By Carolyn Shore Aresu as Libby Shaw
Cross posted on Texas Kaos.
Why bother to address issues of substance that matter to most of us when it is easier to scare voters with hate talk?
First of all, the good news. U.S. Representatives Taliban Pete Sessions and Tea Party Jeb Hensarling have withdrawn their names as a potential GOP majority leader. One of them could have replaced Majority Leader Eric Cantor who lost a primary race in his district in Virginia.
The last thing we need in Washington D.C. is a Texas Republican in any form of a powerful leadership role. G.W. Bush wreaked enough damage on our country to last for generations to come.
Meanwhile here in Texas the GOP has gone out of its way to make life as miserable as possible for many of us. During the 2013 legislative session Texas Republicans declaredwar on women's reproductive rights. They passed a law that requires a sonogram for women seeking an abortion. Soon after passing this law the Texas GOP closed most of the state's women's health care clinics (including Planned Parenthood). This essentially cut off low income women from access to reproductive and family planning in addition to various screenings and mammograms.
As if this was not enough the Texas GOP, led by Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott, implemented a Voter ID law that makes it difficult for certain segments of the population to vote. Apparently if most of us were to vote Republicans could not win elections anymore.
Unfortunately suppressing women's and voter's rights were not enough to satisfy the extremists in the Texas Republican Party. At their state convention last week, the extremists decided to go after gays, and children, as well. Not to mention the Party's hard line on immigration.
So, the Party that touts the values of liberty and freedom has done one heck of a great job at taking the same away from certain segments of society.
For decades Republican politicians have been very successful at fooling and tricking voters by running on hate cloaked in messages about social values. For example, G.W. Bush ran on a platform of national security and "traditional values." Meanwhile, Karl Rove had whipped up the base with scary messages about gay marriage and abortion. Somehow most of the base would turn gay overnight and every man's wife, daughter or girlfriend would be running to abortion clinics 24/7.
Bait and Switch.
But when he was re-elected in 2004 W. swiftly pivoted to his buddies in the financial sector by trying to privatize social security.
To see what I mean by bait and switch, think about what happened in 2004. George W. Bush won re-election by posing as a champion of national security and traditional values — as I like to say, he ran as America’s defender against gay married terrorists — then turned immediately to his real priority: privatizing Social Security. It was the perfect illustration of the strategy famously described in Thomas Frank’s book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” in which Republicans would mobilize voters with social issues, but invariably turn postelection to serving the interests of corporations and the 1 percent.
In return for this service, businesses and the wealthy provided both lavish financial support for right-minded (in both senses) politicians and a safety net — “wing-nut welfare” — for loyalists. In particular, there were always comfortable berths waiting for those who left office, voluntarily or otherwise. There were lobbying jobs; there were commentator spots at Fox News and elsewhere (two former Bush speechwriters are now Washington Post columnists); there were “research” positions (after losing his Senate seat, Rick Santorum became director of the “America’s Enemies” program at a think tank supported by the Koch brothers, among others).
Paul Krugman believes Eric Cantor lost the primary election because his constituents no longer believed the Majority Leader would do their bidding.
It turns out, however, that this is no longer enough. We don’t know exactly why he lost his primary, but it seems clear that Republican base voters didn’t trust him to serve their priorities as opposed to those of corporate interests (and they were probably right). And the specific issue that loomed largest, immigration, also happens to be one on which the divergence between the base and the party elite is wide. It’s not just that the elite believes that it must find a way to reach Hispanics, whom the base loathes. There’s also an inherent conflict between the base’s nativism and the corporate desire for abundant, cheap labor.
The Texas attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott recently promised to secure the Texas-Mexico border since the federal government has failed to do the job. How is he doing to do that when his Republicans colleagues in Washington D.C. vote against everything that requires any kind of funding? Will Greg Abbott's donors pony up to secure the border? I hardly think so. Will he raise taxes? Of course not for Abbott would be tarred and feathered by his tea party base. So his chest pummeling about securing the border is pure BS and nothing more than a cheap attempt to woo racist and xenophobic voters.
Greg Abbott may enjoy spouting off about second amendment rights and secure borders while he continues to literally flee from reporters when asked pointed questions about his policies.
The base's hatred of immigrants and the Party's elite need to reach out to this community certainly poses a problem for the GOP. But when a Party runs on decades of scorched earth politics and thinly veiled messages of hate and fear, it is only a question of time before the shit storm hitting the fan blows back into the faces of the throwers.
If hate cannot win elections anymore all of us are lucky, no matter our party affiliation. Hopefully fewer and fewer of us can be manipulated by snake oil speech. That said, a quick trip to Greg Abbott's Facebook page shows us there is still plenty of hate to go around. His supporters refer to Wendy Davis as a whore, a socialist and abortion barbie. This must be the Obama hating base of Greg Abbott's Party. It's a pretty sick and scary place.
Let's examine how hate is playing in Texas during the 2014 gubernatorial campaign.
The Republican Hate Platform is not working in Texas.
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