Is The Republican Party Doomed?

The Senate passed its version of a health insurance bill just before Christmas. Much of that victory belongs to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who somehow managed to get the 60 votes needed to stop Republican obstructionism. That must have been harder than herding kittens with a stick. There are reports that the senate legislation contains considerable pork benefitting individual senators in exchange for their votes. So be it. That’s how it must be done in a less-than-perfect world. Reid deserves a medal.

On the other hand, what is up with Republicans? Their obstructionist behavior proves that they are motivated to make the Democratic party fail, regardless of what is right or wrong. Not a single Republican vote was cast for health care reform in the Senate. Not one. How can ALL Republicans be in the pocket of insurers? How can every one of them be without compassion? How can 100% of them be contemptuous of the needs of the people they supposedly represent? It is unfathomable. It’s not that they wanted more debate; they wanted to shut down all debate. They are simply petulant obstructionists, like a child who threatens to hold his breath until he gets his way.

The Republican party has become morally, ethically, and intellectually bankrupt. I am sure that as soon as the legislation is reconciled and passed, they will begin campaigning for its repeal. If Dems have any sense of public relations (and they often don’t), they will start framing their victory message now to inoculate the public against the unconscionable Republican hypocrisy inevitably forthcoming.

At some point, even the most ignorant of American voters surely will realize that the Republican party is the party of small-minded greed, selfishness, and immaturity. It will become patently obvious through the party’s bizarre, unjustifiable antics. Won’t it? There must be a bottom to the well of ignorance. This health care reform episode might illuminate that bottom if the Democrats play their P.R. cards right.

I will not be too surprised if, within a decade, the Republican party is defunct, replaced by a new political party, The Conservatives, or something like that, made up of lawmakers who are responsible to the American voters, who do have conscience, ethics, and ideas, but who, unlike Republicans, would like to seriously and honestly engage American voters about important issues such as excessive government spending, and have the courage to stand for election based on their principles. They will become strong. The GOP will be no more.

Is Obama Like Me?

On Friday, major pundit and New York Times columnist David Brooks assessed the impact of Obama’s “bitterness” remark, on PBS’s The News Hour. Brooks said that the tin-eared remark was damaging because it made people step back from the candidate and wonder if he really is like the “plain folks” he is trying to appeal to in Pennsylvania, or if he is condescending to them. And, Brooks concludes, throwing in the Reverend Wright episode for good measure, when that assessment is made, the plain folks will conclude, “he is not like me.”

This is treacherous ground for Brooks, or any commentator to tread, for “not like me” is the heart of xenophobia, which is the core of racism. Racism today is no longer about hooded sheets and a noose. It is about the intellectual and emotional capacity, or lack of it, to get past one’s discomfort with the unfamiliar to understand that the other person is, in fact, “like me.”

People do differ in their socialization history and demographic status, and that does produce variations in point of view. I have no doubt that Obama is more educated, more self-aware, and more articulate than most of the Pennsylvania voters he courts. He is indeed, “different” from them in those ways and that makes his campaign a tricky business.

Obama’s political mistake was in the word “cling,” which implies a desperate helplessness and lack of dignity. That implication is indeed demeaning (even if true) and he should have retracted it. Instead, he blindly spun his use of “bitterness,” which is defensible and even could be construed as a compassionate attribution. Nobody in his camp seems to have gotten the social phenomenology of his remark right.

But why should a minor discourse error be elevated to the existential question, “Is he like me?” What is the logic that gets you from “I am offended by your remark,” to “You are alien to all people like me”? It is the logic of class difference, xenophobia, and the logic of racism.

Hilary Clinton is not at all like me in social class, education or even gender. I do not want to have a beer with her. In fact I am offended by her shameless, inauthentic pandering. But I would still vote for her on the basis of her social values and perceived competence to govern. That’s all Obama asks for himself, but the racial issue lurks just beneath the surface ready to trip him up. A smart guy like Brooks should be more aware of that particular tiger pit.

We should generously assume Brooks was speaking for the Pennsylvania rural voter, not for himself, when he concludes that Obama is "not like me." And in that assessment, Brooks might be correct. But he did not qualify his comments carefully, so missed an opportunity to raise the quality of political discourse in this country. Pity that.