Cutting Our Own Throats

Issues need to be taken seriously by both parties
By Kelvin Wade November 04, 2010

'However (political parties) may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people. . .'

- George Washington, Sept. 17, 1796

Many of our Founding Fathers were wary of political parties. The fear was that they would inflame the passions of the people and be used for party ends to the detriment of the republic. Watching the rise of the tea party and the Republican wave on election night reminded me of Washington's farewell address where he made the above remark.

I don't write this as a Democrat because I'm not a Democrat. I left the Democratic Party a decade ago. I had found myself thinking about what was good for the Democrats first. When you liberate yourself from parties, you feel like you don't owe anyone your vote. Politicians owe me for my support.

Right now, party loyalty may be our undoing. What's good for a party isn't necessarily what's good for America.

The Roman poet Juvenal coined the phrase 'bread and circuses' to describe the way Roman governments distracted and pacified the public with free entertainment. Today, our bread and circuses are tax cuts and other government freebies to distract us while our representatives serve their corporate paymasters.

We've been in fiscal trouble in California for more than seven years. We're hostages to Democrats who won't cut to the bone and Republicans who won't raise revenues. So we've borrowed and papered over our late arriving budgets for years. Hopefully, with the passage of Proposition 22 and Proposition 25, we'll start owning up to our problems.

On the national level, neither party has asked us to sacrifice. Republican pundit David Brooks recently told NBC's 'Meet the Press' that to get on a stable fiscal footing we need to means test entitlements, raise taxes on consumption and let all of the Bush tax cuts expire.

Ronald Reagan's budget director David Stockman told CBS' '60 Minutes' that the GOP has engaged in 'rank demagoguery' on tax cuts. He said both parties are lying when they say, '. . . we can have all this government, 24 percent of GDP, this huge entitlement program, all of the bailouts, and yet we don't have to tax ourselves and pay our bills.'

What politicians or parties are saying that?

Parties always play politics but what we're doing now will lead to the death of the republic. When Republicans accuse the president of socialism for cheap political points, it's an appalling, disingenuous move. In truth, Republicans fully buy into American socialism. After all, George W. Bush and a Republican Congress created a new socialized medical prescription drug benefit.

By the same token, when Republicans such as John Boehner talked about raising the retirement age for Social Security, instead of seriously engaging on the issue, Democrats pounced on him for cheap points.

If the new Congress and the president don't put entitlements on the table and want to maintain the Bush tax cuts while still talking about slashing the deficit, then they're not serious. George Washington was right. Peace.

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ADDITIONAL NOTES: I have to force myself to be an optimist. It's not easy. The conventional wisdom is the voters just voted for massive gridlock and investigations for two years. Absolutely nothing will get done except for a government shutdown. And some people are fine with that. No one is in a conciliatory mood. Both parties want the other party out of the way so they can enact their own agenda.

Politics IS compromise. That's what it is. When you're dealing with the interests of 300 million people, it's going to be hard to get them to agree. It's hard to get three people to agree on where they want to go for lunch.

I think parties make the country haywire. I think loyalty to a party over the republic is perverse. Politics is politics. Nothing wrong with jousting and arguing positions. But if everything becomes a line in the sand....if you demonize the other side to a point where you can't ever compromise, then how do we govern? If Barack Obama is a secret Muslim, socialist, terrorist with Hitler-like tendencies, then how do you compromise with someone like that? I wouldn't. Rush Limbaugh said it on his program< "How do you compromise with evil?" If you think the other side is evil, then you can't compromise. If you can't compromise, you can't govern.

One of the most cynical polls I've seen over the last couple of days is a Rassmussen poll that says 59% of Americans think that by 2012 the Republicans will disappoint. How cynical is that? We'll give you the House of Representatives but we expect you to fail. .

I understand the anger. I understand the animosity. I supported and still support President Obama. And there's that part of me that wants to say, "Stick it to those Republicans." There's that side that wants to make sure the Senate Dems kill everything the House Republicans pass. And if anything does make it to the President's desk, veto the hell out of it. Shove it up their ass. Shut the government down. Screw that knuckle draggin', Palinized, facts-challenged party. Tea Party. Half of them probably couldn't explain what the Boston Tea Party was or recite the preamble to the Constitution or enumerate the Bill of Rights without a friggin' google search. I get it. Red meat feels good.

But while we have competing ideas, we're not on separate teams. We're in a runaway stagecoach heading towards a cliff. And right now, I don't want to argue about whether we turn right or left. I want us to TURN THIS THING AROUND.

The Republicans fought hard to not govern the last two years. Say no to everything. Paid off for them politically. But what does power matter if you can't govern. Republicans couldn't bare to work with Obama lest he get the credit. They even voted against their OWN legislation if Obama supported it. Craziness.

But see....here's where I get off...I want the President I voted for to do well. BUT...if he can work with the spineless Democrats in the Senate and the crazy Republicans in the House and it improves the quality of me and my family's lives, I don't give a shit who gets the credit. I paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars for a home that's worth half that. I've got grandkids that I'd like to see go to college. I've got a serious medical condition. And this is just me. Eveyone has problemss, hopes, dreams.....

If they can't govern.....