All parties are equally terrible...

... but some are more equal than others.

This is a topic for those distinguished forum members who have decided that it doesn't matter who you vote for, because everybody is corrupt anyway. You are right, but only up to a point. And it's a very important point, believe it or not.  The problem is, a simplistic idea like "everybody is corrupt" is like saying "everybody is sick".  When some have the sniffles and others have full blown leprosy, making a distinction is huge.  But there are those who realize that most people aren't seeing the difference and cynically taking advantage of that ignorance.

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult


Mike Lofgren retired on June 17 after 28 years as a Congressional staffer. He served 16 years as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees.

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner. A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

The media are also complicit in this phenomenon. Ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the "respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. Paul Krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "I joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of Planet.'"

That is an excerpt, but I urge everyone to read the entire article. Very enlightening stuff.

 

Basically, what is happening is that the GOP has decided the best way to win is for everybody to lose... and for Republicans to capitalize on that loss.  It's a Pete Rose style gamble that turns losing into winning.  Tear down government from the inside, destroy voter confidence that government is worthwhile at all, and then campaign as being "anti-government". 

 

The best part is, they are campaigning on the notion that the less they do, the better the job they are doing.  What a sweet set-up!  Do nothing, get paid a bunch of taxpayer money to do it!  And since corporate interests only stand to gain from weak government, they are very interested keeping the do-nothings well financed.

 

The big lie is that Republicans abhor the government dole.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  They are the biggest welfare queens in the world.  They just don't like anyone horning in on their action.