Can the GOP weed out the crazies?
Is this man really good for the future of the Republican Party?
I know this will be heresy to many Republicans, but it’s time — long overdue, in fact — for the GOP to abandon Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment.
“Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican,” Reagan wrote. “It’s a rule I followed during that campaign and have ever since.”
But that was in a different time, a different era.
These days, there are so many outright, full-bore crazies in the conservative movement that Republican leaders need to do some serious trash talking.
Even more, they need to do some gate-keeping.
How bad is it? After Tuesday’s election, long-time Republican front-man Ted Nugent dispatched a series of tweets calling American voters “soulless fools.”
“What subhuman varmint believes others must pay for their obesity booze cellphones birthcontrol abortions & lives?” Nugent asked.
Donald Trump, meanwhile — one of Mitt Romney’s most visible surrogates during the election — called for “revolution” as the results were coming in.
“We can’t let this happen,” Trump insisted. “We should march on Washington and stop this travesty.”
And then there was Bill O’Reilly, blaming the outcome of the election on brown-skinned people who “want stuff.”
“It’s a changing country,” O’Reilly said, his voice breaking. “It’s not a traditional country any more.” He went on to clarify that “the white establishment is now the minority.”
And then there was popular conservative talk radio host Neil Boortz, who responded angrily to the idea of congratulating President Obama on his victory.
“I would like to congratulate Ted Bundy on sneaking into yet another sorority house and killing another coed. I would like to congratulate Adolf Hitler on his invasion of Poland. I would like to congratulate the — Al Qaeda for their successful attack on New York City. I would like to congratulate the Ansar al-Sharia crowd over there in Benghazi for their successful assault on our consulate. Congratulate Barack Obama? I’m sorry.”
This stuff isn’t “conservative” and it’s not “principled” and it’s not the “real” America. It is, to bend a phrase, crazier than an outhouse rat. It’s bonkers.
When you have top-tier Republican candidates talking about “legitimate” rape and pregnancies resulting from rape being “God’s will,” it’s vicious and it’s unhinged.
When you have leading Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain calling for construction of a fence along the Mexican border that is “electrified, with a sign on the other side that says it can kill you” it’s ugly and nuts.
When you have top conservative voices calling the President of the United States “a retard” (Ann Coulter) or “Barack the Magic Negro” (Rush Limbaugh), it’s grotesque and lunatic.
When conservative allies blame hurricanes on gay people or earthquakes on abortion, they aren’t devout or fundamental or churched. They are creepy and weird.
So here’s the 12th commandment for the Republican Party. If you say crazy things — about “diseased” immigrants, say, or about women advocating for contraception being “sluts” — you are out.
O-U-T. Persona non grata. Done. Finished. If you babble on about the President’s birth certificate, or his secret Muslim faith, you are banished.
The GOP has a steep enough hill to climb, rebuilding its damaged brand, without being hoisted again and again on the petard of the lunatic fringe.
Taking this kind of hard-line on nuttery will be frightening for party leaders because they’ve let so many kooks into the big tent.
It’s also true, as David Frumm has pointed out, that a lot of carnival barkers are making kajillions of dollars by co-opting the Republican brand, joining what he calls the “conservative entertainment complex.”
It’s good business — damn good business — for Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Michael Savage to bounce off the walls and tell people to go out and buy gold and survival kits in advance of the coming apocalypse.
But it’s not good for the Republican Party. Not by a country mile.
So where does the GOP start? How about saying good-bye to Trump? Or Nugent? Surely, the GOP is capable of that kind of baby step toward sanity and self-policing.
If not, then we will certainly continue to see legitimate conservative causes — and smart, sane conservative voices — eclipsed and deligitimised by the kind of people you wouldn’t trust to baby-sit your dog, let alone run your country.
Tags: analysis, election12, politics
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But back to Brian’s point, at some level the Republican establishment is going to have to take on the media industry and system that is very content to see the Republicans descend to a 15-25% minority, which is their media market. They can make a lot of money talking to themselves and preaching to the choir. So the real politicians the real leaders are going to have to step out from this bunch, which will be hard, the wrath would be fast and furious, but I think we might need a McCarthy moment with these guys.
Rancid,
As to your numbered points:
1) Lots of Americans are already having to choose between medicine/health care and food. Paul Ryan wrote the proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher program. He acknowledged this would force recipients to spend more of their own (not public) money. You probably see that as a good thing. I don’t. It weakens families, communities and the country as a whole.
2) Ryan (and other Republicans) proposed privatizing Social Security in 2010 (despite wide opposition to similar proposals in 2004). The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office analyzed his plan. It would have reduced payouts and crippled SS. That’s my wording. You can read what the CBO said here:
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10851/01-27-ryan-roadmap-letter.pdf
3) The Republican who said slavery was a good thing for black people — and should be brought back as a social institution — is Jon Hubbard. Google away. Or follow this URL to the NY Daily News (not really a left-leaning paper, y’know?) http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-10-07/news/34309227_1_house-candidate-hubbard-arkansas-house
4) I doubt we’ll ever agree on abortion, but FWIW: outside of a woman (and able to sustain bodily function), it’s a child; inside a woman it’s too dark to read (sorry). Inside a woman, it’s a fetus. Abortion happens thousands of times a day around the world. Sometimes, it’s the choice of a woman. But most often it is a natural process in which the body rejects the developing fetus.
But this gets at the gulf in thinking between you and me: you’re using opinion to claim a fetus is a child. You’re entitled to your opinion, just acknowledge it as such. And while you’re at it, please acknowledge that no one should be forced to conform to or follow your opinion.
Right now, in the U.S., you are allowed to determine what happens in only one uterus–the one that’s connected to the rest of your reproductive system. If you don’t have a reproductive system that includes a uterus, tough luck.
One other thing: I’m surprised you argue for women to exercise a bit of forethought and the use of birth control. It’s estimated that at least half the women seeking abortions did, in fact, think ahead and used birth control. This is from an AP news report by David Crary:
“Half of the roughly 1.2 million U.S. women who have abortions each year are 25 or older. Only about 17 percent are teens. About 60 percent have given birth to least one child prior to getting an abortion.”
As to your false equivalency between Democrats (the political left) and communism. I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous.
I am firmly on the left. Like my fellow lefties, I recognize that capitalism is the most effective system for making money. That’s fine. I like making money. But I also recognize that money isn’t what matters most.
My family and the people I love matter most. We live in tempestuous ecological, financial and social environments. I want to protect all of us from the most destructive forces.
In the middle of the last decade, around the initial debates of privatizing Social Security (or parts of it, as you insist), the BBC reported on this argument in the U.S. And the story began with this description of SS:
“It’s an agreement between generations. The young will help care for the old, in hopes that when the young turn into the old the following generation will support them.”
They got it right. That’s America’s social compact.
It’s not communism. No member of the Democratic party — seriously, not one — is advocating the end of capitalism. We’re simply saying that using a bit of money to help care for everyone is good for the country.
I am scared of and angry at the attempts to dismantle our social compact. It works. It’s been working for 70 years. And if you really want to see it succeed, support removing the payroll tax cap on Social Security contributions.
Best to you and yours and Happy Thanksgiving-
wj
“I find it puzzling that you claim the middle class is better off now.”
None of this should puzzle you, RC. It is not based on anything magical or hard to understand.
You mention education and home ownership as examples of how we are worse off now than we were in the 1950s.
Ok.
Both of those are measurable – there are facts that we can compare between these two periods of time.
And when we do so, here is what we see…
Literacy rates are better today. There are more schools today. More children have access to those schools today. Those schools are better equipped , receive more funding, and teach more advanced subjects than they used to. And as a result, more of our children go on to attend college than was ever imaginable in the 50s.
Likewise, the home ownership rate has also gone up steadily since the 50s. I repeat, more people own homes now than did back then. And for some of our citizens (minorities in particular) the opportunity to own a home is FAR greater now than it was then.
So what exactly makes you feel that education and home ownership were better back in the 30s and 50s and 60s… ya know, before those creeping marxists ruined everything?
The facts are pretty clearly not on your side, so is this just a gut feeling you have?
Or is your nostalgia for that period of time influencing your opinions on these subjects?
Not to mention that Republican nostalgia for the fifties is a bit odd considering the 90% marginal tax rate then in effect. That and the largest-in-history public works project, the Interstate Highway System. (Have I mentioned this before?)
There were certainly good things about the 50’s and the time before the social upheaval of the 1960’s through today.
But those things were cultural not political and even all of the cultural things that I treasure about this time period were not all good, not at all.
But we are more violent today than in the 1950’s we are more likely to kill and to steal, we are more likely to leave our spouses to not honor our marriage vows today than before, today the majority of children will be raised outside the love and protection of their two biological parents, we use a lot more drugs and view a lot more porn and we are much more materialistic than in the 1950’s. So yeah some things were better, but we were also more small minded and racist and did not recognize or enforce true civil rights or liberty for whole sections of our society. So it certainly was not all good.
Politically though the 1950’s were essentially what would be considered today a Democratic Leftist paradise, unions were strong, tax rates were much higher, regulation on business and industry across the board was much heavier than we have today.
“But we are more violent today than in the 1950’s…”
Perhaps. But in the 1950s the Klan was active in the south, and there was a fair amount of racial violence. The stylized gang fights of West Side Story are based in real inner-city gang wars of the era. And while abortion was illegal in the fifties, some 2500 women died of botched back-alley abortions during the decade (thanks to antibiotics, down dramatically from more than 15,000 in the thirties).
And given that sexual issues were generally swept under the rug at that time, I’m not so sure we know to what extent people honored their marriage vows back then, or whether it was substantially more than we do today. Kinsey’s work in that period found that half of all married men, and a quarter of married women, were unfaithful at some point in their marriages.
You’re certainly right about porn and drugs. But the statement that “today the majority of children will be raised outside the love and protection of their two biological parents” assumes that couples that stayed together only because divorce was then unthinkable provided a nurturing, loving environment for their children, an assumption that is open to considerable doubt.
Walker, two thoughts:
1. I think we’re definitely more violent as a society than we were in the 1950s. You just have to drive around upstate New York and you’ll find city after city that were nice and relatively safe in the ’50s but are miserable and violent now. Sure, there was violence in the ’50s, people were the same, they got into fights and lost their tempers. But you didn’t have as many handguns on the streets, you didn’t have teenagers bringing guns to school. And you didn’t have the widespread use of hard drugs, which is a huge driving factor in a lot of today’s crime and violence.
2. I don’t think the rise in divorce is the biggest factor in the number of single-parent households, it’s the number of people who have kids without ever getting married in the first place. That’s acceptable now. It wasn’t so much 60 years ago. Sure, there are individual cases where having one parent out of the picture might be better for the kid, because that parent was abusive or violent, but from the bigger picture, I think the number of single-parent households is a societal problem. You have generations of boys learning how to be men from their equally confused and messed-up peers, instead of from fathers.
Marlo, you’re probably right. My point was less that things are just fine today than that conditions in the fifties are easy to misjudge from today’s perspective. Also, the two parent household enforced by societal norms is not just a problem when one parent is abusive; it’s also a problem when the couple have come to despise each other, and use the children as part of their ongoing war. I would be interested to see a study of the mental health of American families across the decades.
Drugs and guns. How much comes from the attempt to impose prohibition on all drugs but alcohol? Would things be better if we legalized most drugs? Where will we be fifty years from now?
The original Larry???? Whoa! There is a story here!
Hey Everyone, and by everyone I mean Brian Mann and Will Doolittle and the other media types who hang about here, has anyone noticed that all of a sudden after the election is over we are starting to see lots of actual policy discussion in our newspapers and on NPR? (I don’t know what is happening on TV)
It is striking that all of a sudden the horse race is gone and actual news is being purveyed.
Well Walker yes and no.
There is simply no doubt that families were stronger in the 1950’s than they are today, and further we are a much more violent and materialistic society today than we were in the 1950’s. Certainly people committed adultery then as they do now, but most indicators would show that people are far far more sexual partners today than in 1950 and we do abandon our marriages easier with out nearly as much thought, that is not a good thing, Kinsey was certainly ground breaking most of his research methods however have been pretty roundly debunked.
Social pressure to stay married for the sake of your children was a GOOD thing, divorce in general always hurts children, the only time it is really a good thing is if there is abuse or addiction involved.
But as you point it was not all good not even close, particularly when we look at the racial injustice in this country in the 1950’s, I don’t want to go back! My point was simply that not all things in the 1950’s were bad and not all things were good, it would however be nice if we could have kept more of the good things while getting rid of the very bad things that were part of that culture and time.
Now the great part of this country is that we CAN re-capture those things, it is not up to politicians or government to decide whether we dishonor our marriage vows, whether we choose to be materialistic or violent or randomly sleep around or get abortions or whatever the particular issue is.
That is why waxing away for the 1950’s is NOT a political issue. Heck the Amish chose to wax away for the 1850’s and are doing it! If we want to live a 1950’s traditional life we can choose to do so and we can raise our children in this same mold.
This is the problem the Republicans find themselves in trying to mix politics and culture.
Being counter-cultural is always an option, it is just hard.
I wish I believed that as a society we could choose to return to the best parts of the fifties. I have a feeling, though, that the American people are pretty much putty in the hands of marketers. I hope I’m wrong.
Interesting how we can point to science when it’s convenient. Science proves global warming. Science proves the earth is billions of years old. But science, with 3 dimensional ultrasounds, do not prove there’s a baby in that “dark” womb.
But then again, it’s easy to turn a blind eye and make excuses when we don’t want to admit the truth.
When I held my fully formed 13 week child in my hand after miscarrying, don’t tell me what it is or isn’t.
The legalization of abortion has given the green light for more abortions and now we have the murder of viable babies left to die after being born (or should I say expelled?)
Of course families were stronger in the ’50s.
Were there affairs, alcoholism, drug abuse, etc.? Of course.
But as a whole, society was more restrained. There was a greater sense of conscience.
You give an inch and they will take a mile.
Society has been given what they want. Human nature is to take that and more.
What will we look like in 5-10 years?
Is there ONE liberal on this forum who has the common sense to acknowledge the increased debauchery of our society?
Kathy. – haven’t people been complaining about that since time began?
I mean the moral decay of youth and things aren’t like they used to be etc.
I bet if you looked closely, families in the 50s were no stronger than they are now and not really all that different. Maybe there were more single earner households then, and for a brief time blue collar families lived well (if they were white).
Who is crazy. I know of four families, actually more in this category but I’ll address these four, who married around the age of 20. They had income but not healthcare. One had a child on the way so they married and to their credit have in the past dozen years plus gotten educations and raised their income. But all of the families have had numerous children but no healthcare. None were obligated to have children. Ten children amoung the four families. We’re paying for the healthcare of the children. These people are expecting us to subsidize them. Of course food stamps are part of the income of some of these families. Who is crazy here, the one who expects care or the one irritated at the obligation?
The student Limbaugh slandered was expecting others to subsidize the behavior of her and her friends behavior that was thoroughly controllable. Who is crazy?
I’m not talking about those who can’t help themselves. Those who are suddenly widowed or orphaned or divorced etc. That is the kind of need for the social safety net. But to enlarge it for people who are not really disabled or handicapped or whatever is beyond our ability to handle.
What incentive is there to be personally responsible?
To not expect personal responsibility is to eventually subsidize everyone to one extent or another and essentially back us into full socialism or communism.
Could be walker, we are all very very plugged in which in my mind means that we are actually more open to marketing we have even more of a herd mentality. The time spent on-line, on our I-phones, on the computer or watching t.v has increased drastically, for some its almost all of the time, their minds are now simply tools of what is streaming through the cloud.
But then again its all a choice as long as there are counter cultural voices out there both on the Right and on the Left, both secular and religious I think we have a chance for change and renewal. I don’t think this culture makes us happy or gives us peace.
jeff: “These people are expecting us to subsidize them.”
Are you sure? Not everyone expects to be subsidized.
jeff: “What incentive is there to be personally responsible?”
If I had 10 children, low income, and no health insurance, then the incentive to be personally responsible is so the inboxers don’t all gang up on me and tell me whether they think I should an 11th child.
I would see to it that I paid my own way, low income or not, health insurance or not, and no one can tell me how to live my life or whether or not I can have 20 children.
That is the incentive.
JDM:
JDM: I don’t see the incentive you suggest. The social pressure to hold off having children, in this instance obviously hasn’t been felt to the point it has curbed behavior. The “community” in which they revolve hasn’t expressed resistance. One of the mothers has pondered if the new healthcare law will affect the CHIP because she is expecting. Granted there is the reasonable chance that if opposition to adding to the burden was spoken, say by the president, the fringe would take things too far, as displayed in Brian’s paragraphs above. And there is potential for negative impacts on the children. (that is largely the issue with the illegal immigration problem) But pushback has to start somewhere and there are bigger issues of responsibility that would be demonstrative.
There is a parallel to changing government spending, if the money isn’t there, don’t spend on credit. I suppose government isn’t setting a good example. We know social security funding is inadequate for long term survival so congress cuts its funding. Like paying less on a mortgage, one never gets to the end. I question the collective sanity of congress. Crazies….
Seems like debauchery has been around for a very long time. Read your Bible and you’ll see plenty of it. Is there more than in the 50’s? I don’t know, but if there is it is probably just because there are more people to actively debauch. As a ratio of debauchery per person my guess is that it is less than in the past. I’m certainly doing less of it than I did in the 70’s or 80’s, but that is probably a function of age.
Not really Knuckle there was a distinct drop in debauchery in years 55-60 then by the year 100-120 an uptick, just like today.
One unexamined assumption in this thread is that the culture of the 50s represents a normal condition of American society. Certainly it looks more stable than the decade of the Great Depression and the half decade of World War that preceded it, but the conformity and common values of the 50s can also be seen as a natural (and temporary) reaction to the chaos and struggle that preceded it, and the toll it took on families and communities.
The much maligned 60s, if one looks at the words of the culture warriors of the time, was in reaction to the stultifying effects of trying to enforce a universal set of behavior and aspirations on the American populace. Youth, minorities and women were no longer willing to play along.
Curiously, the organization and aspirations of conservative insurgents in the Tea Party movement remind me much more of the 60s than the 50s, despite them citing the 50s as an idealized time in American history. The establishment of the 50s would probably tell them to behave themselves, and would not allow their daughters to go out with them.
Dale Hobson
I think you are right Dale. All that screaming, sign waving, etc, go get a job and be quite would be the 50’s response to this sort of rabble. Who has time to protest anyway if you are a working productive member society with kids at home and a wife to support?
I haven’t taken in the presumption that the 50’s were so great because I thought it seemed somewhat obvious that the mythology of 50’s culture was simply patterned from the New medium of TV and all the shows like Ozzy and Harriet and I Love Lucy. Everyone who has paid attention knows how much true evil lurked beneath the soft focus memories, right? Get the book on Robert Garrow and read about the kind of stuff that went on in his youth and tell me that we are worse now, nevermind Jim Crow in the south or McCarthy and the Red Scare or everyone who had a creepy uncle who wasn’t allowed to be alone with the kids in most families but was in others.
Dale,
that last sentence is very funny.
Well Knuckle yes some things are better a lot better. But we are more likely to kill, rape or steal from our nieghbor today, MUCH more likely than in then in the 1950’s. Crime statistics are pretty accurate. I don’t think our culture with its’ materialism can be said to be uniformly better than the 1950’s when people were less materialistic. So yeah there was bad and there was good. Families did provide better homes for children in the 1950’s on the whole, then we do today.
However if you are like me and have daughters then NO way would I want to bring them up in the 1950’s when their whole life would be limited by what man they could marry. I am not saying return to the 1950’s, I just think we could take some of those things that were good.
“But come on, on some of these social issues the Party has moved far far to the Left…”
Society in general is moving to the “left” on social issues. I find it a good thing that we as a society are finally starting to take seriously the idea of equality for all citizens, rather than making arbitrary exceptions for anyone who isn’t a straight, white Christian male. Our Pledge of Allegiance calls for “liberty and justice for all”… not for some. We’re finally moving toward a society that’s living up to that oath. Is that really “left”-wing? If it is, it’s a sad indictment of what the right-wing believes.
DUDE! All the GOP did was tell a few groups they didn’t want their vote.
These groups include:
-African-American people (Laminites with the mark of Cain! How about implying they are all on welfare? genius!)
-Latino people (they’ll self deport)
-Gay people (big government will define marriage, thanks)
-Asian people (did you see the GOP’s commercials depicting Chinese?)
-People who don’t make enough to pay federal income tax (47%’ers!)
-Single Women who use birth control (Sluts, right Rush Limbaugh?)
-Women, who if raped wouldn’t want to carry their rapist’s baby to term.(WTF, it’s God’s blessing!)
-People who are in government unions
-Libertarian members of their own party
-Young people with student loans
And somehow the GOP lost. This is a real mystery.
Don’t weed them out! It’s all the fun I have anymore watching the GOP piss on themselves in public. And they do it constantly. Boehner cries, Palin and Coulter are certifiable, Rove and Trump are done! Truly, the GOP is so thoroughly out of touch with working Americans, our daily lives and struggles and needs. Natural selection will require them to either adapt of go extinct.
Maybe something from a Republican might help you others understand what Democrats are saying:
http://www.ericgarland.co/2012/11/09/letter-to-a-future-republican-strategist-regarding-white-people/
I wonder if the obsession with the problems of the Republican Party is a way for Liberals to not focus on being in charge of what looks to be one giant moving mess? It is now and has been their mess, lack of concern for poverty is now a Democratic issue, the tax cuts are now Democratic tax cuts, the recession if it does not end soon is fully a Democratic recession, heck who wouldn’t want to focus on Donald Trump and Ted Nugent with those problems?
Mervel, most of the problems facing Obama’s second term wouldn’t be problems if it weren’t for Republican obstructionism during his first. Republicans were willing to let the country go to the dogs in the relentless effort to make Obama a one-term president, and some of them seem to be willing to let their party go to the dogs in his second term.
Walker,
You can’t blame the Republicans indefinitely; at some point Obama has to stop campaigning and govern. His approach yesterday to the “fiscal cliff” indicates that he hasn’t yet arrived at that point.
Larry, he’s been trying to govern for four years. He made the mistake early on of thinking your guys had the best interest of the country at heart. He won’t make that mistake this term.
At some point, Republicans have to stop imagining that voters are impressed by their lies and obstructionism. Some of them actually seem to be figuring it out. Others, not so much.
Case in point: (11/14/2012)
The “job creator” myth is utterly lame, but they keep trotting it out, despite polls showing that most Americans (including 40-50% of Republicans) favor raising taxes on the rich.
Walker,
You certainly don’t have the exclusive right to decide what is best for the country. 48% of American voters disagree with you and voted to stop our insane descent into socialism and the Republican party will continue to represent their interests. Most people understand that is how democracy works. Constant scapegoating of the opposition and a relentless drive to have everyone marching in philosophical lock-step is reminiscent of fascism more than anything else.
“…our insane descent into socialism…” ??!!!
Larry, you’re off your meds again?
All I can say is, if Republicans keep this up, 2014 is going to be the end of their majority, despite all the gerrymandered districts.
Taxing the rich as a solution to the country’s fiscal problems is as “utterly lame” as anything else that scapegoats a particular group. The rich aren’t the problem; the huge percentage of Americans who pay NO federal income taxes but who consume most government services and entitlements are the real problem.
“All I can say is, if Republicans keep this up, 2014 is going to be the end of their majority, despite all the gerrymandered districts.”
Always hedging your bets, aren’t you, and leaving room to blame someone else for your failures? Obamacare isn’t socialism? Trying to solve a problem by attacking people who don’t have a problem is certainly insane.
“…leaving room to blame someone else for your failures…”
Who’s failures? Elections have consequences. Your side lost. Get used to it.
Yesterday, in his press conference, President Obama said that “Half of the danger to our economy is removed by that single step” in reference to eliminating tax cuts for the top 2% of individuals and the top 3% of businesses. Who’s off their meds?
Oh man, seriously? Republican gerrymandered districts?!!! Give me a freakin’ break guy. Like the Democrats aren’t the gerrymandering kings? That excuse is about as lame as anything you could write Walker. Both parties engage in gerrymandering, that is a fact.
As far as taxing the rich, consider that we could tax everyone in the US at 100% it would still take over 8 years of that to pay off the debt we owe according to one “expert” I heard on the CBC the other day. Our total assigned debt is $58 Trillion dollars at the moment. And you think we can pay that down by taxing people? No way. We have to cut spending but no one wants to admit that or even consider it. Means testing is going to have to come to Social Security and Medicare. Social programs are going to have to be cut. This is nuts and anyone thinking the Clown in the White House has any real plan to address any of this is nuts too. The R’s and D’s are just going to try to hold the inevitable off till they are safely retired or dead, that’s the plan in it’s entirety. Good luck with that.
“The rich aren’t the problem; the huge percentage of Americans who pay NO federal income taxes but who consume most government services and entitlements are the real problem.”
The bottom 98% are the only true job creators: without their spending, there would be no jobs.
“We have to cut spending but no one wants to admit that or even consider it. Means testing is going to have to come to Social Security and Medicare. Social programs are going to have to be cut.”
Wrong. Cut unneeded business subsidies and bloated military spending. Those are the entitlements that are killing us.
Walker,
Part of the constant Democratic misinformation campaign is to shift attention from legitimate questions by answering every point with an unrelated counter-point. I mentioned government services and entitlements’ Answer that point and THEN we can talk about corporate subsidies or defense spending. The current focus is on insane socialism. As Arlo so correctly points out, we need to cut spending on social progrrams. If throwing money at poor people worked poverty would have been eliminated long ago.