State of the Disunion

It was really sweet; President Obama earnestly running through his Wish List – preschool classes for every child, investments  in R&D, bridges repaired, people put back to work, a budget balanced on both smart cuts and smart taxes – while behind him Boehner sat stone-faced, thinking to himself, “When pigs fly.”

So, the country will get the sequester it doesn’t want or need, draconian and pointless cuts that will harm both the economy and real people, because the most important thing to Republicans is that Obama fail.  The country’s welfare no long matters to The Grand Old Party, because it has turned into the New Confederacy and is in full Gotterdammerung mode – By God, If we have to burn the whole damned country down to get rid of all those liberals and negroes and women and Mexicans, then strike the match! 

Which likely explains why some right wing doofus Congressman invited White Trash Rocker, Ted Nugent, the guy who said the president should suck on his gun, to be his guest and sit in the balcony looking like a sulking sophomore. All that was missing was Ted wearing a white hood, waving a Confederate flag and swilling a jug of ‘shine. Talk about “messaging.”

Speaking of which, viewers could watch the repeated  spectacle of half of the chamber (Democrats) standing up to applaud  calls for things involving equality, fairness, justice while  half the chamber (Republicans) all sat stone-faced and cross armed, thereby sending out the visual message that they think all the nation’s kids should just go die, women should continue to be battered, gays must remain second-class citizens and the victims of gun violence can all just go to hell.

No wonder Republican strategists keep wringing their hands and worrying that maybe the Party just needs to tweak its message?  Uh, don’t think that’d do it. The last election proved that Americans got their message and said, No thanks.  So, tweaking won’t do it.  What the  GOP needs is a new message instead of repeating the same old one.

Which Republican spokesman, Marco Rubio, the GOP’s Great Brown Hope, attempted to do in his official reply to Obama’s State of the Nation speech, a follow-up event that usually turns out to be The Place Where Young Pols Go To Die On Camera. 

And poor Rubio was no exception.  He’s a bright young thing, but even he ended up parroting the same old radical Republican crap,  contradicting himself into thematic incoherence, sweating like he was cutting cane under a hot Cuban sun, and awkwardly reaching off camera for a water bottle.  In short, he pulled a Bobby Jindal.

But, he’ll recover.  He’s got the backing of the old guard GOP, will have plenty of money to run for whatever he wants to run for. 

And so the nation lurches along for two more years of poisonous politics, after which, Americans will have another chance to take a look at their elected representatives and decide if they’re sick of these Party of NO jerks or want to double-down on more gridlock and political extremists and so get themselves and the nation even more dysfunction. 

In short, business as usual.

Sigh.