The way things are polling for this coming March Madness primary - where large-delegate states with Winner-Take-All results (Hi FLORIDA) can break the field - it's likely going to be Cruz and Trump the rest of the way.
This is still not a good situation for the United States.
Looking back on this blog, you might notice I've railed against most of the GOP candidates as Active-Negative disasters in the making. Even the ones I damned with faint praise - Lindsey Graham and John Kasich - were viewed with skepticism and dismay.
That was because - even for the ones who respected the federalist system of government, of the checks and balances - all of those candidates were arguing in defense of a political agenda that will re-create the economic (domestic) and diplomatic (international) policies of 2001-2009 that led to a massive global recession - that we STILL have not recovered from - and two costly wars/occupations that continue to destabilize half the planet to this day.
During that debate - transcript linked here - all four candidates sold their similar-sing-song platforms of tax cuts, tax cuts, deregulation, spending cuts to everything not military or CEO-related, tax cuts, wars, and more tax cuts. And on a lot of their arguments, the candidates were outright lying or failed on the facts.
Digby noted in her official column over at Salon how the candidates were mostly unified on the issues, just offering different ways in which they'd shred Social Security, handle foreign trade, arrest all illegals, and charge blindly into war zones in Syria and Ukraine.
Where the Democrats have a distinct split on the issues between a Socialist-Left take by Bernie Sanders and a Centrist-Moderate take by Hillary Clinton, there are no distinctive splits among the Republicans. All that distinguishes them from each other is the hair-splitting specifics.
There's a reason why the south Florida paper Sun-Sentinel refused to endorse any of the four remaining GOP candidates. Actually, they had several, but they all boiled down to the same thing, even for Kasich: they are all pushing the same platform, and that platform is dangerous.
Just like Mitt in 2012, all four are keen on a massive tax cut that would wreck everything for everyone not in the .01 Percent bracket.
They're pushing for putting ground troops into Syria, a move that will easily go sour and re-establish an occupation regime that already ruined much of Iraq and would wreck any diplomatic standing among our own allies.
They want to shred Social Security and every other social safety net from schools up to Medicare, as though cutting back on funding somehow creates the "reforms" necessary to actually make things work.
It doesn't matter if it ends up being Cruz or Trump or Kasich or even Rubio if he somehow
These are the Jokers to the Right of us: dangerous in their disdain for Constitutional norms, fervent in their dogma for tax cuts and deregulation and privatization, proudly ignorant of their view of the real world. Their personalities and arrogance may distract voters as entertainment for mockery or dismissal, but they are each covering up for a political war on rights and governance that's been waging for the last 30 years that could well devastate the U.S. if any of them make it into the Oval Office.
These Jokers are deadlier than the comic book version.
Don't laugh at these guys. Recoil in horror. And get the damn vote out for Democrats to make sure they don't win this November.
1 comment:
You're right. We can't let near-riots at rallies distract us from what the actual damage would look like. I'm old enough to remember when Reagan got elected, and he looks like a liberal and a statesman compared to these bozos.
-Doug in Oakland
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