Ranpaging Right

Published on The Smirking Chimp (http://www.smirkingchimp.com)

 

Rampaging Rightwing Retreats, Slightly - Shot Their Wad with Armageddon

 

By Robert Becker

 

Created Mar 30 2010 - 10:15am

To no one's great surprise, itself a point of interest, unhinged Republicans predicted the Democratic relief of worst-case insurance abuses meant the end of the world. Imagine the pandemic heart attacks, let alone exhausted rhetoric, had the public option sneaked through. When single-payer happens, someday enlarging Medicare, fire and brimstone will rain down - and won't that augment global warming!

Until then, health insurance will have to do, ending not just freedom as we know it, but national fiscal sanity, oppressing our indebted grandchildren and forcing millions unto indentured servitude. Health reform is so onerous 14 zealous states rushed to court against, well, blatant legislative terrorism that forces health care on most, but hardly all.

House minority leader John Boehner warmed my heart when pledging the bill passes only "over my dead body." Sounds like a suicide threat to me. Rush Limbaugh swore on the world's tiniest Bible he'd drag his drug-laden body to Costa Rica. Don't cry yet, Costa Rica, no guts, no glory. Shock jock Neal Boortz predicted passage meant "more damage than 9/11" - but Neal, think of all the new emergency medics to aid the "wounded."

The Rapture, fast track to heaven

But there's more. With no sense of shame, history, or intellectual scrutiny, Boehner predicted nothing less than Armageddon - the end of times battle between good and evil. This boehnerism won't even wash with radical charismatics, down on their knees praying for instant Rapture, the fast track to heaven. And, as the Final Judgment ends time and space, think how long those socialist-fascist-Democratic bad guys will be suffer somewhere dark and deep. Hell has no fury like a Tea Party Congressman scorned.

Look, if Boehner so disregards the growing Rapture Party, his re-election may not be secure. You'd think rightwing nutcases and religious fans would get their metaphors and mindsets in sync. How in the other world did Boehner miss "Final Judgment" as the ultimate, no-appeal death panels, a universal parade of punishment of endless death of the already dead? Invoking Armageddon, about one broken health system in one country on one obscure planet, invites ridicule.

Didn't Boehner even get the anti-terrorism office message about the Rapture completing God's plan against fanatic terrorists. End of times depends on Jews defeating Muslim infidels and controlling Palestine, setting up the promised land for Tea Party traditionalists - a bastion of white, patriarchal, theocratic, authoritarian rule for the pure of heart. When will the fearful, anything but pure fringe would make up its mind: is the Rapture a good thing, or is it so bad you can use it to bludgeon an incomplete, but significant legislation that endorses health care as an American right?

Baby killers plus granny killers?

Of course, you object, how can I be so literal? Apoplectic, apocalyptic Republican die-hards speak in metaphor, not literal Biblical prophecy. Oh. That would explain the entirely earthly, vicious rantings focused on real-world House members abused while doing their job. And the equally irrational defenses of spitting Tea Party rage as perfectly understandable - really, if only the Democrats weren't so obtusely stiff-necked. Plus extreme partisan rancor, as when nominal party leader John McCain declared a total strike against co-operation. Without resigning?

Or the totally bizarre, reactionary lawsuits challenging insurance mandates, ironically the original GOP response to single-payer. Or the "shoot-first, ask questions later" retaliation school headed by Sarah Palin: don't give up your anger, or be violent, just "reload" your gun sight graphics against anyone you hate. "After all, the party of Reid and Pelosi have it coming: they moved on from pulling the plug on granny to baby killing."

Good news to report: some rightwingers are retreating from indefensible, fear-bating grenades. The not always insane Lindsay Graham assures us the world won't end; otherwise why complain "one-party rule" will "blow up the deficit" and "affect every business, every family in this country." So, we're blowing up national deficits, and American families, not the entire universe, Sen. Graham? Apparently, the Almighty backed off from Armageddon to plague us with a mere "Ponzi scheme of the first order." Whew, no Ponzi scheme devastates like the end of times, especially for us non-Christians.

"Repeal" only repeals the GOP

Now a devilish Ponzi scheme is no walk in the park (except for the early in, early out con artists) but we did survive the Madoff Ponzi. That was $55 billion but the crooked spoils were at least squandered domestically (more than you can say about Bush's wars). Odd that Graham would invoke the worst business fiasco highlighting Republican misrule. Madoff proves what happens when GOP business think dominates, viewing all regulation as a crime against free market "innovation."

Whatever the retreat, the Party of No Class, No Change finds ever new death panels for its future, forfeiting all the leverage a year of lies gained them against Obama. The GOP remains so doctrinaire, so incapable of being embarrassed, its continues to blather about "repeal and replace." Useful for partisan fundraising, delusions about repeal only turn today's prominent horses asses to incredible buffoons. Even if state litigation succeeds, extremely unlikely, the result would be fixed with minor changes, withholding penalties but also subsidies for non-joiners.

Where have we seen this show?

What this parade of angry, self-parodying rogues brings to mind are the classic authority figures targeted for ridicule throughout TV history. "What a revolting development this is," cried William Bendix in the "Life of Riley," foaming with wrath and indignation, forever his own worst enemy. Likewise, "The Honeymooners" Ralph Kramden reinforced the angry, permanently misguided fool, overblown and over-reacting, tethered by delusion and paranoia. Does any politician sound more like Archie Bunker or Al Bundy these days than Boehner, Gingrich, McCain, and McConnell, among others?

The reigning queen of congenital tone deafness remains Sarah Palin, the willfully ignorant, infinitely mockable parody of herself. Last week, treating ugly street violence as mirage, she campaigned for zombie John McCain by bragging "the Party of No" didn't go far enough. It was, she shouted, the "Party of Hell, No." Then, in glowing terms, she praised indisputably thuggish Tea Party as "a beautiful grassroots movement that is putting government back on the side of the people." Let's see: not "beautiful" (unless spitting on civil rights heroes is beautiful), not "grassroots" (with billionaire funding), not a "movement" (more a staged, media tantrum) that defies any positive role for "government" to serve "the people." Is this woman a Democratic plant?

Conservative dementia

A very few Republicans, like ex-Bush staffer Bruce Bartlett, admit reality, "Rigid conformity is being enforced, no dissent is allowed, and the conservative brain will slowly shrivel into dementia if it hasn't already." Likewise, ex-Bushie David Frum was fired for declaring the Party of No lost everything, not just zero impact on health reform but core credibility with an absurd caricature of what the bill said and didn't say. Failure is doubled when losers lie about what's at stake, then lie about their lies.

I stand firm: the Repugs continue to shoot themselves in both feet. They have no leaders except mockable loud mouths incapable of winning national office. They not only poisoned health care debate for a year but are now reinforcing the greatest "hell, no" hissy fit since Newt Gingrich got suckered by Bill Clinton, humiliating the GOP by closing down the government. But then, the GOP controlled the House and the Senate, whereas today it has boxed itself into a discredited, solipsistic end game.

Astonishingly, the once staggered President Obama is now the heroic Comeback Kid, who routed Party of No Class, No Change and finally looks like a pro-active leader in charge of the White House. He owes Boehner and the GOP team of bozos thank you notes: such mindless blunders won't come every season.
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Robert Becker

Let The Sun Shine In......