Responding to Kathleen Parker's Washington Post Whine

[markpkessinger]

Posted in the comments in response to Kathleen Parker's whine in Friday's Washington Post.

Ms. Parker writes: "The demonizing of Republicans for trying to seriously address our desperately ailing economy . . ."

Please tell us, Ms. Parker, that your tongue was planted firmly in your cheek, or at least that your mouth formed a twisted, wry smile as you penned those word. I mean, if you really wrote that phrase with a straight face, one would have to question the firmness of your grasp of reality.

If Republicans had ever been interested in "seriously address our desperately ailing economy," they wouldn't have fought tooth and nail to extend the Bush tax cuts. And on this particular go 'round, if their primary motivation had been to tackle the deficit then we would not have had to witness the absurd brinksmanship over absurd things like trying to defund NPR, PBS and Planned Parenthood, as well as the the various anti-choice riders for which the current crop of Tea Party/GOP legislators was attempting to blackmail the rest of the country into accepting. For that matter, if the deficit had ever been a real concern for the GOP, they would never allowed George W. Bush to enact a massive tax cut in the first place while in the midst of prosecuting two wars.

Also, Ms. Parker, where was your concern about "demonizing" during the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, when virtually any attempt to raise concerns about his decisions with respect to Iraq or Afghanistan -- concerns which turn out to have been, for the most part, very well founded -- was met by insinuations that the patriotism of the person calling attentions to those concerns should be called into question? You complain about unfair use of the word "extreme," but did you complain when the GOP, in its attempt to repeal the health care legislation, referred to it, even formally, as "Job-Killing Obamacare?" The most generous assessment I can make of your whining is that it is disingenuous.

The GOP has always had within itself a faction of far-right radical extremists, who have always been ideologically opposed to any form of government spending aimed at alleviating social problems or at providing a measure of economic justice for those on the lower end of the economic scale. And that faction has always been willing, in the service of its anti-social spending agenda, to exploit the fears and prejudices of various other groups -- xenophobes, racists, the religiously intolerant, etc. What is new, in recent years, is that this faction now thoroughly dominates Republican politics. Moderates have effectively been either driven out of the party or forced into silence. If remaining moderate Republicans are feeling unfairly tarnished by labels like "extreme," then perhaps they should find within themselves the moral spine to resist the extremist agenda that has come to define GOP politics.