12 Republican Myths That Are Killing Us

Alan Grayson, Reader Supported News
Thank you friends at RS || With select original comment thread

Romney debates Santorum: Quien es mas stupido?

s the Republican demolition derby rolls on, I continue to be amused by how each remaining contender tries to assume the “small government” mantle.

Mitt Romney wants a government so small that it provides universal health care.

Newt Gingrich wants a government so small that it will establish a permanent base on the moon.

Rick Santorum wants a government so small that it will fit inside a woman’s uterus.

The only real remaining advocate of small government is Ron Paul. Dr. Paul appears to be disqualified from the Republican presidential primary, however, because he is unwilling to drench himself with the blood of our imagined enemies, like Gerard Butler in the movie “300.”

But what about that Jon Huntsman guy? This week three different people told me, quite independently of each other, how sorry they were that Governor Huntsman never gained any traction in the Republican presidential primary.

I told them that they should get over it. Huntsman wasn’t any better.

It somehow counts as an act of courage for Huntsman to have tweeted: “I believe in evolution.” Of course, it would have been more courageous if Huntsman had said that to a Tea Party audience, and then they tore him limb from limb, thereby disproving the theory of evolution right before our eyes.

And evolution is not something that you “believe” or “disbelieve.” Evolution is like gravity; it’s not like Santa Claus or the Abominable Snowman. (Question: Why do they both live at the North Pole?)

Be that as it may, neither Huntsman nor any other Republican presidential candidate has been willing to take on the hard myths. The myths that are killing us. Here are a dirty dozen, right off the top of my head:

• The government can’t create jobs. (Tell that to FDR, who created four million jobs in three months.)
• Tax cuts reduce the deficit. (Doesn’t it bother them that a man named “Laffer” came up with this one?)
• A fetus is a baby.
• The poor have too much money.
• Cutting the federal deficit will end the recession.
• The rich are incentivized by tax cuts, while the poor are incentivized by lower wages, no benefits, an end to the minimum wage, and unemployment.
• An unwanted child is God’s will.
• Everyone who wants health insurance has it.
• The problem with education is the teachers.
• The “free market” satisfies every human need.
• There is no discrimination in America anymore.
  AND
  
• The distribution of wealth and income are irrelevant.

I don’t remember Jon Huntsman disputing any of these myths. And these are the ones that do the real damage. Show me a candidate who is willing to take on these myths, and I’ll pay more attention.

Courage,

Alan Grayson

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About author
Alan Grayson served as a representative from Florida. His brave populist record did not save him from a well-financed campaign from a Republican opponent and the sheer stupidity of the constituents.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

Comments  

 

+67 #Willman 2012-03-03 17:30

I would say some of the far right actually do prove evolution exists. They are a prime example of how far they have to go to catch up with the more evolved on this planet.
Or maybe they are destined for extinction due to their lack of adaptation to the modern world about them.

 

 

+62 #kbarrand 2012-03-03 20:51

Instead of “Survival of the Fittest:, they believe in “Survival of the Wealthiest”.

 

 

+62 #RMDC 2012-03-03 18:16

Yes, I agree that the republican campaigns look like a demolition derby, but it is having the effect of pushing democrats, esp. Obama, into the lunatic right wing. All democrates (except for maybe Grayson) are terrified about appearing to be a liberal or progressive. Repubicans are defining the terms of the debate. Democrats are too cowardly to call them on their lunacy and just accept the terms and thereby validate the structure of the issue. Because they appear to be running for office, they get tons of free media coverage that spreads their insanity.

All the 12 points Grayson lists are trule false, but the become the standard issue that the mass media debates and that democrats think they have to respond to.

Republicans are excellent at propaganda. They’ve been studying and practicing it for 100 years. Their paymasters have spent billions of dollars on propaganda. It is now America’s only reality.

 

 

+18 #X Dane 2012-03-03 22:31

RMDC. I disagree. Democrats can surely see that the republicans are totally nuts, and thank heaven so can independents. Even the few relatively sensible republicans are tearing their hair out at the spectacle called the republican primary.

Obama hardly need to make any adds to tackle the one left standing and bleeding,
He can just run all the idiotic remarks made in the primary, comments barely needed.

 

 

-63 #globalcitizen 2012-03-03 19:56

Grayson fails to point out that many of the same class myths, class dogmas he attributes to Fascist Republicans, hold also true for Fascist Democrats.

All class ideologies, class parties have degenerated through class myths, since the time PLATO tried to graft social reforms, democracy and Republics into existing class Patriarchy and got crippled class republics degenerating into class Empires , class tyrants.

Another class/Empire myth Grayson does not discuss is the BI PARTISAN FASCIST SUPPORT FOR FASCIST ZIONISM, which Grayson, himself tries to hide. Class deformed languange hides these inverted, totalitarian , corrupted class results, and selectively cherry picks, failures of others when they are a failed political class, whether democrats or republicans.

 

 

+71 #Dave45 2012-03-03 20:15

Several years ago historian Richard Hofstadter wrote a book on the American anti-intellectualism of which Grayson speaks and which stubbornly continues to plague politics and education in the US. Thoughtful teachers are hamstrung by real and de facto censorship, and other thoughtful citizens have trouble getting elected (or even nominated!) because they recognize correctly that most issues are many-faceted and cannot adequately be dealt with in a 30-second TV spot. Thus, in the US electoral process thoughtful people usually come off as “indecisive” or “wishy-washy” or some other term or phrase coined by an opposition the degree of whose ethical and intellectual vacuity only becomes widely apparent after they are elected and the damage has been done. Both major parties have succumbed to the temptation to honor mindless and repetitive propagada over critical and thoughtful attempts to seek truth. It seems doubtful if US education and politics will ever recover from this centuries-long onslaught against thoughtfulness.

 

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