The GOP is Having A Civil War but Does Anyone Care?

If not for the scandals of Anthony Wiener, Eliot Spitzer, and San Diego Mayor Bob Filner; Democrats would have been left out of the Sunday talk show discussions. The media is fixated on the 2016 presidential campaign and the infighting among Republicans.

I don't know why I waste so much time watching the Sunday talk shows because it’s not as if they’re newsworthy. It’s just one big gotcha, or a platform for politicians to spout their interrupted talking points. For example, George Stephanopoulos and David Gregory wanted the treasury secretary to admit that there would be a government shutdown in October. Chris Wallace sat there silently as Senator Mike Lee said that the president was not ready to implement a major part of ObamaCare even though the employer mandate is barely 6% of the law.

The old-guard Republicans have put a target on Senator Rand Paul because he is considered a non-interventionist. It’s unusual for the GOP to be having a hawk versus dove battle. It’s one of the reasons Liz Cheney is running for office. Six years ago, House Republicans would have never considered blocking a National-Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program, but they did, and with the help of Democrats, they almost pulled it off. Senator Paul seems to think if he can win the presidential nomination; he can move to the left of hawkish Hillary Clinton and pick up the youth vote. Governor Chris Christie shot the first volley at Senator Paul and the latter weakly responded by saying that he was not going to take the incoming fire lightly. Senator Paul said that the New Jersey governor gobbled up Sandy money leaving no money for defense. Pass the popcorn; it’s going to be a fun three years.

I was wrong when I said the words of Bill O’Reilly would not be repeated because they certainly were. The commentators on CNN and MSNBC have set him up as a poster child for race baiting instead of improving race relations. People like O’Reilly believe that black people deserve all the injustice they get from society because of what he thinks happens in the inner city. O’Reilly will cite lyrics from a Lil Wayne song, fatherless children, and Chicago killings as the reason race relations will always be a one-way street. That’s just a distraction to avoid talking about voter suppression laws, racial profiling, Stop and Frisk and the high unemployment in the black community.

Yesterday, conservative columnist for the Washington Post, George Will said” “You can’t solve the problems[Detroit], because their problems are cultural.”
“You have a city, 139 square miles, you can graze cattle in vast portions of it, and dangerous herds of feral dogs roam in there. You have three percent of fourth graders reading at the national math standards, 47 percent of Detroit residents are functionally illiterate, 79 percent of Detroit children are born to unmarried mothers.”
“They don’t have a fiscal problem, Steve, they have a cultural collapse.” I think that’s pretty much their answer for helping the poor. People like George Will ignore the fact that the brain needs fuel (food) so by cutting off school lunches, food stamps, or other programs designed to help the needy, we will continue to cut the rug out from under them before they can get started. The conservative plan for Detroit is to raid the union pension funds, allow private investors to buy up the public lands and treasures while only paying 10¢ on the dollar.  I did notice that the bond money for building the new sports stadium will be funded 100%, despite Detroit’s problems. Republicans are already submitting amendments to prevent Obama from providing funds to Detroit. We should know by now that nation building should only be done in Iraq and Afghanistan because there’s no room for that nonsense in the United States.

I did learn a couple of things over the weekend. I learned that republican commentators get pretty angry when President Obama or his surrogates call the ongoing investigations, “phony scandals.” It infuriates them.

In yet another wing of the right- wing GOP are forming a group called “Groundswell” which will go after progressives and Karl Rowe. Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni and Allen West will head up this group. This group put out a memo that read “We are failing the propaganda battle with minorities. Terms like, 'GOP,' 'Tea Party,' 'Conservative' communicate 'racism.” They want to be known as Frederick Douglass Republicans. They also said that their message must be at a 4th grade level. And therein lies the problem, the old GOP never had to rebrand or resort to gimmicks and trickery; it was a plain old fashion conservative party.