History as caricature - Republicans selling malaise like it's 1979

"[O]n issue after issue, Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan want to go backwards." -President Obama, Boulder, Colorado, September 2, 2012

The Republicans want you to be morose, sad and resigned. One of the themes that emerged from the Republican National Convention, in Tampa, last week, was how sad are the times, how disappointing is the economy, how grey the outlook for hope. You could see it in the drooping, puppy dog eyelids of vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), when he spoke of the Janesville, Wisconsin, shuttered GM plant. "It is locked up and empty to this day," he lamented, the corners of his wide, disappearing lips, drawing downward, feeling your pain, out there in the unemployed, closed factory towns around the country, "And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight." Hopeless. So hopeless. If you are resigned to the hopelessness of the "fading Obama posters" on your bedroom ceiling, for attacks on success and for government assistance to help you get your slice of the American pie, they said, than vote for Obama. "If you're looking for free stuff, that you don't have to pay for," like health care and food and the ability to afford a college education, the Republican nominee told a heckler during the heat of the campaign, "then vote for the other guy. That's what he's all about." Gov. Romney, continued the RNC's theme of Obama destroying American drive, the night after Ryan's appeal to despair, in (not surprisingly) a less nuanced, more direct approach:

"Every family in America wanted this to be a time when they could get ahead a little more... Every small business wanted these to be their best years ever, when they could hire more... Every new college graduate thought they'd have a good job by now, a place of their own... "This was the hope and change America voted for... "I wish President Obama had succeeded... [b]ut his promises gave way to disappointment and division."

Oh, it's so sad, too sad, that this president has turned your lives into a brother-can-you-spare-a-dime, ponderous time of high gas prices and low self esteem, he insists. Despite Romney's claim that "every president since the Great Depression who came before the American people asking for a second term could look back at the last four years and say with satisfaction: 'you are better off today than you were four years ago,'" it is only Reagan who thought that question relevant, and because he won on it, every Republican challenger to an incumbent has felt it necessary to ask the same. READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE...

Building blue communities, birthing blue babies and illumintaing self interest

Which would you think could turn those red and pink states blue sooner? They are all important, but more vital than the birthing - and educating - of future socially conscious and culturally generous Americans, more challenging than enticing out-of-state progressives to accept the challenge of red state politics, is getting our fellow citizens to realize, and vote, their own self interests.

Living in Georgia, where state Republicans literally broke out a broom at their celebration in Atlanta, Tuesday night, it all seems rather insurmountable. Just because the GOP have spent the last eight years in power in this state, doesn't mean it is either inevitable or for the good of the state. Just because this is a traditionally conservative state, doesn't mean  it cannot be a conservatory for strong, progressive ideas. Finally, just because the blue bleeds to red once the vote gets outside the state's urban zones, doesn't mean that the people voting there are all aware of the consequences of touch screening a Republican slate of candidates.

[caption id="attachment_440" align="alignright" width="261" caption="Blue counties in Georgia that voted for the Democratic candidate for governor in 2010. Almost all the blue represents metropolitan areas of the state's largest cities, including Atlanta, Athens, Savannah, Augusta, Albany, Macon and Columbus."][/caption]

In Georgia, like many other southern and western conservative states, the social ideals of the electorate move as slowly as a man with a push-mower on a sweltering, summer day. In fact, it could be argued that the mood hardly changes at all - only the labels worn by those elected do. After all, this is the state that awarded Lester Maddox, a segregationist Democrat, the governorship in 1966, and elected Jimmy Carter governor right after that.

To put that into context, Maddox and his Dixiecrat contemporaries, like Alabama's George Wallace, would have been darlings of Jim DeMint, Rand Paul and Sarah Palin's Tea Party followers today. If you doubt it, check out Wallace's rhetoric during his independent presidential run in 1968. "They're building a bridge over the Potomac for all the white liberals fleeing to Virginia," he said at one point during the campaign. Can't you just hear the Embarrassment of Alaska saying that?

"His campaign in California and other states attracted the interest of the far right, including the John Birch Society," cites a Wikibin article on Wallace's failed bid. If you look at the crowds from his rallies that cycle, you'll see many faces, and many signs, that are similar to today's TP gatherings. He actually carried five Southern states that election, as the candidate for the American Independent Party (any one of which could have given Democrat Hubert Humphrey the election), including Georgia.

The last two-term Democratic governor in Georgia was Zell Miller (1991-1999), whose eccentricities and knee-jerk conservatism led him to the floor of the 2004 Republican National Convention, as keynote speaker and outspoken supporter of George W. Bush.

The thirty years from Maddox to Miller shows that very little changes in Georgia politics. Yes, we elected a string of Democrats in that time, but most just rode the tide of the Southern Democrat machine that was so prevalent in this part of the country in the twentieth century. The tide shifted within four years of Miller's leaving office.

Even though we elected another Democrat, Roy Barnes, as governor in 1998, he only served one term, being swept out in the Great Changeover of 2002. That's when Georgia elected its first Republican governor since Reconstruction - Sonny Perdue - and both houses of the State Legislature went to the GOP. In fact, many of the Democrats who did get re-elected, sensing the changing winds, switched parties, giving the Republicans an even more overwhelming majority.

If you are thinking, "Okay, campaign like a Republican; govern like a Democrat," that probably won't work either - at least, not in this political climate.  Barnes, who lost another bid for a second term, Tuesday - to the crooked former Congressman, Nathan Deal - tried to run with Republican ideas this time. He came out in favor of an Arizona-style immigration law and against the recently passed Affordable Care Act (Healthcare Reform).

There's no telling if another candidate, running on a similar, pandering platform, would have done any better than Roy. That is, the majority of voters either didn't trust him because he was Roy Barnes - who took the states' rights, confederate emblem off the state flag when he was governor - or they just don't want to vote for Democrats.

Roy's disingenuousness  was probably his downfall. That, and the fact that the state Democratic Party is afraid to back a bolder candidate. If you are going to be derided and pigeon-holed as a Pinko or Liberal or Socialist, no matter what you stand for, if they're not going to believe what you say anyway,  you may as well say what you believe. They'll respect you more for it, and they may even vote for you, as long as you are honest and can demonstrate that you love this state as much as they do, and you're putting their best interests ahead of your own.

By the way, we would welcome progressive carpetbaggers, too. Y'all come.

-PBG

Presidents and Irrelevance

How quickly do the blustery storms of windy bravado become the squawks of a cold little man in the last throws of leadership!

Below thirty is not only chilly on a Fahrenheit thermometer. It's also a frosty place to be in an opinion poll, and that's where the President of the United States finds himself these days. The White House this weekend dismissed Jimmy Carter's opinion of the present administration's foreign policy as the "worst in history" by arguing that the former president and recent Nobel laureate is becoming "increasingly irrelevant." The question is, with Bush's numbers in the deep freeze, just who's opinion exactly is "irrelevant?"

The world stopped listening to George W. Bush four years ago when he launched an unprovoked, negligibly supported war in Iraq. Despite what the media called a "mandate" following the close 2004 elections, the confetti at the inauguration had not even stopped falling when the President's numbers began their slide. After getting us into an endless war and showing blind support for Michael Brown after Hurricane Katrina, does anyone really care about his opinion about what the Lebanese are doing to the Palestinian refugee camps, or whether or not he is confident of Alberto Gonzales?

We have a low opinion of the President because, like the drug addict he once was, he has shown horrible judgement. If he has poor judgement, his assessment of any situation (other than, perhaps, what his Scottish Terriers' poop smells like) is completely without weight or merit.

For some presidents, strong presidents, honorable presidents, opinions can be easily converted to calls to action. Recommendations are considered, coherent arguments are made, and a good government functions. But a president with a track record of mismanagement on - literally - a global scale, is weak and has no honor, and deserves (arguably) only the honorific of his office as a modicum of respect. He is not just a lame duck. He's just lame.

The problem is, if one day he realizes the level of his impotence, and graciously removes himself from office, we may no longer have a screaming Lilliputian on our shoulder, but we will still have to deal with the Cheney in our shoe.

But the high office of leadership is bigger than one man. Each of the three branches of government strives for the permanence of its opinions, and each wields a pen to imbed those ideas into the foundation of our government and the fabric of our society. I hope one of them has the wisdom to build the necessary consensus that will help us recover from this time of the worst US government in history.