THE STUPID AMERICAN VOTER - REDUX

12/7/2010 - President Obama has just been backed into a corner on the issue of tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires by a united, monolithic Republican Senate minority led by Sen. Mitch McConnell. The Republican argument revolves around the fallacious notion that "Raising taxes on job creators will hurt the economy". The flip side of that coin is: What will this policy of slashing incoming revenue going to do to the soaring national debt?
During the run-up to the November Midterm elections we heard the Tea Party types lament the skyrocketing deficit, over and over and over again. The Republicans are counting on the people to lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of Obama. And they probably will.

Obama's capitulation to Senate Republicans, while odious, should be viewed in the context of the past election, when people with fully functioning mouse brains in their heads voted overwhelmingly for right-wing candidates who promised tax cuts for the rich and slashing entitlement spending, and who were against Obama's "socialist" agenda (They thought they were "taking America back" from the socialists, when what they were really doing was giving it away to billionaires and corporate oligarchs). So Obama's reasoning was that "the People" had spoken loud and clear" (to quote McConnell and Boehner), and they wanted the rich to keep getting the tax breaks they had been getting for the past ten years. The voters, after all, tuned out the fact that corporate and foriegn money paid for all the attack ads during the campaign. So why would they start believing the truth now? Had the electorate showed a modicum of intellegence, Obama might have stood his ground and allowed taxes for the rich to revert back to pre-Bush levels (when, by the way, the economy was much stronger than it ever was under Bush). 
Moreover, it was obvious that the Republicans were perfectly willing to allow unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed lapse, to let the Start Treaty with Russia to remain in limbo, and, worst of all, taxes for even the poor to revert back to pre-Bush levels, which would have been devastating to the economy. The Republicans, specifically McConnell, knew the aggregate American electorate to be utterly stupid, and would blame Obama for their tax cuts and unemployment insurance expiring. They knew this was a fight they couldn't lose, and that if Obama would have held out he would have gotten the blame.
There is now internecine warfare between Obama and his own party. Democrats are livid. They, and the majority of Americans, according o polls, favored letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire. One can look at this as a shrewd move by the Republicans, but then if the American people were to ever wise up (fat chance), they (the Republicans) would be utterly repudiated for years to come. Running up the national debt so rich people can get even richer faster than ever is suicicidal for our country. This stokes the fires of class warfare - fires that promise to burn ever hotter as long as things keep going the way they're going.

What the Republicans have done is virtually insure Obama's almost certain defeat in 2012 because the national debt will have increased even more, and unemployment will still be in the stratosphere. The Republicans know this. They know that the supply-side trickle-down economics has been proven to not work. And they know voters will still believe it will work. They know how stupid the voters are. They know voters are unaware that for ten years lower tax rates have not stimulated the economy, and they know the voters will confuse a policy of letting taxes revert back to what they were, as being a tax hike, not the expiration of a temporary tax cut. The voters know that because that's what the Republicans are telling them. They wouldn't lie, would they?

Here's an illustration of some voters courtesy of Cenk Uygur's TV show The Young Turks.
A reporter tries to interview people lined up at a mall in Columbus Ohio to have Sarah Palin sign copies of her book Going Rogue. I have seen this kind of idiocy first hand. Early in the interview the reporter gets this response from a big, oafish, dull-witted guy: "She's the epitomy of conservative-ness. And I'm tellin' ya, if the Republican Party doesn't back her - it doesn't matter, 'cause she's gonna get the presidency". The interview closes out with the same oaf who says - "The state that she did govern was right across the street from Russia". Sandwiched in between is an astonishing array of ignorance and simpleton commentary from Palin's fans, including one woman who thinks having czars in this country is unAmerican. Czars in America! She thinks we have the same kind of czars as Russia used to have!  !!!! Makes me want to beat my head against a wall.
Rather than showing a transcript of the interviews, I think it would be instructive for you to see for yourself. Here's a link...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27QTX46XNLM&feature=related


Yes, the American voter is stupid and dangerous. And those who have given up and wish to stay home when the next election cycle rolls around - well, these are the people who are voting in your place. These are the people who think giving more money to rich people will cause them to make jobs for the unemployed. With this, I rest my case.