Democrats and liberals have watched in apoplectic horror as Republicans have gained ground at all levels of government despite hard evidence of corruption, incompetence, and failure. Foolishly, we, navel-gazers that we often are, have thought that the trend was about us; something that we were doing wrong. We have had meeting after meeting to discuss where and how we went off-track.
Well, we have erred, but not in the way that we usually think. We have failed because we let doubt get the better of us. We have let America down by thinking there was something wrong with what we were doing in the first place. We lost our voice because we blinked when we should have advanced.
The Republicans haven't been winning because they have a better plan or sounder policies. They have been winning because they have spent billions of dollars on a coordinated media campaign to make a slim majority of voting America feel good about the worst aspects of their natures. They have succeeded, not by providing a national vision that inspires us to a higher nobility, but by telling us that giving in to our basest instincts is what's best for us as individuals and as a nation.
The product the GOP has been selling is absolution-- not the old-fashioned kind, purchased through self-sacrifice and dedication-- but a cheap, outsourced knock-off kind of absolution that says, "its okay, we do it, too. We won't tell."
How hard is it really to convince people that being selfish is the way to go? Where is the higher calling in predatory greed? What invention is required to pander to the lust for revenge?. Where is the challenge in stoking people's fears about personal safety, or in feeding the flames of prejudice?
Its not hard to aim for the lowest common denominator and that is exactly what the GOP has been doing. Rather than hatching a plan to make America a better place then convincing the public to support it, they have instead made a science of putting lipstick on a pig. They package greed and avarice and sell it as "sound market policy." They bind up cruelty and fear and slap on a label marked "national security." They take bigotry and hatred and push it out the door in a glossy package marked "traditional family values." There are no new ideas; only our darkest human frailties made bland with a double scoop of political weasel-words and sexed up with Madison Ave. sizzle.
The link is here. Go and read the entire post.
-The Oklahoma Hippy
He makes some good points but what do we do know. Sure what the Republican's have done is an astonishing work of propaganda but how do the Democrats react and more importantly how do the Democrats provide a new and better option to the GOP?
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