Let 'Em Have It

by Deacon Blues

Depending on whom you listen to, the GOP is poised to either make major gains or take outright one or both houses of Congress this November. Yes, there are some outliers in the White House or the labor movement who think the Democrats will hold off the GOP assault and hold onto one or both houses, but this could be whistling past the graveyard.

The total success of the Fox News/Tea Party message saturation effort and the White House/Democratic inability to deal with it since last summer is best evidenced by yesterday's Gallup Poll results, which finds that the GOP is now favored on seven of nine issues, even though they've offered no specific solutions on any of them.

A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds Americans saying the Republicans in Congress would do a better job than the Democrats in Congress of handling seven of nine key election issues. The parties are essentially tied on healthcare, with the environment being the lone Democratic strength.

[snip]

The Democrats' advantage on the issue of the environment is likely not something the party can leverage to improve its 2010 electoral fortunes, as Americans rank it at the bottom of the list in terms of its importance to their vote. Rather, economic concerns are paramount, with a majority of Americans rating the economy, jobs, and federal spending (along with government corruption) as extremely important.

The Republican advantages on these economic matters range from a low of +5 on jobs to a high of +15 on federal spending. Terrorism -- the issue on which Republicans have the greatest advantage over Democrats -- is rated as very important by 47% of Americans, putting it in the middle of the list.

That entire list of important issues is taken straight from what the right wing media tells us are important issues each and every day. It's particularly galling that voters think federal spending and government corruption are major weaknesses for the Democrats, when you consider the unprosecuted corruption by the Bush/Cheney administration and the difference in who spent what. Bush and Cheney ran two wars on credit and drove up the debt by two trillion dollars, and then added another two trillion dollars of debt in corporate welfare for the drug and military-intelligence industries. They then tanked the economy at the end of their term, and began a several-trillion dollar bailout of their campaign contributors on Wall Street. And it's also galling that during the Bush/Cheney era, we lost jobs and our manufacturing base, and saw family median income decline.

And yet voters prefer the GOP on economic issues like federal spending and jobs, when all the Tea Partiers have offered is to slash domestic spending on jobs and infrastrucure, and to cut and eliminate Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as unconstitutiional.

Let the voters have their way. Let them reinstall the same people they tossed out two years ago. Let them watch these people act upon their agenda, investigate Obama for corruption when Obama turned the other cheek, and have at it. It's time the American people see and feel the consequences of their actions, and get a close look at how easily they can be manipulated against their own interests. This has been a long time in coming, and when the economy craters again next year and all the GOP has to offer is impeachment hearings, draconian budget cuts against Main Street, and a return to unbridled largesse and power for Corporate America and the wealthy, voters can look in the mirror for once and stop blaming someone else for their troubles.