Week Ended Nov.16th, 2012

This was a week of election hangovers. Yes, although it’s hard to recall, we had an election just last week. And to remind you, especially those of a right wing bent: Obama won. Please don’t forget that. It looks as if many Republican politicians are trying too.

The election threw a mighty wrench into the plutocratic world. It seems they aren’t taking to the reality of uprising by the peons too kindly.

Mitt Romney – remember him? – came back from wherever he hid last week to give an interview. It was quite a rambling affair in which he gave us insight into the reasons he lost. It turns out he was overwhelmed by moochers. Yes, that’s right: Mitt lost because of all the goodies Obama handed out in order to buy votes. So it was the moochers what done it.

The extraordinary aspect of his interview and the opinion Romney expressed is that is in an exact reprise of the infamous 47% talk someone bootlegged a video of and which helped sink our fearless Republican candidate. Were is not for the flood of goodies handed out to those sundry moocher types the fine upright folk would have won the day.

Examples of moochers?

Single women who flooded out to vote upon the realization that ‘Obamacare’ makes contraception something covered by health care insurance. The plutocrats just are aghast that women would be concerned about such trivia as contraception. What does it have to do with protecting carried interest tax rates?

Then there’s young people. They swarmed to Obama too. Indeed one of the shocks of the election was that the Republicans were confident that the young – the silly dears – would stay home in a huff this time because Obama was thought to have betrayed them with all those unfulfilled siren calls of hope and change. Rats! They voted in greater numbers this time. And, horrors, seem to have been put off by the right’s obsession with abortion, gay marriage, and other extreme social issues. They also don’t seem to have been too worried by the threat to carried interest tax rates being raised. Personally I find this lack of interest in such a national crisis baffling. Don’t the young care about their portfolios? Anyway, the young were bought, it turns out, by Obama’s effort to make college tuition more affordable. Who knew the young borrowed money to go to college? Not Mitt, that’s for sure. And if they need a few thousand bucks, why not borrow from their parents? Whatever happened to family values?

Then there’s black people. Well not here. I mean they’re all in the cities. And they turned out to vote. Obama is black too, so you just know it was simple racism on their part. White people wouldn’t vote on such a tribal basis. They vote on the issues. Important stuff concerns them. Like carried interest tax rates for instance. Why aren’t black people worried about carried interest? Sometimes I just don’t get it. Americans are so easily swayed.

Enough.

The important part of this admission by Romney, apart from its total separation from reality, is that it represents a strong strand in contemporary Republican thought. It is a recurring theme on the right that America is infested with moochers, or ‘takers’, who live off hand outs. They are indolent and leech from the hard working folk who are called ‘givers’. Anyone who doesn’t pay income tax, in this taxonomy, is a ‘taker’. That they pay payroll, sales, property, and other taxes is of no consequence. Anyway it spoils the narrative. Eric Cantor, a far right heavyweight, bemoaned this ugly situation before the election. He calls for everyone to have some ‘skin in the game’, i.e. pay incomer tax no matter how little income they earn. One of the right wing’s goals is to convert all these ‘takers’ into ‘givers’. Even if it means throwing them into destitution. Naturally, were someone to fall into penury subsequent to their conversion into being a ‘giver’, it would be a reflection of their lassitude and lack of solid American moral fiber.

The Republicans with an interest in future elections – presumably Romney is finished – leapt to disavow his comments. Thus we heard Bobby Lindal from Louisiana decry the moocher notion. His interpretation of Romney’s loss is another common right wing theme this week: Romney wasn’t conservative enough, nor was he clear about Republican policy. Lindal is an interesting character. He is anti-science. Almost literally. He denies any truth in evolution for instance. He sees the GOP’s problems as stemming not from its nutty right wing ideas, but from its inability to sell those nutty right wing ideas to young people, women and minorities – especially Latinos. Apparently banning contraception, opposing gay rights, throwing people out of health care insurance systems, starting wars hither and yon, and generally preserving the privilege of the wealthy has enormous appeal to those kinds of people once explained properly.

Ah, I see. It was the messenger. Not the message.

Right.

Meanwhile.

Obama has started to press the Republicans to make a deal on taxes. He is adamant, so he says, that taxes on the wealthy must go up, and that such action is a non-negotiable part of any budget deal. Equally adamant, John Boehner has replied that raising tax rates is a distinct non-starter. An impasse looks likely. Well not quite. Note the language. They are both saying the same thing: revenues generated by taxes on the wealthy must rise. That’s not the same as raising tax rates. The Republicans hold out a slim hope that they can conjure increased revenues without raising tax rates. It’s not really possible without socking it to the middle class as well. But the Republicans aren’t worried about the middle class. Which is why, presumably, the words ‘middle class’ were tripping off Obama’s tongue so frequently at his first press conference yesterday.

So here we are.

One week into the new world and already it looks and feels just like the old world. I think it will take time for the new reality in washington to sink in. It will take the arrival of those new Democratic Senators who all look more liberal than their predecessors. It will take the realization by the right that their relentless four year effort to thwart Obama was a dismal failure. And, allow me to hope, it will take the realization y the Republicans that it wasn’t the messenger, nor the moochers. It was their nutty anti-socail policies.

Given the events of this week, that last one’s a long shot.