In case you are wondering, the cartoon above is what the Republicans are counting on. Below is an e-mail that Father Orthoduck received from a Democrat. It does exemplify a limited collective memory.
After The 8 Years Of The Bush/Cheney Disaster, NOW You Get Mad?
You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy and push us to invade Iraq.
You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.
You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn’t get mad when we spent over 800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn’t get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.
You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq.
You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn’t get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.
You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.
You didn’t get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.
You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.
You didn’t get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in tax breaks.
You didn’t get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades.
You didn’t get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance.
You didn’t get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments retirement, and home values.
You finally got mad when a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes,illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, job losses by the millions, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, and the worst economic disaster since 1929 are all okay with you, but helping fellow Americans who are sick…Oh, Hell No!!
But people did get mad, and that is why the Republicans lost so bad in 2008. The new outrage is not just aimed at the Democrats, since Republicans have been put on notice too (as was seen in some of the primaries in which sitting Republican senators lost).
Likewise, many of the points he e-mailed tried to make demonstrates how they (the sitting Democrats) are still missing the point.
Something happens to elected officials when they cross the BELTWAY into Washington DC–I don’t know if it is in the air or the water or what it is, but they forget from whence they have come and start to think that they are better, know more, are entitled to more. They forget the guy who works at the gas station and the woman who waits tables at the corner diner. It doesn’t matter what party they are from or what their (former) employment or socio-economic level was, they change and change for the worse. Something happens to people in that giddy, heady environment that precludes common sense and seems to work toward corruption. All campaign promises and slogans seem to fly out the window and the insidious BELTWAY MENTALITY starts to creep in.
This is why term limits are a good idea and why we should not elect politicians–we should pick names out of a hat and send them to Washington for one term as servants of the people. It wouldn’t get worse…..
Alix, as a person who has lived in the DC suburbs all my life and watched what goes on, I absolutely agree about the Beltway Mentality, but completely disagree about the methods of combatting it—at least until we change the way lobbyists work. The practice of national politics has a pretty steep learning curve. Freshman Congresspersons and Senators come to Washington and have to figure out what matters. Mostly, now, they rely on members of their party with seniority—which is achieved by being re-elected over and over, and which generally doesn’t happen unless they’re doing what their constituents want them to do. Without those senior members, to whom would inexperienced members turn for advice? The people most willing to give it to them: lobbyists, who work for corporations and causes that have their own goals firmly in mind, which may be, and often are, at odds with what’s best for you and me over the long haul. Lobbyists have no term limits. Do you really want lobbyists to have more experience in how the government works than members of Congress have?
I guess we should make sure lobbyists are firmly labeled as propagandists for their particular (usually money-making for the ones who send them out) ideas which may or may not be what America needs or wants. I guess I am just tired of everyone’s hype. Senior legislators sometimes are reelected because they are doing what their constituents want, but there is a bias toward incumbants unless they truly step in it–name recognition, the idea that their seniority on whatever committee is more important than their faux pas, a war chest that probably already has something in it vs the little guy who lives around the corner who starts from scratch. We are in a situation where an “ordinary” person cannot really run for office on a national level and I am not sure that is what our founding father envisioned. Of course, the dirtier politics gets the less any sane person wants to be a part of it. In fact at the level of smut that it is politics, it should probably be X-rated for sex, violence and slanderous words. Not that the USA is any stranger to yellow journalism—but it seems we are in a cycle of more and more dirt being thrown even when it is not true. You almost have to be a sociopath to even want to expose yourself or your family to it. I really don’t know what the answers are–I just pray a lot for our country, our legislators and even for the media folks who drive the dirtier it is the better it sells bus. And moved out of DC before I caught it–whatever it is!!