The GOP Is Crazy, Some Are Taking Notice

The GOP and the Tea Party are nuts.

It ought not be that difficult to voice this truism.

A few steps in the right direction are noted by Eric Alterman at The Nation:

Scot Faulkner, personnel director for the Reagan/Bush campaign in 1980, and Jonathan Riehl, former speechwriter for the right-wing Luntz Global consulting firm, recently complained of the corrosive effects of a "Republican world view that was devoid of facts and critical thinking," combined with the creation of "a new self-perpetuating political echo chamber." This follows on the remarks by longtime Republican congressional staffer Mike Lofgren, who noted two years ago that "the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe." And respected scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein announced last year that "The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

That's, ah, fine. Within four year, three rational columns by Republicans.

But what about rational commentary from one GOP member of Congress, from one state, say Rep. Tom Petri (R-Fond du Lac, Wisconsin)? He has nothing to lose.

How about Petri picking up the phone, calling the city desk at the Fond du Lac Reporter and saying, 'the GOP is going off the rails and American families are suffering because of it.'

Rep. Petri would find much support for stating the incredibly obvious.

As for Wisconsin's other five GOP/Tea Party members of Congress; well one at a time.

GOP Candidates Faced with Decision to Stand with Conniving Romney Exposed; What Will Paul Ryan Do?

Jump in, the water's fine, say Lyin Paul Ryan and Mitt

Update II: Keeping Romney at arm's length, Part III (TRMS)

Update: Republican Candidates Across Country Signal Concern on Mitt Romney Video Comments -
Republican and Tea Baggers the nation-over now face a political terrain on which the Romney-Ryan ticket is on record ridiculing Americans receiving veterans' benefits, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as less-than individuals who "should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

How about Paul Ryan? Does Romney include him? He has been subsidized by American tax payers since he was a young legislative aide right up to now?

Ought Ryan, in Romney's universe, reject public assistance?

Ryan's bio reveals a career as an aide to Senators Robert Kasten, Sam Brownback and Rep. Jack Kemp, and a political career financed by special interests.

So, how about it Ryan, will you give up your entitlements? How about just your health care?

One thing is certain. Mike Lofgren, who retired in 2011 after 28 years as a Republican Congressional staffer, sure got it right when he said Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues like the presidential nominee are after your Social Security and Medicare.

On a related matter, Zach at Blogging Blue reports:

There’s been no word (at least not that I’ve seen) from Mitt Romney’s campaign as to whether or not Mitt Romney considers the 7,000 millionaires who paid no income taxes in 2011 to be among the 47 percent of Americans that he feels he could never convince to take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

Paul Ryan Is Apt Pick as GOP's Targets Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security

Romney and Ryan 2012

GOP extremism on display

"If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté," said Mike Lofgren, a Republican legislative grunt who retired in June 2011 in dismay and anger at the Tea Party-GOP's radical plans to dismantle the most successful and popular social insurance programs in American history.

Now, Rep. Ryan has been enlisted by Mitt Romney to carry the torch as GOP nominee for the vice presidency.

It's a perfect fit.

Recommend James Vega, John Nichols and the Paul Ryan Watch for important insights on who Paul Ryan is and what he plans for our country.

Paul Ryan and GOP Closer to Goal of Phasing out Social Security

Paul Ryan and the GOP care solely and exclusively about its rich contributors

When a disgusted congressional insider. Mike Lofgren, a long-time Republican Congressional staffer, retired in June last year, he decided to blow the whistle and warn America what Paul Ryan and the Republicans were up to—destroy Social Security and Medicare little by little—and reap the accolades that they are fiscally wise and courageous.

Wrote Lofgren:

If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté.They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be 'forced' to make 'hard choices' - and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked. The crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

Wage a few wars in the name of grave threats to our national security, then cut taxes to pay for the war effort, and use the resulting debt as an excuse to phase out Medicare and Social Security.

Paul Ryan's proposed budget will cost the Republicans, but there is nothing courageous about targeting our seniors, our seniors, by decimating Medicare and Social Security.

As the Republican National Committee spokeswoman noted, Republican Economic Platform Will Be the Bush Program, ‘Just Updated.’

Paul Krugman writes contemptuously of the Bush-Cheney record, "Because the worst incomes and jobs record since Herbert Hoover was just an accident."

After Bush went after Social Security in 2005, his administration never recovered politically.

We hope the same fate awaits Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues.

Writes Paul Krugman on national and state (like Wisconsin) Republican parties plundering:

Overall employment in the Obama years has been held back by mass layoffs of schoolteachers and other state and local government employees. But private-sector employment has recovered almost all the ground lost in the administration’s early months. That compares favorably with the Bush era: as of March 2004, private employment was still 2.4 million below its level when Mr. Bush took office.

Oh, and where have those mass layoffs of schoolteachers been taking place? Largely in states controlled by the G.O.P.: 70 percent of public job losses have been either in Texas or in states where Republicans recently took control.

Paul Ryan, Romney and GOP: Phase out Social Security and Medicare

Money for GOP, not for thee

The 14 scariest words in American politics: 'We're from the Republican Party, and we're here to save Social Security and Medicare."

"If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté. They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be 'forced' to make 'hard choices' - and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked."
- Mike Lofgren, who retired on June 17 after 28 years as a Republican Congressional staffer (TruthOut, Saturday September 3, 2012)

Lofgren is brilliant, but seeing what Ryan, Romney and the GOP are up to is like wondering if we were going to war with Iraq in January 2003—the decisions were made, and ideology and propaganda led the way to disaster.

The GOP has always hated the Medicare and Social Security, and now they want the presidency to save it, not to bury the social insurance program though their asserted reason—debt is the achieved objective of the Bush-Cheney administration and unregulated Wall Street speculators.

"Romney insisted on Wisconsin radio [last[ Friday that Ryan's plan does not balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the elderly ... It instead preserves Medicare and preserves Social Security." (The Paul Ryan Watch)

Reviews are not kind to these unpopular GOP positions, as noted by Xoff:

A Christian Science Monitor column by Howard Gleckman calls it Ryan's "mystery meat budget" saying he "airily promises both trillions of dollars in tax cuts and a nearly balanced budget within a decade, but never says how he’d get there."

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones says:

Paul Ryan has released the latest Republican budget, and it's a blizzard of numbers, gimmicks, weird comparisons, and obfuscation. It's no more serious than any of Ryan's other budget proposals, no matter how many PowerPoint slides he includes... 

Dana Milbank, in the Washington Post, says Ryan's idea is to help the poor by hurting them:

Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, is on record as saying, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” And Ryan has just written a budget that supports Romney’s boast.

In an editorial, the Post calls Ryan's plan "dangerous and intentionally vague."

The Post also says Democrats want to know how much taxpayer money was spent to produce those slick videos with Ryan to try to sell his budget.  So far, no one's saying.

Ohio Set to Reject Rove and Kasich in Working Families' Win, Wisconsin Next

Photo: Carolyn Tiry / Flickr

Working families are just trying to make it. Sell their labor product at a fair price. Raise families. Maybe even have a home for their children. But not if Karl Rove, the Koch Brothers and John Kasich have their way.

Now, working families are fighting back.

A new poll in Ohio shows overwhelming hostility to the Rove-Koch-Kasich anti-working family bill, Senate Bill 5 [Issue 2], that citizens of Ohio look to reject in a binding election Tuesday, just one week before the start of the recall of fellow anti-family governor, Scott Walker of Wisconsin for his signing a similarly unpopular law with support from anti-family billionaires.

Senate Bill 5 targets health care, collective bargaining, pensions, and is seen as effort to continue the enterprise of attacking private working families by moving the attack against those families working in the public sphere.

As Mike Lofgren, who retired on June 17 after 28 years as a Republican Congressional staffer, said in September 2010,

I left as an act of rational self-interest. Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and ‘shareholder value’ the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP’s decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one.

If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren’t after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté. They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be ‘forced’ to make ‘hard choices’ – and that doesn’t mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked.