It is hard to see how and why the leadership of the Republican party does not see the danger at hand for its future. Its leaders are not aware that their party could be only a few years from extinction. Things do die. Larger entities than the Republican party – whole empires and powerful corporations, in fact – have disappeared through history. A political party disappearing is nothing. On this business of the fiscal cliff, the country already is suspicious of Republicans by a 2-1 margin. So within a few weeks, the country could blame Republicans for throwing the economy back into recession. And let us say that another storm like Sandy brews up in the Atlantic next summer, pushes past Florida and instead of wrecking New York and New Jersey parks itself over Atlanta this time. Already caught in a demographic squeeze as the nation’s population changes, embroiled in an extended Bush recession and then pasted by another blow from the change in climate that Republicans deny – the GOP could be at the precipice leading into the 2014 midterm elections. They just lost an election that if President Obama had had a better night in Denver one evening might have turned into a landslide. And now, another storm named Hillary already is beginning to vent its first soft but undeniable breezes for 2016.
Monthly Archives: December 2012
Building New Rhetoric Not New Walls
Two standard phrases crop up the instant that lawmakers, bureaucrats and the media begin to talk about immigration: Resolve the problem and comprehensive immigration reform. Talk in Washington about resolving any large-scale challenge is rather ambitious given the city’s ever-steepening warps in its already pockmarked ideological-rhetorical terrain. Immigration is not an easy subject to talk about dispassionately, and so how Washington gains traction on immigration no doubt will be affected greatly by how lawmakers and the President manage the fast-approaching fiscal cliff.
The 2012 election, it is said, opened Republicans to accept the possibility that they might have to compromise on immigration, something that most of those commonly referred to as the Tea party adamantly oppose. The corporate side of the Republican equation, however, is in favor of something being done, and corporate America has more of the power now. It is not surprising that it also is driving a good part of the discussion of how to avert the cliff.