insurrectionists in this country who have constituted themselves one. Whether cyberwar and financial war would have to be recognized by constitutional amendment, or whether a statutory cognizence of these would pass muster, is another matter, but they are indeed recognized as serious offenses in themselves, and if they were prosecuted with any rigor, would be deterrent enough. I suspect Mr. Norquist would be ulnerable to a RICO prosecution, if that avenue were followed up.
loading...
Reynardine
Dec. 5th, 2012 at 11:21 am
Vulnerable. I think ALEC approaches the definition of “…insurrectionists establishing themselves as a foreign sovereign on our soil”, but again, we are in the swamplands of artful construction, if we charge them with treason. Public corruption and RICO…yes.
loading...
Kathy
Dec. 4th, 2012 at 3:18 pm
feddup…..Then I guess Karl Roves outing of Valerie Plame doesn’t rise to your definition of Treason.
loading...
Reynardine
Dec. 5th, 2012 at 11:07 am
It wouldn’t, unless he had outed her to an enemy sovereign or to active insurrectionists in our country, and the more likely outcome is that he would be charged with espionage. But outing her was nonetheless a serious felony, whose consequences he escaped because Scooter Libby took the fall for him.
loading...
James Threadgill
Dec. 5th, 2012 at 3:54 pm
Everyone needs to write the White House demanding obstructionist TEA PARTY and GOP Congressmen be charged with Conspiracy to Commit Treason. Here is the text of the message I sent:
“TEA PARTY and GOP Congressmen who participate in creating a debt ceiling crisis should be charged with conspiracy to commit TREASON for seeking to damage the reputation and the full faith and credit of the USA.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments
loading...
Jonathan
Dec. 5th, 2012 at 7:40 pm
The TEAbaggers are killing the GOP from the inside. They are an insidious disease to Democracy and their intransigence will choke the GOP to an ideological death. I only wish this would happen sooner. It is way too long until November 2014 when the American people continue their echoes of displeasure and put our Congressional house back in order. Way too long!!!
loading...