GOP, Rediscover Your Backbone

Please explain this: Obama is incredibly unpopular, and Obamacare is one of the main reasons, yet some Republicans are now saying it's here to stay. That is flat-out unacceptable. GOP -- heal thyself.

You don't have to be a radical to understand that the GOP is afraid of its own shadow half the time, that it is suffering from an identity crisis and that it often lacks the courage of its convictions.

We've learned that it's not enough for Obama to be the worst president in the past billion years. Republicans have to give the voters a reason to vote for them and not just against his party.

Don't assume I'm being inconsistent because I have previously rejected the claim that Republicans don't have any plans to offer on health care, the economy and the rest. They definitely do, and they have offered numerous concrete ideas to reform health care, restructure entitlements, reverse our reckless course on taxing and spending, deregulate our administrative leviathan, and rebuild our national defenses.

What I'm saying -- and I've said this before -- is that they have to start acting as if they passionately believe in their ideas and they believe they must be adopted soon. They must make clear their urgency about our dire national situation and quit downplaying it because they're afraid of looking extreme or afraid of receiving an electoral spanking from a growing percentage of voters who are dependent on government.

Let's have more faith in the electorate. Let's have more faith in Americans. Let's not write everyone off because the Obama economy has placed so many in desperate economic straits and on some kind of government assistance.

Republicans have a duty to sell their ideas and to quit running from them. Those who want to grovel to the voters as a lesser version of the Democratic Party ought to be kicked to the curb. This country will not be saved by liberal lite. We must have a 180-degree reversal of our present course.

It has taken a while, but finally the public is waking up to Obama's destructive effect on this country. Even with a conspiratorially dishonest liberal media downplaying every negative bit of news concerning Obama and his policies, the public is still catching on. Many of Obama's formerly die-hard supporters are obviously grasping that he can no longer credibly blame his predecessor for his litany of policy disasters.

The latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll shows Obama's approval at 41 percent, "near the lowest level ever recorded in the 20 Heartland Monitor Polls since April 2009." Also: "Only one in four adults say his actions are increasing economic opportunity for people like them, also among his worst showings in the polls." Obama's numbers are particularly bad "in the seven red-leaning states" where Democrats are trying to defend their Senate seats in November.

Democrats can derive no comfort from polls showing that Congress is even less popular. These generic congressional polls always show Congress in disfavor with the public, but they have little correlation to congressional elections, especially compared with presidential approval ratings.

As I've recently written, Obama is pushing his income inequality meme as the latest iteration of his divide-and-conquer electoral strategy, but this poll suggests it's falling flat. Voters are wising to the disconnect between Obama's rhetoric and his results. They know you don't expand opportunity by beating up the rich. Even if they don't know that, they know that his policies are not remedying the problems of which he constantly complains. This poll shows that Obama's no longer escaping blame for the state of the economy.

Further, the poll reveals that only 27 percent said they believe the country is moving in the right direction, and a whopping 62 percent said it is on the wrong track. Think about that for a moment. Finally, people are awakening to the reality that Obama -- not George W. Bush -- "built this" economy. It's on him.

As such, it's time for Republican members of Congress such as Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers to dispense with this talk about Obamacare's being here to stay. There is no room for fatalism in a party that needs to recapture the imagination and support of the American people.

Obamacare is not here to stay. Thoughts to the contrary are noxious to the republic. Do not let this president succeed in completing his destruction of the best health care system in the history of the world just because it might be difficult to disentangle ourselves from Obamacare's poisonous tentacles.

Republicans, quit looking over your shoulders; believe in yourselves. Rediscover your backbone. Full repeal. Full reversal of Obamanomics. Pro-growth policies. Reinvigoration of the free market. Full restoration of America's strength and greatness.

“The GOPe and its Chamber of Commerce and Corporate donors stand to make a fortune from Obamacare and other massive Federal Government overreaches. This is a matter of money and lots of it, not a lack of courage.”

Big business wanted to end the defined benefit pension system in private industry. Once 401K and IRA legislation was passed, corporations ran from pensions shifting the burden of retirement savings to employees with no increase in wages. They also fixed the bankruptcy laws allowing them to shed past pension liabilities through the bankruptcy process.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s big business slashed capital spending for modernizing and maintaining the factories built post WWII. The leveraged buyout boom of the 1980’s stripped productive assets from companies enriching investment banks and the 1%. By 1990 America’s factories were inefficient shadows of their former glory and needed billions of investment dollars to for modernization and streamlined to be competitive internationally. Instead of spending that money in the US, big business pushed “free trade” legislation through Congress ending quotas and dropping tariffs on imports. As soon as free trade was implemented, the investment dollars were spent building new factories in Asia instead of modernizing US factories. Wall Street banks made billions on the deindustrialization of the US. At the same time millions of middle class jobs were eliminated, wages stagnated in the US, and the inflation adjusting income of the average American began dropping for the first time in US history.

Big business and the 1% wanted cheap labor to perform unskilled jobs at prices lower than Americans were willing to perform the work. The last 4 administrations did their bidding by failing to enforce immigration laws and allowing millions of illegal immigrants to pour into the country. The wave of immigration depressed wages in the economy and dramatically increased social spending and taxation to support social spending. The financial burden hit the middle class, not the wealthy, not the corporations, not the big banks.

Now big business wants to stop spending on employee health care and shift the cost to employees or the government. Obamacare is the first step to single payer. What business wants the Republicans in Congress will deliver. Fear of losing access to big money is greater than fear of constituents. After all, what choice do those dumb constituents have anyway, vote for the Democrats?

"The GOP is fighting the real enemy, the Tea Party."

Exactly correct, I find it humorous, tho sad, how many people, even smart educated people fail to see what is right in front of them. The GOP and the Rats, are ON THE SAME TEAM, the GOP is the right hand of the oligarchy, the Rats are the left hand. The enemy of the oligarchy is or rather was the American middle class. Well the ruling class (oligarchy) solved it's middle class problem by destroying middle class wealth and importing millions upon millions of poor from third world country. Our new neighbors understand there place in society since the society they left is just like the society our rulers are building for us here. See Mexico for a good example.

As long as our rulers can trick us into believing we have a choice on election day things will only get worse and worse then now is hard to imagine.

I was born in 1963; my mother was in her forties at the time, so I was a Caesarean baby.

Some years ago, my husband and I were going through an old steamer trunk that belonged to my dad, and we came across the receipt for the anesthesiologist’s bill....it was $43.

Those were the days when your insurance man came to your house and sold you the policy you picked out for yourself. That $43 was the uninsured price; my parents thought no kids were in the picture by that time, so they didn’t include pregnancy coverage, LOL.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.