The Actual Republican Strategy
“Not my job.”
“Nothing we can do.”
“Not our role.”
“Shit happens.”
These four statements are the total and complete strategy of the New Trumplican Party regarding public policy that protects the citizens they represent. Politicians in the Trumplican party seek office for one reason and one reason only, and that is to grab, and then keep power. There is no thought given to public policy that helps anyone (except for themselves and their patrons). The public policy initiatives they pursue are purely cynical, designed to keep their gerrymandered base wrapped around the axle and ready to explode at any minute. Their ENTIRE strategy is to keep their alternate dimension dark, dangerous, unstable, unhappy, and increasingly fearful. That’s it, period, the end.
The key feature of this strategy, which I call The Dodge, is to do nothing to prevent massive tragedies, then heap blame on strawmen to deflect responsibility for their own negligence. The most advantageous feature of this strategy is that nothing bad ever sticks to them. From statewide power outages to mass shootings in schools, The Dodge allows those in charge of governing to brush those off to “free market” principles or “god given constitutional rights.” “There’s nothing we can do because constitutional freedoms won’t let us,” is the rote answer to all gun violence. The “free market” is also a common excuse; here’s one – “healthcare must be free market.” This Dodge allows insurance companies to overprice and deny health coverage to millions of Americans. Another good one is, “We won’t talk about immigration reform until the border is 100% sealed and there are zero border crossings.” Since “sealing the border” is impossible, they have the excuse to never have to do anything.
Abbott is masterful at The Dodge. He paid no political price for his incompetence and corruption with both ERCOT and the PUC that caused the massive power outages that cost hundreds of billions of dollars to the economy and cost as many as 700 Texans’ lives. “Free market” was his excuse as well as bald faced lying by blaming wind turbines for the outage. He also did it during the pandemic, providing zero support for closed businesses to protect people from the spread, and then using economic deprivation as an excuse to open the economy far too early, even overruling local government officials actually trying to protect people. After causing thousands of unnecessary deaths, Abbott then blamed the CDC, the WHO, China, Anthony Fauci, Peter Hotez, Lina Hidalgo, and other “liberals” to cynically gain political advantage using illness and deaths that he caused as a weapon.
We’re not surprised when shitbags like Abbott, Patrick, Cruz, Cornyn, McCarthy, and many others use The Dodge to avoid accountability for their own corruption. However, the most shocking and disgusting abusers of The Dodge are the six SCOTUS judges that now say that the Court has no role to play in reining in massive extreme gerrymandering, protecting voting rights, stopping unlimited buying of elections by billionaires, preventing massive pollution enabled by their rollback of EPA regulations, stopping the rewriting of the Second Amendment to create a right for idiots to carry and use assault weapons in public, and protecting women’s right to equal protection under Roe v. Wade.
These politicians (I’m including SCOTUS justices in that description) use The Dodge to deflect all responsibility for their own incompetence and profound corruption. And it works. By continually piling on boogeyman after boogeyman they can blame everyone and everything for problems they create or fail to solve. Such boogeymen include(d) gays, ACORN, those who “hate the troops”, immigrants, China, gays, “gun grabbers”, “welfare queens”, gangs, gays, drug cartels, old people, “radical Democrats”, gays, “voter fraud”, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, transgender kids, drag performers, gays, and, last but not least, wokeness. Oh, and gays.
By creating these boogeymen, these politicians accomplish their key goal which is gaining and staying in power by avoiding accountability. They couldn’t care less if you live or die. The textbook examples of this callousness is their disregard of human lives taken my massive gun violence and their willingness to sacrifice the old and sick for the economy during the pandemic. If you doubt any of this conclusion, I invite you to listen to Rep. Burchett (T) Tennessee:
’nuff said.
Wish there had been a followup question about exactly what freedoms we have that people in other countries don’t have. Enumerate them, please.
Cuz I know I don’t feel more free than my foreign counterparts when I have to stay in my job just to keep affordable health care coverage.
People being able to own guns without accountability — the freedom I’m sure he was talking about — takes away my feeling of safety when leaving my house. So I feel *less* free.
1Thom Hartmann has an expansive list of why he calls the Republican Party the Party of Death. Lots of good talking points about the historical blocks that they have put in the way of making life better for the majority of people in this country.
2“Not my job.” – For the reps and senators that state this, vote them out.
“Nothing we can do.” – If they won’t do the job to serve the public who elected them to office, voted them out.
“Not our role.” – Yes it is.
“Shit happens.” – Those who are callous enough to say this about the carnage from unregulated guns and do nothing, may one day find themselves facing their own karmic “shit happens” moment”.
3Republicanism exemplified by Fox ‘Hate’ News in a nutshell, “Lie and Blame the Democrats”. Which you call ‘The Dodge’. Lol thanks El Jefe I like that!
Besides it cost Conservative Think Tanks Millions of dollars $$$ to come up with “free market”! Those ‘feel good’ Conservative talking points don’t come cheep! Just ask the Mercers, Koch Bros. etc.
So much MSM conservative propaganda and wrong in that video. It reeks of wingnut ‘both siderism’, blaming Big goverment (only when a Dem is president), Christian
Entitlement thru and thru BS and of course …. Freedumb!!! I’m really surprised they didn’t blame Hillary’s emails, Benghazi! or Hunter Biden’s laptop. Oh that will be on the 11:00 News.
Thanks El Jefe! One good rant deserves another one, oldie but goodie link below …
“An open letter to the people who hate Obama more than they love America”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2012/01/09/1053088/-An-open-letter-to-the-people-who-hate-Obama-more-than-they-love-America
It basically boils down to that highly contagious, destructive, mutating, Human soul sickness disease, Bigotry.
Bigotry – ‘Fear and Hate of anybody that does not look, act, think or believe like you do.’
4Racial, religious, political, moral, gender, social are just some of the many dangerous forms of the disease.
You forgot perhaps the most important objective: OWNING THE LIBS!
5Pretty much covers the whole sorryass shitty topic of Rethuglikans.
“We’re not gonna fix it.”
Because crap like this keeps our mega-ignorant dumbass base in a froth of blind unthinking hatred and braindead reflexive puppetry, and we get to keep pulling the strings.
.
Mark @2, and many others:
Y’all really should edit down any weblinks that you put up on public websites.
You are potentially exposing yourselves to online dangers that most of you are apparently totally unaware of.
The link that Mark posted unfortunately includes much personal information which could be exploited by hackers, or worse [did my first ‘hack’ in 1971, long before most even knew what a computer was].
The portion of the URL he gave, from the “?” afterward, contains Mark’s unique ID information and should have been removed before posting it here.
I corrected it and posted the edited URL below, which still takes you to the story, without any compromising info [or almost…].
This is very important, I hope that y’all will take note and protect yourselves..
It’s easy enough, just takes a couple of steps to put the URL in Notepad or whatever, edit it, then test your new URL in a browser.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-gop-needs-a-new-slogan/ar-AA18M5di
Note from the Jefe: I removed Mark’s link from his comment. Anyone who wants to see it can click here.
6For those of you who remember the soundtrack to Tommy, by The Who:
We’re not gonna fix it
7Never did and never will
We’re not gonna fix it
Gonna break it, gonna fake it
Let’s forget it better still
Sometimes, all a death cult needs is a leader who takes absolutely no responsibility for anything. In 2017 they got him.
8He was the one they’d been waiting for . . . . . .
Exactly angela @7! Luckily this one was dumb. The next one might not be.
Great comments everyone!
Oops my mistake was thinking of ‘trickle down’.
“History of the Term “Free Market”
9The term was introduced in the 19th century in France and it was called laissez-faire. Laissez-faire means ‘hands-off’. According to this idea the government is supposed to be ‘hands-off’.
This subject covers a lot of ground. Well done, El Jefe.
10I find the use of “woke” to be the excuse that goes to the heart of the current trumpublican party. They don’t need to explain why they refuse to do something- they can just say it’s a “woke” idea. If they did explain, it might even sound bad to some of their voters. This my seem like a small example but I read in the Oregonian this morning about the Idaho legislature voting down a need proposed by the state education department. The schools are saying that there’s a need to provide feminine products in school restrooms. The failure to pass was simple from the R legislators- “that’s a woke idea.” Case closed. They use the same excuse for life and death issues.
And “woke” is exactly what Boebert used in a debate about assault rifles and the most recent massacre in Tennessee:
https://www.rawstory.com/lauren-boebert-democracy/
11Sandridge,
Thanks for being proactive. I was not aware of the security risk. I appreciate your bringing it to my attention.
12And when it comes to the judiciary, once again ‘Murica is leading the way for the world to see.
13Bibi netanyahu’s trying to get done in days and weeks what it took turtle McConnell years to accomplish.
WaPo ran an article about how gun manufacturers have moved into small towns red states. The populace who have been making $7/hour now make guns for $14/hour. Obviously they are happy for more money, but seem ambivalent to WHAT they are making. I’d like to see the manufacturer of the TN guns tracked down and interviews done with some of the employees who made that gun and see if they don’t give a flip like these legislators.
14Republican: “Nobody should get anything for free, except rich people”. That takes care of everything.
15