.
Republican Congressmen are playing both sides of the stimulus bill.
Every Republican in the House and nearly every Republican Senator voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as the stimulus). Although the Congressional Budget Office has credited the stimulus with creating up to 1.6 million jobs, the same GOP politicians who opposed the stimulus have attempted to justify their opposition to the policy by smearing it as a failure. But as ThinkProgress has documented, the same politicians are returning to their districts to take credit for the economic success of the stimulus.
And here’s the thing; they’re going to get away with it. The reason Repubs have been so bold in moving ahead with their lie and smear campaign is because they’ve met with success. They have been allowed to muddy up every issue from the economy to health care to the point where every blatant lie has caught hold with their base.
The right-wing noise machine is, if nothing else, an impressive and fine-tuned mechanism with conservative politicians, pundits and media working in perfect unison to get their message across. Lies and half-truths, it matters not. The base is watching Fox and listening to Limbaugh where truth is nothing more than a four letter word.
.
I think this country has been totally demoralized by the Republican Party. When there is a glimmer of hope, they stomp on it lest a Democrat be credited with creating it. When there is a push for positive change, they push back with a campaign of obstruction based on fear and lies. When we finally get a good man in the White House, they demonize him. They have politicized every facet of our lives to a sickening degree. They have split this country down the middle with a dull butcher’s knife. The most demoralizing part of all is the number of people who are marching in lock-step with them.
Frances, the best remedy is accurate information and a good, well-rounded higher education. I know everyone says start with the children, but we need desperately to start with the adults in this country who either cannot read or write or those whose levels of literacy make them plausible targets of the wing nuts. We need to help those whose educations are less than what is needed in the 21st century or we will have a population that is led by the nose and believes anything proffered through emotions filled with hysterics. Without accurate information, wisdom cannot be had and an illiterate population will not be able to govern itself or it’s representatives. A word to us all to keep on getting educations and to keep on being well-informed and learn how to vet and source information.