Republicans and Reality: Divorced and Loving it!

Mitche McConnell: I'm So Clueless I Could Cry...

The Party of Speculative Fiction, formerly known as the Republican Party, is outdoing Hollywood in their distortion of reality. The difference is that Hollywood is making an honest attempt to entertain. Everyone knows it’s fake. The Republicans, however, are making a dishonest attempt to mislead, and they want people to believe it’s real.

But it’s not. Every day the reality gap grows wider and wider.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, says that he will introduce legislation to ensure that nobody ends up paying higher income taxes in 2011.

McConnell: “We can’t let the people who’ve been hit hardest by this recession and who we need to create the jobs that will get us out of it foot the bill for the Democrats’ two-year adventure in expanded government.”

What planet is Senator McConnell living on where the rich have been hardest hit by America’s economic woes?

And why wasn’t he laughed out of the Senate?

There are a number of problems with his statement.

1. The rich were not hardest hit by the recession;
2. the “trickle-down” theory of economics is demonstrably false ; and
3. to which “two-year” adventure in expanded government is McConnell referring?

More and more, Republicans insist on creating a fantasy world that has nothing in common with the reality in which we all operate. They invent something, and then invent “facts” to support  the fantasy tale. It’s all as true as a prince rescuing the princess in her tower from a dragon.

Dragons don’t exist.

Neither does Republican reality.

McConnell is not the only aspiring author of speculative fiction in Congress.

Eric Cantor: I'm certain my math is right...

Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), the House Minority Whip, who has already demonstrated his belief that trimming $1 million over five years will fix the deficit, refused to be outdone issued his own statement saying that he would focus on keeping the Bush era tax cuts for everyone.

Cantor: “I will do everything in my power to stop President Obama and Speaker Pelosi from raising taxes on working families, small business people, and investors.”

1. President Obama is not raising taxes on working families; he is extending tax cuts for working families;
2. It is the Republicans who are blocking efforts to help small business people; and as President Obama has repeatedly pointed out, most small business owners do not make in excess of $250,000 a year.

President Obama outlined small-business legislation which would:

1. create a $30 billion lending fund to help provide cheap capital to community banks;
2. provide $12 billion in tax relief to small businesses between 2010 and 2020; and
3. provide $1.5 billion in grants to state lending programs.

Incredibly, Republicans are using the following argument to reject the Obama plan:

Since the Democratic plan doesn’t to ENOUGH to help small business owners (they say), they refuse to vote for it, thus refusing to help the small business owners at all. Apparently, in Republican reality, it’s more helpful to not help.

Of course, given their opposition to government spending, it is difficult to imagine they could conjure a way to help small-business owners at all. Magic doesn’t exist; neither does government spending without increasing the deficit while also cutting taxes.

That’s what got Bush in trouble in the first place: Spending + Tax cuts = Increased deficit

But then Republicans seem to have erased Bush from their collective memory. Or maybe, as the history of the past 40 years has shown, the Republicans believe only they have the right to increase the deficit.

The Republican fantasy scenario has reached unbelievable proportions. It is a wonder they can keep straight faces as they tell their bald-faced lies.

McConnell again: Americans “have had it” he insists. “They are tired of Democratic leaders in Washington pursuing the same government driven programs that have done nothing but add to the debt and the burden of government.”

Of course, as President Obama has pointed out, keeping the tax cuts in place for the wealthy will add 700 billion to the deficit and Boehner’s own economic plan several trillion. It is difficult to make an argument that these Republicans are interested in lowering the deficit. Reagan didn’t. Bush didn’t. Boehner doesn’t plan to.

Clinton, however, did – the only president in the past 40 years to do so. And he was a Democrat. And they hounded him out of office. Just as they plan to hound Obama out of office if they get control of Congress.

So THEY can “pursue the same government driven programs that have done nothing but add to the debt and the burden of government” and live happily ever after in the la la land of their fantasies.

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

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