Recycling Rethugs

Keeping fear alive with Stephen’s interactive clip art

Per the Colbert clip above, the Rethugs don’t need to stop at duplicating clip art for their fear mongering commercials. Since they have nothing new or positive to offer in the way of economic policy, they could simply recycle Ronald Reagan‘s supply side economics, deregulation and tax cuts from the ’80s, Newt Gingrich‘s promises to shut down the government in the ’90s, and George W. Bush‘s ruinous, unfunded, tax cuts in the ’00s.

To help keep the party going over at the Pentagon,  their so-called “Pledge To America” calls for enhanced missile defense spending. No problem there– they can just re-run Reagan’s old SDI- Star War commercials. However, they will have to come up with a new catchy fear slogan to replace Reagan’s Evil Empire.  Bush already used Axis of Evil, so that’s out.  Hmm…since they find that slamming Muslims turns out the crazies in their base, something along the lines of  The Caliphate of Evil would do. (Heck– I’ll give ’em that one for free. )

On social policy, abortion and gay bashing seems to have lost their steam. But undocumented laborers are an easy group to demonize and  Mr. Expedient, John McCain, once a proponent of comprehensive immigration reform, can be counted on to lead the charge against it now. Also, the Rethugs could revive Reagan’s Cadillac driving Welfare Queen to demonize the 42 million people on food stamps, the 15 million unemployed and the 30 million underemployed– obviously too lazy to compete for jobs that have a ratio of one available job per five available workers.  Confronting foreclosure,  overdue car and credit card payments, relentless collection agencies, and kids disappointed that they won’t be able to go to college after all pales in comparison to be able to spread out on the couch, watch tv– all the while living on a fraction of one’ s previous incomes.

In crisis there is opportunity, so look for the Rethugs to take Gingrich’s suggestion that they can win big in November if they can reframe the election as a battle between “Democrats as the party of food stamps” and the GOP as “the party of paychecks.”

Yup, the Rethugs are in the enviable political position of being out of power, so that they can be against everything and for nothing. The worst thing that could happen to them relative to the 2012 presidential election would be to actually win one or both houses of Congress because then they would have to actually put forth legislation, and be judged thereby.

The recent shakeup of the White House staff, most importantly the exit of President Obama‘s Delusional Behind the Scenes Congressional Super-Negotiator, Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, suggests that Obama has gotten the message that there is no negotiating with a party of sociopaths bent on his personal destruction. So he might as well adopt the same  strategy his predecessor used to pursue his agenda– recess appointments, executive orders, signing agreements, etc.

What goes around comes around.