Shutdown fulfills GOP’s Confederate fantasies

[StrictlyRockers]

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/shutdown_fulfills_gops_confederate_fantasies/singleton/

It's a way of acting out a deeply held secessionist dream
BY STEVEN ROSENFELD
WEDNESDAY, OCT 2, 2013 07:41 AM PDT

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The most apt historical precedent for today’s marauder Republicans is the old Confederacy, where the provocateurs are not merely intent on stopping federal governance, but withdrawing from it or sabotaging it if they can’t get their way. Today’s Tea Party darlings like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and the House right-wingers driving the federal shutdown are cut from the same disunionist cloth as the old Southerners who fomented secession and the Civil War.

They have branded Obamacare as their Tariff of Abominations, which were export taxes imposed by Northern industrial states the South railed against before the Civil War. Fox News is the disunionists’ Charleston Mercury,egging on the rebels, and seeking to convey legitimacy to their crusade to save government not by fixing things, but by blowing it up piece-by-piece.

The Republican confederates don’t want to follow any law or election result they don’t like. Whether it’s Obamacare’s coverage of the poorest of the poor, federalgun control, reproductive choice or even the Voting Rights Act, there’s been a parade of red-state politicians in recent years working to exempt themselves and their states from federal rights, laws and remedies.

This is not a new list or trend, but it is growing and is ominous. At its base, it does not share a belief in national government. It includes the 28 states that sued to overturn Obamacare or not participate in it. It includes the two dozen states that passed so-called firearms freedom legislation, which thumbs its nose at federal gun controls. It includes states that don’t want new voter suppressionlaws subject to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They include states whose public health options do not include family planning.

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[Doctor_J]

1. Best result of this for real Americans

cut off the ward red states and set up an actual nation run and inhabited by people who believe in the America before Hate Radio and Reagan.