An Unremorseful Tea Party Already Spoiling for Another Fight

For people to learn lessons from their mistakes five things have to happen: they have to have an element of humility in their nature; understand that they are not the center of the universe; have empathy and a basic respect for their fellow humans; be aware of themselves and the impact of their behavior on those around them; and want to change very much. 

If any of those are absent, they might do little temporary shifts but it’ll only be to try and get out of crisis.  Essentially they’ll carry on doing the same old same old. Or else they might not even make any superficial move towards changing. Carry that to the extreme and you have a sociopath.

Since President Obama stood his ground, backed by Harry Reid and sane politicians, and the Tea Party experienced a resounding loss, many have expressed the hope that now the Tea Party will be sobered; will have learned their lessons. They’ll take a long hard look at how detrimental to everybody – including themselves – their actions have been. How they’ve undermined democracy by acting against the wishes of the majority of the electorate and underestimated Obama, Harry Reid and Democrats in general. 

How their behavior was so outside of the bounds of normalcy and decency that they turned even moderate Republicans against them, making enemies where before they had friends. How absolutely nothing good resulted from their actions. Nothing for them, nothing for anybody else.

The idea that this group has been sobered in any way at all is naïve. The Tea Party is already spoiling for another fight, congratulating themselves and Ted Cruz on a fight well fought. Bob Vander Plaats, CEO of The Family Leader (an umbrella Christian conservative organization), anti-gay, anti-abortion, who has become increasingly unpopular in Iowa, has backed losers and has failed in every run he himself has made in politics but believes he has a political future said of Cruz “[he] is a rock star sucking all the energy in the conservative movement. He’s making all the right enemies with the Republican establishment, which is taking him to unprecedented heights.”

And judging by the type of support the Tea Party is garnering, from organizations like the Heritage Foundation which has turned ultra conservative in the past six months and whose money helps secure seats in the House for Republican Representatives, they’ll never surrender. It isn’t going to bother them that the GOP job approval rating has taken a massive hit or that its chances of succeeding in any future election are diminished. That’s because they don’t want to nurture the Republican Party as a moderate party. They want to take it over. They’re taking the long view. 

It’s hard to take this group seriously when they’re so out of touch and are openly saying that what they’ve learned is how to be more effective next time, how to up the stakes, how to create more pressure. Or that’s what they think they’ve learned. How you believe you can up the stakes from government shutdown and defaulting on debt is hard to imagine. How you can imagine there’s anywhere to go against a President who just flat out says “no” and stands his ground is beyond rational. 

How you think you can take over a whole country which is ruled by democracy and retain power for any length of time when your support is 22% and on a downward trajectory – words fail.

They behave like fools and none of the normal parameters of rationality apply to them. But they’re fools with a mission and with money backing them. Which adds something sinister to the mix. Can you imagine an America run by super conservatives who have secured power by gerrymandering and some of whose members wave the Confederate flag in front of the Whitehouse? You might not be able to but they can. And they believe it’s a good thing.

They won’t succeed in the long run. But they can do damage in the short run and they’ve already illustrated that they have a talent for that, so it's probably not a good idea to dismiss them entirely.

Republicans Refusing to Expand Medicaid Tighten Their Own Noose

Conservative rhetoric since Barack Obama was elected has been about how his administration has cauterized progress in the US. You’d think it would be hard to get around the fact that the US economy is doing a lot better than many other countries because Obama understood the fatal ramifications of austerity, and despite what he inherited. But rhetoric, like water, will flow seamlessly around obstacles no matter how rational and fact-based they are.

Republicans have opposed Obama on everything they could whenever they could. Yet, ironically, he provides a measure of cover for them. They want control of Congress and the White House, but if they succeed after the next elections – God help us all - they’ll have to take the rap for the ill effects that are bound to result from their conservative policies. Whether they’re conscious of that or not is hard to know. This is group of politicians notorious for their skill in slipping the noose around their own neck and tightening it.

The latest gimmick is for Republican states to resist expanding Medicaid. In 2010 Congressional Democrats approved the health care law as they intended to expand eligibility for Medicaid in each state. If that had happened, people too poor to afford medical insurance or medical attention would have received Medicaid. The Urban Institute has estimated that it’s about 5.7 million people.

Predictably, there was huge Republican resistance. Last year the Supreme Court ruled that states could decide for themselves. The New York Times states that 25 - mostly Republican - states decided against. So those 5.7 million people will lose out. Surely a victory for Republicans.

Meanwhile, Obama and his administration continue along the path of most resistance but also most effectiveness for the economy and the recovery of the middle class. Beginning next month the president and a team, including the secretary for health and human services Kathleen Sebelius, will fly around the country informing people about their options. They want to reach those who are eligible but don’t realize it or don’t know what they have to do to access it.

Unfortunately the team will also have to explain to those in states with no expanded eligibility that they’re too poor. That is going to be heartbreaking. It’s hard to know whether or not the blame will fall on Obama at first. But over time it’s going to be pretty clear who’s responsible. That noose is tightening. But the collateral damage is something awful.

Maureen Dowd Gets on the Bash-Obama Band-Wagon

Maureen Dowd recently wrote a pretty damning piece about President Obama in her column on nytimes.com, castigating him for not controlling Congress. It’s disappointing to see her jumping on the bash-Obama bandwagon without mentioning how hard he has tried and the kind of mentality he’s dealing with. People who criticize Obama in this way need to put themselves in his position. It’s unlikely that Dowd, extraordinary woman that she is, and fearlessly outspoken, would be able to control Congress either. 

This isn’t high school. Obama can't force Congress to behave rationally or to actually represent the people who voted them in. It's humanly impossible. Anybody who suggests that he should do it, and that he somehow can, needs to try. Anybody who can’t understand the futility of even the attempt doesn’t understand how democracy works. 

It's easy to blame the President. But the responsibility here lies on the shoulders of voters. America has a Congress filled with men who border on lunacy at times, and who have absolutely no investment in the well-being of all Americans. They represent the NRA, the military industrial complex, giant corporate interest. Anybody, in fact, but those who they're supposed to represent. 

It's ludicrous to allow such a group of people to be voted in, and then expect the President to change them somehow. When Obama was re-elected, Republicans appeared to understand that their voter base is dying out, and that they would have to do something significantly different if they wanted to remain part of the political scenery.

But it's a wise person who understands what change really is about and does what they need to do to bring it about within themselves. These [mostly] men are not wise. Their entitlement is neurotic, they’ve been in power for too long and gotten away with murder, and they’re backed by massive wealth and power. They won’t change while that continues to happen. In fact, they probably won’t change at all. Even when they’ve finally been voted out because their voter base has disappeared. They’ll be whingeing then about how unfair it all is.

Democracy is held up as the best and only way to fairly govern a country. It is, but it only works in the interests of everybody when everybody who has a vote uses it intelligently. Since everybody doesn’t, the results of a vote are just a reflection of people’s state of mind. Half of American voters who voted used their vote intelligently when President Obama was elected and re-elected. The other half didn’t. 

How did these men in Congress get to be there in the first place? Because people didn’t bother to inform themselves properly. Can’t blame the President for that.

Scott Prouty Filmed the 47% Video that Lost Romney the Election

Before the last US Presidential elections, I knew Romney was a fraud, but he fine-tuned his public persona quite well, and became the man who loved his wife and children and cared about everybody, so long as he knew he was in the eye of the media. It was horribly frustrating to watch. Of course he couldn’t completely control his runaway mouth, but such was the fear of Obama that Romney’s supporters forgave him every time.

They would have sold their soul for a Republican President. In the end they were rescued from that dire predicament by Romney himself who revealed his real absence of humanity and the elitism that forms the foundation of his true personality, and by the man who recorded him.

His name is Scott Prouty, a bartender at that fateful fundraising dinner. Recently he was interviewed on NBC and Huffpost Live, and anybody who can get their hands on him is clamoring for an interview. Anybody except Fox News.

“You can tell a lot about a man by the way he takes his drink” said Prouty (Huffpost Live). Normally, people say thanks and acknowledge the bartender. Romney took his drink and turned away without a hint of a thank you. To him the bartender was just a servant. Contrast that with Bill Clinton, who, at a fundraiser at a private home, came into the kitchen to thank all the staff, one of whom was Prouty. He was very moved, and his experience of Clinton  helped inspire him to release the video.

On the Republican night in question, Romney sat down and demanded that the food be brought immediately, because he was late. “I’d never do that,” said Scott, “even if I was the guest of honor. I’d never walk into a house and say ‘where’s the food? Come on, bring it, bring it’.” (Huffpost Live)

He decided to record Romney. None of the staff had been told they couldn’t record the event, so he didn’t hide the camera; he set it up on the bar in full sight. The media weren’t invited, but I guess it didn’t cross Romney’s mind that the waiting staff might be smart enough to fill the gap. I also guess Romney didn’t care enough about the 47% to worry about what would happen if they heard what he had to say. Which says it all, really.

Prouty obviously had a job to do but he was also there as a voter. He wanted to hear what Romney had to say and expected him to address everybody in the room. But it was as if for Romney, the staff didn’t exist. He didn’t include them; he didn’t see them as individuals and he didn’t care about them as voters. What a person instinctively does tells the truth of them, so his bit about the 47% of Americans being lazy, unwilling to do anything with their lives, wanting bailouts, was just affirmation.

Scott Prouty is a down-to-earth, straightforward guy with a sense of decency and his own dignity.  He said he released the video because most Americans couldn’t afford to pay $50,000 to know what Romney really thought. “It’s a shame”, said Prouty, “you would wish they [politicians] would say the same things in public as they say in private. Maybe they do but clearly he didn’t.” (Huffpost Live)

What Romney said was so “diametrically opposed to what he was saying in public” that Prouty couldn’t bear to let him get away with it. He spliced the video and the first release was only a piece. It was “sort of a dry run”. He wanted to get a feel for how it landed. And people saw and heard what he did; the hypocrisy. YouTube shut down that first partial video, entitled “Romney exposed”, as did some other places he put it up on. 

But a Tumblr user noticed a second video and contacted Huffington Post reporter Brad Shannon, and Prouty had media traction. His original intention had been to start a conversation but he ended up helping to change the direction of a Presidential election, because after this, Romney didn’t have a chance.

Social media makes it possible for an ordinary guy to affect the course of history. “[It’s] a great equalizer. If you have a good message, a strong message, an important message and you are persistent enough you can share it with lots and lots of people.” Prouty added that he was very grateful to all the ordinary people who retweeted his message very persistently, even before the media found it. “[Social media] lets you get around the media filter...This was going out no matter what, and if the media ended up picking it up, that was great.” (Huffpost Live)

YouTube didn’t give Prouty any reasons for shutting his video down, which leaves room for speculation. But in any case, they couldn’t stop this one. Kudos to Scott Prouty. His twitter account is @scottprouty.