The Republicans Are Fucking Stupid: A Status Report (Part I)

The Just-Say-No Boxing Tournament

If politics is like boxing, the GOP (in the Red Corner) have an interesting strategy.

Run to the Blue Corner and punch like fuck while shouting,

'NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooOOOOOOO!'.

Obama's tendency is to move to the center at the very outset. By now "Nobody" is surprised when Obama stands at the center and leans left and right.

And by "Nobody" I mean those trolls who listen to Limbaugh or Hannity, O'Reilly and so on. Anyone with sarahpalin.com as their homepage instantly qualifies.

Those are the only people on the entire planet who think of the President as a bona fide Marxist, always fighting against the ropes in some fabled, mythical Blue Corner. They are the only ones surprised when he does and says things which sound moderate.

In this imaginary Blue Corner, Karl Marx is team manager, Vlad Lenin is Obama's personal training Czar. Mao's got big money on the game and he keeps saying, "keep moving to the left until you hit Beijing."

So the GOP size up the opposition, who is standing at the exact center of the ring and they charge to the Blue corner, punching and screaming.

Let's have a little lookie at their scorecard so far...

GIT-NO

GIT-NO

No to trials of GITMO detainees on US soil.

The GOP won that battle so easily and such little has happened ever since the first rounds, that the President basically scored zero real hits in that entire contest. After a hopeful beginning and a few more rounds of stalemates, Obama's push to hold trials in New York were finished off.

On the issue of the detainees and their human rights, Obama all but dropped his gloves. He ran from the Blue Corner like a thunderbolt hoping, perhaps to use political capital he didn't have and he got resoundingly pounded to the mat by the GOP before he reached the center of the ring.

It was to be one of the very few GOP victories to come along so easily.
Very few had really expected a lot of legal traction on the matter of trials for suspected terrorists. After all, they'd been tortured and illegally detained. Their legal status was and still is impossible to resolve.

That's not because Obama is inadequate as a President, nor because the Justice department is inadequate.

It is instead because Addington and Cheney had almost eight years to create a legal Gordian Knot and tie it around GITMO.

The bastards did a great job too.

HEALTHCARE AS A CAUSE FOR ARMAGEDDON

So with a predictable failure under his belt, the second big match up was really the first big test for No Drama Obama.

Healthcare was a major title, a gruelling tournament involving 50 states, two branches of government, a divided Democratic party and of course the party of No. Few believed there was any chance of any success at all. It had never happened before. Many Presidents had tried. Most had not even bothered.

The party of No is, however, utterly predictable.

Once again, the GOP took on the same weird strategy of swinging wildly while running at Obama in the Blue corner. And due to a lot of flash photography from the media the President took a lot of hits from the right which should definitely have been aimed at the Congress.

The seemingly simple Single Payer system went out in the early rounds. Here again Obama tended to retreat to the center of the ring. Candidate Obama had supported the Public Option, that turned out to look like it was more political support rather than actual support.

In the boxing ring where it might count, Obama dropped the Public Option like a weight he didn't need.

He didn't really punch all that hard for key parts of his own reform. Perhaps his dodging the punches strategy by dropping his reforms was meant to court the blue dogs in his own party. Perhaps it was because he couldn't support it after all. His lack of effort was disappointing to many on the left who had imagined it was a promise.

The party of No, of course, stood firm and went instead for the threat of a filibuster. When that failed, they block voted against everything.

We reached John Boehner for comment and he explained that this would bring on Armageddon.

ECONOMIC REFORM IS LIKE NUKING ANTS

Now in his finance policy, Obama is boxing closer to the Red corner, if anything.

He has, after all, relied almost entirely on the advice of known conservatives. Bernanke and Geithner both of whom come ordained from the right wing's most beloved and hallowed ground, the Ivy league.

As extra resume buff, they've both lived and worked in the holiest parts of Wall Street too. Their invisible right wing hands are all over Obama's Marxist economic policy.

So Obama is at the center and drifting further right on the issues of Wall Street. Meanwhile the right wing is still off in that Blue Corner, trying to smash the fuck out of thin air.

On the issue of finance reform there was, obviously enough a lot of right wing attacking partly because there was no real defending to be done. There were a lot of bitchin' punches thrown too, no doubt. But since every last slug was aimed at the ropes, rather than the President, the GOP scored zero real hits at all in the later rounds.

So once again the party of No went with their familiar, vuvuzela-like chorus of "filibuster" and "No".

That was, of course, a completely expected move and the GOP certainly didn't let their fans down.

An orange person was interviewed and they assured us that this new law was like taking out an ant with a nuke.

20 BILLION ESCROW IS A BP SHAKEDOWN

This has to rank as one of the stupidest political positions ever taken. So here's the Barton approach. Defend the Red Corner when he's covered in tarballs.

BP: The oil company trying to repair the leak, the company now drawing oil out of the well and making cash from it... This is the oil company which is responsible for destroying a region of ocean larger than Vienna. A lot larger than Vienna in fact. It's a plume now the size of Austria...

That poor oil company, BP, shouldn't be held liable.

That means, in polispeak, "I'm open for business and hunting for Big Oil Contributions.". That is defending the Red Corner and what it looks like.

The President was wrong to take a 20 billion check for victim relief. That is punching at the Blue Corner.

This is Barton's position?  No wonder he looks like he's choking on his own brain.

THE POINT BEING

Well, not to be shy about it...
Republicans are fucking stupid. 

They box like absolute lightweight babies. They have no idea who their opponent is nor how to find him when they're missing him by trying to pin him down where he isn't.

Obama has moved the agenda to the center every last time. The GOP don't fight for the center. They defend the extreme right and attack the extreme left and never pass through the center of American life.

So Obama's given them right wing economic reforms to chew on - after a total financial meltdown no less - and the GOP voted no. They even threatened filibuster on every issue.

So to people at the center the choice should look pretty clear. Vote Republican and swerve hard right and get more NO, or vote left and get someone who can work at the center and push through actual reforms.

The folks at the center should be delighted with Obama.

His much noted drop in popularity is unlikely to come from the Right where he was never liked and never will be.

It is unlikely to be from the center where people mostly do not blame him for the economy or the oil spill or any other thing he didn't cause.

Instead, Obama has courted the center position time and again.

I suspect that a lot of the shift in the polls is from the people on Obama's left who are wondering who they elected sometimes. They're already looking for other options because Obama seems nothing like the progressive he appeared to be as a candidate.

Looking back Obama was very careful to promise little while saying Americans should demand it. He said many times that people had to demand change. He talked about people being the force for change and he talked about that starting in communities.

When he was asked what people should do, supposing he was elected, to continue to help him create these things, he said to continue in the community, to press the government for what you want, to hold his feet to the fire. So to some extent, Obama is the people's President because he responds to their forces and he's said as much. 

There is still vast potential for bigger changes in the US, but with Obama in the Whitehouse, the people have to become more active in their demands for it.

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