Republican Leadership: Thinkless, Thankless

To be a leader in the Republican party is a think-less and thankless task. As Paul Krugman has pointed out many the times, Republicans have to reject simple math and logic in justifying their catastrophic fiscal policies. This is GOP party leadership that must carefully evade exposure of its  near treasonous “Starve the Beast” economic policy which has been a primary cause of the huge deficits plaguing the US government. It is a Republican leadership that has condoned the subversive sabotage of the Founding Fathers Constitutional writ for the sake of petty and perfidious obstruction of the Obama administration through its use of the 60 votes on Filibuster Closure  in the Senate to block not just executive appointments but a broad swath of legislation. Show that government cannot work by blocking it from working effectively by snookering majority rule in the Senate.

But the epitome of thoughtless and perverse Republican morality is its yin-yang coalition. Republicans join at the hip the financial elites with one-issue voters [restore Christian prayers in schools, no gun controls whatsoever, gays like blacks should be denied a complete set of civil rights, ban all abortions, and other hot button social issues which ordinarily demand careful, bipartisan treatment]. To keep this coalition intact is becoming well nigh unmanageable.

And so the Republican party has its established its own, self-declared “fair and balanced” News network, Fox News, with its stable of “opinion makers” ceaselessly attacking Democratic policy and policymakers. These current news polluters are backed up by a phalanx of economic and political institutions like the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute and several dozen others that argue against global warming or regulation of markets or effective government regulation in general [ironically showing that any government regulation can be outwitted and defeated by determined efforts of business organizations]. In sum, its a sophisticated Republican message machinery that can get Republicans at all levels to speak with one voice on almost every issue [see the exact language and phrasing used here].

And so more often than not the Republican Party leadership is painted into a thankless corner. Witness the Republicans deal with the devil on tax cuts for the wealthy leaving their middle and lower class supporters with slim pickens . But Slate has one of the best exposes on the Republican News Pollution and its apparently gutless leadership in Congress. The story has almost Biblical overtones of denial. It echoes the grim, almost humanless story of 2004  Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlmann , who is gay but who used the wedge issue of anti-gay Republican policies to help his man win the Presidential election.

Mehlman was George Bush’s campaign manager for the nail-biting 2004 presidential election, and served as chairman of the national Republican party from 2005 to 2006. During that period Republican strategists resorted to devices such as state referendums banning gay marriage as wedge issues designed to motivate Republican voters.

And now you see why to be at the top of the Republican party currently , you have a thankless task – you have to check out completely on integrity. And this is Republican Party not immune to integrity in the past [see Eisenhower in the 1950’s]. But to be Republican now is to be in a thankless moral quagmire.7 Can you imagine any aspiring Republican leader taming Rush Limbaugh, the NRA, Glenn Beck and the Banksterz?