Thursday, March 20, 2014

Still the Party of No

Yes, the Republicans are still the party of no. Still the party that criticizes everything President Obama does. You need look no further than an op-ed piece by Senator Rubio in the Post today:

It is shameful that even as Russia attempts to carve up Ukrainian territory, Ukraine’s request for weapons, intelligence sharing and other assistance has been turned down by the Obama administration. We also need to deploy additional military assets and even U.S. personnel to our allies, including Poland and the Baltic states.

What happened to rally around the president in an international crisis. The constant carping the Obama is weak because he “allowed” Russia to take over the Crimea. Because the US is viewed as weak in the world (according to Republicans) Putin was embolden to invade Crimea. This of course would never happen under a Republican president. Because a Republican president would put the fear of God in Putin. And Putin would never take invade another state. Because we all know how that “strong” Republican president George Bush stopped Putin from . . . Oh yes that’s right under Bush, Putin invaded Georgia and well he invaded Georgia.

So the perceived strength or weakness of a particular president had little to do with influencing Putin’s course of action. What now has to happen to influence Putin is strong sanctions against Russia. That will influence his next move.

Continuing the party on the party of no. Once again and again and again the refrain that Obamacare must be repealed. Now and only now is there talk among Republicans about coming up with some sort of alternative health care plan. It sounds like the Republican “plan” would keep all the parts of the Obamacare people like: keeping children on a parent’s policy until 26, no denial of insurance for preexisting conditions etc. As for how this would be paid for and implemented well gee there seems to be little if anything on that except for turning more things over to the states.

Turning to immigration reform well that’s dead in the water. Maybe after the election but probably not. You know that’s because any reform is amnesty. Or the other excuse is the border must be secured before anything can proceed. That’s a great excuse to never reform immigration because Republicans can always say the border isn’t secure.

In a push by the Republicans to show they care more for just the rich (yeah I know that’s a stretch), they are suddenly concerned about income inequality. We got some ideas from the resident Republican “genius” Paul Ryan (these come from an interview on Bill Bennett’s radio talk show) which essentially said people are poor because they are lazy. There’s a culture in the inner-city (I guess that’s the only place where poor people are these days not say in the rural south) that promotes a culture of not working. Then the great brain Ryan brought in the book the Bell Curve (which essentially says blacks are genetically inferior to whites). For some strange reason people accused Ryan of his comments having racial overtones. He said no to this that this comments were inarticulate. No Mr. Ryan there weren’t they showed just what type of a person you are.

As always all the Republicans ever seem to do is criticize but ideas are few very few. (And those that are like the concern on poverty are same old things Republicans have been advocating for years just dressed up as new)

Unfortunately because of the disastrous roll out of Obamacare and the weak economy, the Republicans have a change of gaining control of the Senate. It’s time for the Democrats to shine a bright light on Republicans and start asking what they are for and what they propose to solve the problems in the country. I think if this done people will see that there isn’t much in the Republican brain trust at all.

No comments: