What are Republican Party Leaders in a Word? Demagogues.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
A regular reader asked us the other day what one word would we use to describe the national Republican Party leadership?
Now, that was a stumper.
But, we thought about it more and more -- and about how they win elections
(in addition to stealing them) and manipulate public opinion.
And we decided it might not be such a tall order after all to distill
the Busheviks, Federalists, the Republicans in Congress and the Christocrats
down to one word.
Because what they do is puddle jump from manipulating people emotionally to the next issue that touches the hot button of enough people to distract us from the real problems that the nation faces.
That, dear friends, is called being a demagogue. The Republicans stink at governing -- they are disastrous. But boy can they play the demagogue card like a violin prodigy.
That is why the immigration issue has become such a hot button topic right now. Is it really, all of a sudden, such a new and pressing issue?
No, but it plays on racial fears (come on, we aren't talking immigration in general, we are talking about Mexican immigration); it deflects from the Republican support for moving jobs offshore and scapegoats Mexicans as the reason many Americans have lost jobs; it buries the issue of the NAFTA disaster in causing many Mexicans to lose their indigenous jobs because of large corporations now controlling vast swaths of agricultural land in that country; it hides the fact that the U.S. government is not really going to seriously stop drugs from coming in from Mexico because the Mexican economy might collapse; and it keeps people from thinking about all the failures of America's one-party GOP system of incompetent governance.
Republicans are masters of using wedge issues. They run elections on what divides people -- and they excel at creating divisions on emotional issues.
This is the power of the demagogue.
This is the Republican Party.
It's not to say that there are not problems created by illegal border crossings from Mexico (no one's uttered a word about an immigration problem from Canada, have they?), but the red meat, racist cries coming out of the Republican House are the words and tactics of the demagogue. They are not the strategies of elected officials who are actually trying to achieve effective solutions to complex public policy problems.
So in a word, what are the national Republicans: demagogues.
There, you have it.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL