Let a Conservative tell you how it is...

There are times that I feel like I just sit here and harp on and on about the current conservative movement in the United States. I´m pretty sure I´ve covered every angle. Of course to be sure that my dear readers don´t just think that I am the only one seeing things this way, I bring you David Frum, former speech writer of President Bush, and I quote...

"Too often, conservatives dupe themselves. They wrap themselves in closed information systems based upon pretend information. In this closed information system, banks can collapse without injuring the rest of the economy, tax cuts always pay for themselves and Congressional earmarks cause the federal budget deficit. Even the market collapse has not shaken some conservatives out of their closed information system. It enfolded them more closely within it. This is how to understand the Glenn Beck phenomenon. Every day, Beck offers alternative knowledge — an alternative history of the United States and the world, an alternative system of economics, an alternative reality. As corporate profits soar, the closed information system insists that the free-enterprise system is under assault. As prices slump, we are warned of imminent hyperinflation. As black Americans are crushed under Depression-level unemployment, the administration’s policies are condemned by some conservatives as an outburst of Kenyan racial revenge against the white overlord."

Want more? Read it right from the horses mouth. I have to conclude I am impressed. Of course in no way do I agree with everything he is saying, but still its damn well written and has a good point.

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Welcome to the Flood

Lets dig a bit deeper into the results of election night. The Republican Tsunami was there all right and yet it didn’t get the Senate. That means that we are in some kind of a deadlock. Somebody is going to have to play ball to make things happen. Who that someone is remains to be seen, as does what the offers and ideas are that are to be played over.

Remember that when any party (in the US only two are really represented on paper) gains a majority, it means that a significant proportion of its members are part of what could be called true party supporters and the rest are some form of loose coalition members (the Blue Dog Democrats are this to the Democratic Party). So now the Republicans have to deal with a bunch of people that they might not have to during their time in the opposition. In other words they have added to their majority by opening their arms to people who are not the usual Republican fit. The Tea Party fits this role.

For those Democratic supporters who were bitter because they hadn’t been given a cake that they could have and eat as well by Obama, and therefore didn’t vote I say this: shame on you. You have put back the chance to make real change once again. I had a lot of hope in 2008, in 2010 not as much, but I still voted because a Republican future is not something that I have any interest in being a part of.

To belabor a point that needs to be exhausted beyond anything else in the circus that is America: fear, ignorance, and hate won an election. To those who voted based on those things it’s really sad that you call yourselves Americans. In a century where information and knowledge seems to be just the click of a mouse away, we seem to be turning to garbage more and more often. Europe is laughing, and while the typical Republican thing would be to ask snidely who are they, I find myself thinking that they have every reason to laugh. A country that takes Tea Partiers and their queen Sarah Palin this seriously deserves to be laughed at.

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