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The Republicans' Bait-and-Switch Power Play [1]

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Date: 2022-11-06

Let’s say there’ve been a number of burglaries in your neighborhood, and you’re worried about your family’s safety.

So, you hire two guys who just got out of prison after serving time for burglary, and you pay them to sit in your living room every night while you and your family are sleeping upstairs, so you’ll all be safe. I mean, these are some pretty rough looking men. Who would mess with them?

Then one morning you come downstairs and they’re gone, along with a bunch of your stuff, and you realize these two burglars told you they would protect your possessions, but all they really wanted to do was get inside your house so they could take them.

That’s just like the Republican Party and the garbage they’ve been slinging to try to convince you that you can trust them to control Congress, your state government, your local school board, the whole deal. The trouble is it’s all a con.

It’s a bait-and-switch where they promise the voters something good, and then screw them over as soon as they get a chance.

Let’s look at what they’re trying to do.

Republicans are attacking Democrats over crime, inflation, gasoline prices, and border security. In all cases they blame their opponents for these issues with the hope voters will put them back in power to address them.

The problem is, if you take an honest look at the Republican Party, they either can’t or won’t do something about any of them.

It’s been written here before that the GOP is incapable of addressing crime in this country because their political agenda won’t let them. They aren’t going to approve adequate funding for police departments because they’d rather push for spending cuts that they can pass on to their rich donors in the form of tax cuts.

Plus, I can’t see them wanting to give that type of money to states and cities controlled by Democrats. We’ve already heard their “Blue-state bailout” line in the past.

They aren’t going to do anything about our gun problem because they oppose all common-sense gun laws. They aren’t going to even consider the economic and social causes of crime – such as poverty, lack of opportunity, and the absence of a good education. That’s because they’d rather cut the social safety net and increase the use of school vouchers for parents, which will leave the poorest kids behind in even more underfunded schools.

And they aren’t going to demand police accountability, which would enhance a department’s reputation in the community and might make more people willing to support it and step forward with information to use in criminal investigations. That’s because their cult leader Donald Trump endorses more aggressive policing,

Also, the GOP demonizes law enforcement when it fits their messaging and agenda. In their eyes, the only good law enforcement agencies are the ones that don’t investigate Republicans or stand in the way of domestic terrorists trying to overthrow the government on behalf of a criminal ex-president and his corrupt party.

Republicans also aren’t going to do anything about inflation or gas prices. These are in large part global issues of which any president has little control. In the case of gasoline prices, that’s left the GOP with only the option to lie about President Joe Biden’s energy policies and the state of the industry.

Price gouging? Republicans aren’t going to touch that one with a 10-foot pole.

Finally, the border. That’s a situation that needs to be fixed, but Republican hysteria about immigrants is nothing but fear mongering, something they’re really good at. How can you make an honest attempt to solve a problem when you hate the people – immigrants – who are at the center of it?

That’s where the cruelty you saw during Trump’s term in office came from. These weren’t human beings to his administration and party. They saw them as no better than animals. Is that the way a great country solves a problem? Short answer: No. Long answer: Hell no.

And ask yourself why, when the GOP controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House, they didn’t do anything about it. Just like they didn’t do anything about health care. Just like they didn’t do anything about a lot of things.

Oh, they did approve a tax cut aimed mainly at the rich and corporations that added $2 trillion to the deficit, part of the almost $8 trillion they tacked on in just the four years of Trump’s reign.

That tells you all you need to know about the Republican agenda. They can’t really run on making the rich richer at the expense of the poor and middle class, or their devotion to the fossil fuel industry that will make our pending climate disaster even worse, or their blatant attempt to undermine democracy by positioning themselves to throw out the legitimate results of future elections if Democrats win.

But that’s what they want to do. And they’re itching to get in there and get to work.

You’d be right to say that Biden will be there to veto any shady legislation, but he can’t do anything when they refuse to stop runaway states from rigging their elections, or when they block funding to help Ukraine in its war with Republican favorite Vladimir Putin’s Russia, or when the Senate won’t approve any of his judicial nominations, or when important matters are ignored in favor of constant congressional hearings and attacks that will form a large part of the GOP’s far-reaching revenge agenda they’re dying to start.

The Republican Party doesn’t care about your problems. It’s track record proves that. All it wants is power, and if we give it that power our government will be on its way to becoming more corrupt and more dysfunctional than we’ve ever dreamed of. And our democracy will be in danger.

They’re like the burglars who wanted to get in your house. We can’t let them in our House, or our Senate, or our state and local offices. That’s why this year’s midterms are so important.

The pundits have criticized Democrats for not focusing their message enough on answering Republican attacks about crime, the economy, and the border. They’re probably right, but we should be a country that can walk and chew gum at the same time.

It’s understandable that people who are struggling might not look past our economic issues. How they might not have the time, energy, or inclination to worry about democracy, women’s reproductive rights, and other things. But they should.

Do you really think what the Republicans want to do will help these folks? That the party that thinks nothing of crushing the poor and middle class to put more money in the pockets of the rich will actually make their lives better? That our economy will thrive under those circumstances?

There’s no more important issue right now that protecting our democracy. Anyone who feels that way can’t vote for a Republican. All our other problems – and some of them are serious ones – won’t be addressed by a party this steeped in corruption. This dependent on lies. This indifferent to humanity. This riddled with hate.

The Republican Party has shown us who they are. We better believe them.

And we better vote accordingly.

***

Thank you for reading my post. You can see more of my writings on my blog: Musings of a Nobody.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/6/2134014/-The-Republicans-Bait-and-Switch-Power-Play

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