Tina Dupuy

Calling ObamaCare “socialized medicine” truly lowers the standards on what could be considered socialized medicine. It’s like calling paved roads “government overreach”; a stop light a “government takeover of your commute”; or a neighborhood with speed bumps “a road to communism.” The law is really some regulations to help consumers buy private insurance coupled with a small fee if consumers decide not to buy said insurance.

Is it perfect? No. Could it be improved? Absolutely. However, ObamaCare is the opposite of socialism, it’s a market solution.

The right-wing got a “free” market solution to health care. That was their cause – personal responsibility their mantra – now it’s law. They got an entire reform bill incentivising citizens to buy into private for-profit insurance plans. This is the Republican vision for America: Less government more profits for giant corporations. This core of the Affordable Care Act was an idea floated by President Nixon in 1974, touted by the Heritage Foundation in 1989, introduced by Newt Gingrich in 1993 and implemented by Mitt Romney in 2005. And now? Now it’s a big festering albatross around Obama’s neck.

As former presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said in front of the Supreme Court last week, “We have not waved the white flag of surrender on socialized medicine!”

So the decades-old Republican big idea finally gets Democratic presidential ink and now, if you ask a Republican, it’s an unconstitutional government takeover of health care Stalin would have loved. Mitt Romney wants to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with RomneyCare. Essentially repealing the Affordable Care Act with the Affordable Care Act. Leave it to a Republican frontrunner to vow their first act as president will be to waste time with redundancies while lamenting how ineffective government can be.

Now health care reform has reached the Supreme Court, we will have a ruling on the law in late June. Will it be overturned fully or partially or upheld? It’s anyone’s guess.

Regardless of the outcome, personal responsibility in health care is a Republican pet idea they’ve strapped to the roof of the car.

It makes the case that their ideas should never be law because if partisanship beckons, they’ll rally against them and call any Democrats who signed the bill, Hitler.

Imagine if Obama signed the most recent Paul Ryan Budget plan – a blueprint to cut taxes further for the wealthy and further increase the debt by not taking in enough revenues. If Obama embraced it, Republicans would storm the Capitol calling it a tax hike and a Maoist plot with Wall Street. People in tri-corner hats with signs reading, “Don’t raise my taxes!” and “Stop government takeover of business!” would swarm The Mall. The erosion of Medicare would make Republicans faint on the House floor. “It’s a tenet of Marxism to kill grandma!” They’d gasp.

Just remember, when George W. Bush took office the budget was set to be balanced in a few short years. Social security was actually its namesake – secure. And then he went uber-GOP-with-a-mandate – didn’t pay for any of the wars he started – just showered seniors with unpaid-for Medicare Part D and sent everyone in the country a rebate check. And when this “free market capitalism” failed? He bailed out the banks and the auto industry with taxpayer money, famously saying he “abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.”

Now? Now the Republicans blame the deficit, the debt, the recession, the bailouts and (wait for it) the wars on the Democrat in the Oval Office.

It’s a take on the Pottery Barn rule, “You break it, you buy it.” The Republican version: “We break it, we blame you … and call you a Nazi.”

When asked to report on the onslaught of political ads on television words like “flood,” “deluge,” and “torrent,” will suddenly pepper copy. A report from the Borrell Associates estimates $9.8 billion will be spent on political advertising this season. Nearly 60 percent of that will be on television. Phrases like “secret money” and “shadow funders” also pop up. Conservatives, traditionally, call for transparency when it comes to money in politics. Liberals will call for limits. Right now we have neither. And nowhere is that more apparent than on your teevee.

Ask anyone in even a slightly purple state or in an even slightly contested district: Political ads are a plague come election time. And what exactly are we getting for our (estimated) $42 per potential voter? Not much.

Ads are not transparent, not fact checked and in many cases not accountable. Voters get to feel like Alex DeLarge in “A Clockwork Orange” during his aversion therapy (eye drops, anyone?) without knowing who’s footing the bill.

A way to combat this Stanley Kubrick-esque torment is just ban all political advertisements on television.

“That’s an assault on free speech.”

First off television is not an unregulated utopia of free speech – that’s the Internet (for now, anyway). Television, like it or not, doesn’t allow everything to be broadcast. There are standards on television. Our mores may have changed over time but generally we’re still okay with decency standards for television. Speaking is speech. Broadcast is regulated.

And it’s worth noting, 99 percent of Americans have televisions in their homes. It’s still the broadest, most viewed medium we have. Which is why candidates and advocates for candidates invest billions into blanketing it.

We don’t allow tobacco companies, for example, to advertise on television. Why? Because their products are poisonous and harmful to our citizenry. The same could be said for Swift Boating, Demon Sheeping and whatever Herman Cain is doing.

These ads are supposed to sway public opinion. But these aren’t actually opinions being targeted – they’re emotions. Most Americans have less of an opinion when it comes to politics and more of a visceral reaction to issues. Which explains why your “political debate” over Thanksgiving dinner ended up with you being pummeled with green bean casserole.

And there’s no better example of where to start hysteria than in 30-second fear and loathing campaign spots. Does this elevate political discourse? Civic engagement? Sound policy? Hardly. These ads are doing what tobacco does: producing a carcinogenic cloud.

“But you’re trying to limit a candidate’s ability to get their message out!” Look, if you can’t get your message out after 23 Republican primary debates – you don’t have a message. Candidates should be out on the stump, on television, at town halls and at debates. Absolutely. It’s the anonymous sugar daddies bank rolling ads the candidates can easily divorce themselves from that I suggest discontinuing. It’s like having all the benefits of a loyal Rottweiler and none of the legal liability once it mauls your adversary.

So just ban these spots. Let the hallowed ground of 20 minutes per hour of programming be for more wholesome things like erectile dysfunction treatments or reverse home mortgages. End candidate television advertising.

“If this happens what’s to stop a ban on ALL political shows?” Ridiculous. We haven’t had cigarette commercials for half a century and we still have smoking on TV. Banning a type of advertising that erodes our elections into secret televised slush funds won’t stop political programming.

What it will do is something about this flood – this deluge – this torrent of commercials – the most in the history of interruptions – that’s drowning our discourse.

What does a government bureaucrat being between you and your doctor look like? That was the go-to canard to scare Americans away from the health care reform bill (or single payer for that matter). So, imagine your doctor decides he or she doesn’t want you to get a procedure. They don’t agree with it for whatever reason. Your doctor happily lies to you. Tells you – you don’t need it – everything is fine. You find out later your doctor, with political motivations, omitted facts from you, and your decisions based on what you thought was full information, later caused problems with your health. What precipitated your doctor’s reckless and unethical behavior? A group of lawmakers decided you don’t have a right to know the truth about your medical condition so therefore a doctor’s fabrications cannot be grounds for a lawsuit.

Your doctors and those lawmakers have decided they know what’s best for you. And you have no recourse whatsoever.

Would you feel conspired against by your state legislature and your health care provider? Yes. And this is exactly what women of child bearing age are facing on a state level: making it okay to lie to pregnant women if it potentially avoids an abortion.

Both Arizona and Kansas are considering bills giving your doctor the legal authority to withhold potentially crucial information about your health and in this case your child’s.

This idea of lying to women has been in the quiver of the our-choice-for-you movement since before Roe v. Wade when abortion was legal only at the state level. In 1967, the first of what are now known as crisis pregnancy centers or fake abortion clinics was opened by a man named Robert Pearson in Hawaii. The blueprint for these ruses is still The Pearson Foundation’s manual, “How to Start and Operate Your Own Pro-Life Outreach Crisis Pregnancy Center,” published in 1984. Pearson writes, “Obviously, we’re fighting Satan. A killer, who in this case is the girl who wants to kill her baby, has no right to information that will help her kill her baby.”

In this case, Satan is a girl.

And Satan, being the father of all lies and all – doesn’t have the right to the truth when he gets knocked up.

In the right-wing-maligned health care reform bill were strides for women’s health, equality and autonomy. The buried lede about Obamacare is it forced insurance companies not to treat a womb as a preexisting condition. Recently it came to focus (while being declared a war on religion) that birth control must be covered by insurance even if the employer is a religious institution (the exception being an actual church). For the last decade, Viagra was covered by insurance, no problem, and the pill was not. A dysfunction for men was covered and a function for women was out-of-pocket. The Affordable Care Act changed that.

And the right-wing opposes this as a “government takeover of health care.” But when they want to endow your doctor with the ability to dictate their values in the form of dishonesty – health care (specifically women’s) needs to be taken over by government. Stat!

As a culture, would we tolerate this if it were any other medical condition besides pregnancy? What if your doctor was being paid by the soft drink industry to tell you your obesity isn’t from your 5-liter a day habit? What if your doctor didn’t approve of vaccinations and you actually got Meningitis? What if your doctor thought it wasn’t right to tell you about your cancer screening results while in its operable window? And what if some yahoo state lawmakers decided – against all ethics and medical research – to agree with your quack doctor?

If those things seem outrageous then lying to pregnant women has to be too. If we want to live in a society where women have the same rights as men, being of child-bearing ability can’t be a caveat to equality.

Either women have equal rights under the law or they’re public incubators. And according to these attempted laws in Arizona and Kansas – we’re not equal.

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina members of the media noticed there was widespread devastation in the South. Watching it on television, as a person of Southern heritage, to me it was clear: “Some of that was like that before the storm.” And it was. And it still is years later. Now since the Southern states have primaries for the next few weeks – combined with Mitt Romney doing his best Rand McNally material at campaign stops – the South is in the spotlight once again.

However, in this election cycle there are no real Southern candidates. Newt Gingrich represented Georgia but was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (and retains that accent). To contrast that, both the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention events are being held in southern states (North Carolina and Florida).

Here’s what the nation ignores unless there’s a disaster (or an election which could also qualify as a disaster): Of the bottom 10 poorest states in the union – nine of them are Southern states east of Texas. Mississippi is the poorest state of all. Child poverty. Unemployment. Under-employment. Lack of education. Lack of resources. The nation’s highest obesity rates are found south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Despite the conservative bona fides, the South isn’t pulling herself up by her bootstraps … mainly because she can’t see her toes she’s about to lose to diabetes. These are deeply and consistently Republican voters – but being poor and Republican is like being a cow and pro-leather. The South is a parable as to why that is: Their prejudices are being exploited to prod them into being against their own best interests.

In the South there’s been a long (and storied) resentment of outsiders coming in and telling them how to run their lives. But without fail, when the economy is bad anywhere – historically the first group to be blamed are the noobs. Hence why a new wave of anti-immigrant legislation has been pouring out of the southern region of the U.S.

Last year, Alabama passed HB 56 or Hammon-Beason Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act which led to a mass exodus of labor in the state. There were reports of crops rotting in the fields and an estimated cost to the state in the billions. Now the governor of Mississippi has endorsed a similar plan. Capitalizing politicians will say these heavy-handed laws are to keep out illegal immigrants but in practice it’s anyone who looks vaguely foreign being forced to show their paperwork.

Not exactly the land of the free. And sure not Southern hospitality.

Are immigrants, as these laws imply, parasites on the system? It’s actually the poorest (and yes, Southern) states that are the ones not carrying their own weight. For every dollar Alabamans pay in federal taxes, they receive $1.66 in federal money. In Louisiana it’s $1.78 per dollar. Mississippi gets $2.02 per dollar they give the dreaded federal gubmint.

There’s a way to help this region get off the federal dole: Welcome immigrants.

California has a huge immigrant population (both legal and illegal) and while certainly not void of any problems, the state still boasts of having the 8^th largest economy in the world. And grumble as you will about Californians, for every dollar they pay in federal taxes – the rest of the country receives nearly a quarter of it.

Southern conservatives can bemoan “paying for someone else’s birth control” but in this way the New England states are paying for “someone else’s” (namely the South’s) Lipitor.

Welcome immigrants. When you welcome immigrants – you welcome tourists, you welcome tax revenue and then, counter-intuitively, the South can be more self-reliant. That’s a conservative principle in a “severely” right-leaning culture.

The best thing the South can do to save herself is welcome the world. Be a place immigrants move to. Let smart people from other countries call themselves Alabamians. Let hard working people everywhere call Mississippi home. Welcome the world to the South.

Basically enact the opposite of HB 56.

Conservatives really wanted a fight about religious freedom. It appeared to be an easy win: Make an ObamaCare mandate that insurers cover birth control into a war on religion. The GOP, void of any ideas Obama hasn’t contaminated by agreeing with, finds itself in an election year frantically looking for a bold battle cry. That sweet hot button issue that can excite their party and (hopefully) win them the White House (or maybe the Senate).

Their old standbys have fallen flat: Iran, abortion, climate change, child labor laws, and even gay marriage don’t have the sparkle they once had for the Grand Old Party.

Republicans can’t seem to get excited about Mitt Romney as their ‘80s-teen-movie-smug-rich-guy-stock-character nominee. Worse yet, he’s Mormon, which makes evangelical leaders grumble. So having a common enemy is the best way to bring everyone together for the proverbial good fight: Freedom.

“It’s important for us to win this issue,” Speaker John Boehner told reporters last week. “Our government for 220 years has respected the religious views of the American people and for all of this time there’s been an exception for those churches and other groups to protect the religious beliefs that they believe in. And that’s being violated here.”

Is Boehner coming out against anti-Sharia laws?! Or is he just conveniently forgetting the government isn’t always so deferential to the pious? Mormons had to forsake polygamy to gain statehood, for one. In 1862 the then-General Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jews from his district of Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky. And there were plenty of states where you couldn’t hold public office if you didn’t swear to believe in God (as opposed to Allah, Buddha or a flying plate of spaghetti) until the Torcaso v. Watkins decision in 1961.

This whole charade of religious freedom collapsed under the girth of Rush Limbaugh. He pivoted what was supposed to be a church and state issue into snickering about young women having sex. For three days Limbaugh railed on law student, Sandra Fluke, who testified for congressional Democrats, calling her a prostitute and a slut for speaking in public about the need for birth control coverage. So the GOP was trying to take the high (read: holy) road and there was their mouthpiece driving them all off a cliff demanding Ms. Fluke post sex videos on the Internet.

Now here’s the thing: Even Rick Santorum who (oddly) thinks birth control leads to more teen pregnancies – who has previously said states should have the right to ban contraception – now tells Piers Morgan, “It should be available.” This was tempered with the now irrelevant point about religious freedom. But even the way-out, cringe-inducing, extremist-in-a-sweater-vest has to confess birth control should be available.

Affordability is accessibility. If it’s out of your price range – it’s out of your grasp. It doesn’t matter if the pill is offered over-the-counter or in vending machines – if you can’t afford it – you can’t have it. Fluke’s testimony was not about the legality or morality of contraception – it was about students not being about to shell out over $1,000 a year for a medication in addition to purchasing medical insurance.

If Republicans admit they think birth control should be available – that means they believe it should be within price range.

The conservative talking point on health care reform was summed up by Rep. Virginia Foxx: “There are no Americans who don’t have healthcare,” adding, “Everybody in this country has access to healthcare.” In other words: Everyone has access to cake!

We don’t say everyone accused of a crime has access to a lawyer without providing one. We don’t say everyone has access to police protection but charge more than anyone can pay. We don’t say every child has access to education but require an outrageous tuition. Access is not abstract … unless you’re a Republican lawmaker.

No, when you’re a Republican “access” gets muddied with whatever sham controversy they hope will help them. This week it’s basic health care services for women.

This campaign season can be summed up by one interview on conservative talk radio last August. It was with Iowa Straw Poll-sweeper Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, in which she proclaimed: “What people recognize is that there’s a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward.”

Yes, Bachmann warned us of a foreign boogieman rising … one that’s been dead for over 20 years.

Boo!

But warning of a zombie nation feasting on the metaphorical brains of the U.S. is consistent with a party now completely untethered from basic American history, science or any other evidence-based practice: The GOP is now a party standing proudly on a pro-fiction platform.

Yes, in their party, as an aide to Senator Jon Kyl put it last year, whatever they say is “not intended to be a factual statement” but to illustrate a point.

For example, this week Mitt Romney brought a Michigan tea party audience to tears recalling the 50th anniversary of the American automobile event he attended as a child … even though it took place months before he was born.

Former Senator Rick Santorum asserts public schools are an “anachronism” of the industrialized era as the reason they should be privatized. He said at the CNN debate last week: “Not only do I believe the federal government should get out of the education business, I think the state government should start to get out of the education business and put it back to the local and into the community.” Just when millions of Americans have lost their homes comes a candidate in favor of home schooling.

Public schools are arguably what made us a country. The colonies had one of the highest literacy rates in the world at the time. In James D. Hart’s “The Popular Book: A History of America’s Literary Taste” published in 1950, he notes that in 1650 New England there were laws requiring “reading and writing schools.” Education was thought to thwart Satan at that time (note to Santorum there). Hart goes on to include a popular ditty of the era: “From public schools shall general knowledge flow, For ‘tis the people’s sacred right to know.”

Also, the principal writer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was (gasp) publically educated.

Santorum, as a pro-fiction candidate, also dismisses colleges as “indoctrination mills.” One man’s indoctrination is another man’s accreditation to work in the sciences.

The four candidates still vying for the nomination are pro-fiction to the core: Somehow the President who okayed the assassination of Osama bin Laden, sent drone attacks into Libya and kept Gitmo open is an apologetic pansy – soft on our enemies. Obama has deported more illegal immigrants and spent more money protecting the border than any of his predecessors – but he’s ignoring the issue of illegal immigration. Romney keeps on promising if elected he’ll make the military so powerful no other country would dare attack us even though we have the biggest military in the world. Gingrich who says if given any power he’ll send U.S. Marshalls to compel radical judges to explain their rulings, deems “the pill” to be the epitome of radical government overreach. Taxes? Too high even though they’re historically low (especially during war time). Tax cuts? A pay-for-themselves panacea even though the Bush Tax Cuts didn’t pan out.

Challenge their narrative and brace for the ad hominem attacks. You only believe this because you’re at least one of the following: liberal, socialist, unemployed, commie sympathizer, elite, dupe, European, journalist, gun hater, Muslim, Obama-bot, or (my favorite from my inbox) silly little girl.

Because in fiction you must create an enemy or there’s no story.

The pro-fiction party will tell you their ideas will lower gas prices, cut the deficit, end poverty, cut the size of government and make everybody super free by allowing the states to decide which rights to take away.

No matter how completely impossible – no matter how divorced from evidence or precedence – the GOP will continue to make claims not to be factual – but just to illustrate a point. Possibly that you should vote for them.

The Soviet Union must be watching this race right now and just laughing their heads off.

On paper Rick Santorum is not a generous man. He’s the most religious; the staunchest of the moralists; the fastest to the Bible thumpyist; the preachiest of the preachy in this race. He’s the most giant-government-forcing-you-to-be-holy of the small-government-for-corporations-only candidates. Yet according to his tax returns, he gives the least amount to charity of anyone else running. In 2010 Santorum gave 1.75 percent of his nearly million dollars of income. That same year President Obama gave 14.2 percent of his income to charity topping the most giving of the Republican candidates, Mitt Romney. That’s a whopping 12 percent difference with a president who Santorum says doesn’t have an agenda based on the Bible.

Now this would not be notable if Santorum were a godless hedonist who wrote tomes about how well selfishness has served him. But since he’s of the Christian faith and uses God as a personal reference on his resume, well, then it’s quite significant. Especially since the Bible is pretty clear on charity and helping the less fortunate.

But Santorum’s other problem is he seems kind of anti-women. Now when I say “anti-women” I don’t mean he kicks all women in the shins instead of shaking hands, or he’s scared of anything with an extreme waist-to-hip ratio. I mean he’s anti women being anything other than a mother or a soiled dove. “Traditional roles” for women have been either wholesome mom or the proverbial whore: Mother or outcast; Child bearer or streetwalker; Womb proprietor or back alley courtesan. Feminism traditionally has striven for equality regardless of gender. It’s been a cry for women to be able to branch out of the world’s oldest profession into some new ones. And yes, gasp, work outside the home.

In Santorum’s 2005 book, “It Takes a Family,” the Senator wrote: “The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness.”

And Rick’s recent declaration that prenatal testing leads to more abortions only solidifies the caricature of him as a shady backwoods holy man in any Timothy Olyphant television show. It’s condescending to women to be told they don’t need to worry “their pretty little head” about the health of their baby because if they had knowledge they’d “ruin their lives with an abortion.” It makes Santorum look anti-women-being-educated-and-properly-informed. Because giving birth is the most important role in life – anything else is worthy of popular scorn.

Santorum’s team has sensed this woman thing could be an issue. So he’s trying to soften the edges with the (ahem) softer sex. Last week when ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos asked about the anti-women working passages in his book Santorum said his wife, Karen co-wrote those passages. “She felt very much like society and those radical feminists that I was referring to were not affirming her choice … All I’m saying is … we should affirm both choices … That’s what the book says, and I stand by what I said.” Yes, the book, according to Santorum’s latest explanation, should have been titled “Affirming Choices.” Santorum: pro-affirming-choice. Sure.

I could make all these problems for Rick as a candidate go away. I have one simple solution: Give Karen an author credit. Yes, “It Takes a Family,” admittedly took a family to write, so why not accredit the co-author on the cover? Currently Karen isn’t even in the acknowledgement section – let alone on the cover or in the catalog information. So why not announce that the mother of your children isn’t just your personal incubator but is valued for her mind and opinion? It says your anti-women stance comes straight from the woman happily working in your own home. Do a re-issue of this collection of antiquated ramblings and tell the world she’s the wife who made you the anti-women candidate you are today.

It accomplishes two things: It makes Santorum seem generous (again) on paper, and it makes all of that Neolithic “women need to know their place” rhetoric in his 464-page manifesto seem more this millennium.

Sure it “takes a family” to write a book – but it “takes a woman” to make you look less like a sad desperate relic.

Part of being a Democrat is acting like you’re losing even when you’re winning. Part of being a Republican is acting like you’re winning even when you’re losing. The phrase “silent majority,” that brilliant bit of Nixonian rhetoric, is a way to augment Republican numbers and voices. “Nearly all people agree with me and they’re not only in my imagination … you just can’t hear them.”

Senator Jim DeMint (SC-R) has an odd obsession with ill-fitting metaphors. He famously proclaimed his only reason to kill the Affordable Care Act was to annihilate the president politically. “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him,” said the tea-touting Senator. DeMint has a pre-existing condition; he thinks an enemy’s high casualty mêlée is comparable to the inability to pass a sensible, relatively mild, reform bill. Well, at least when he’s talking about Democrats. As the kick-off speaker at this year’s CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) DeMint used a somewhat softer analogy: football. Specifically these two teams DeMint sees have different goals. “We don’t have shared goals with the Democrats…Compromise works well in this world when you have shared goals.”

In football the teams are never expected to go in the same direction with the best interests of the fans in mind. Also in football, no team threatens to shut down the country as a strategy to win the game.

But maybe DeMint is correct: It’s really tough to compromise with a group that’s solitary goal is destroying you. Apparently taking the same oath to uphold the same Constitution, in the same country, drawing the same paycheck, in the same office building, in the same city and being of the same religion, sharing the same language and being mostly (85 percent) male, white and wealthy isn’t enough common ground for Republicans to even entertain working with those alien Democrats. It’s even tougher to compromise with a group who you could totally agree with but they retroactively become against their own ideas once you propose them. Like say, the individual mandate every GOP candidate was for before he was against it. (Yes, except Ron Paul, keep your emails.)

Enter the “severely conservative.” This was the description Mitt Romney bestowed upon himself at this year’s CPAC. “I was a severely conservative Republican governor,” said the oft-frontrunner. “Severe” is a word normally associated with pain or really bad weather. With today’s GOP, not only do Republicans refuse to have the same goals – they deny all similarities to their enemy. “The President is not like us.” This is severely conservative.

In the same speech Romney promised to repeal ObamaCare even though it’s nearly identical to the plan Romney signed into law in Massachusetts, dubbed RomneyCare.

Let’s put it this way: If Romney “repealed and replaced” the “job-killing ObamaCare” with RomneyCare, no one would notice. If there were a taste test and you covered the labels – no one could tell the difference. You’d have a 50/50 chance of guessing which reform you were actually enjoying.

But to be a true severe conservative demands suspending disbelief. What must you be willing to accept? The economy buckling while a Republican was in the White House never happened. Bush never bailed out the banks or the auto industry. Deficits suddenly matter. Clint Eastwood is a hippie. And if the country continues to struggle it’ll be great for the GOP.

It reminds me of King Pyrrhus’ quote which sums up the term Pyrrhic victory: “If we are victorious in one more battle, we shall be utterly ruined.”

And well, these severe conservatives are acting like they’re winning.

That should tell us something.

“Gen X” was popularized as an advertising term. Marketers used the label to describe the young people of the late ‘80s. The focus was on how to sell goods to the MTV generation.

Advertisements at that time, just as one example, started to feature unmarried couples to appeal to this group of consumers. This was a first and in the early ‘90s it was pushing the envelope. It apparently resonated. The advertisers gauged correctly: They successfully sold their products to Americans with the now documented lowest marriage rate in history.

The argument could be made (mainly by those who want to take us back to a mythical innocent time of the supposedly recent past) that it’s advertisers who’ve corrupted our culture and changed what’s socially acceptable through their manipulations. Or, if you have sold your proverbial soul to the gods of unfettered commerce – like the rightwing self-described Culture Warriors, or the (formerly) Moral (former) Majority – advertisements are the market speaking for the greater culture at large. And the greater culture, funny enough, largely disagrees with the rightwing.

Here’s how it works: Advertisers put out an image or an idea – the greater public concurs by buying those products. Successful ads equal agreed upon ideas. Marketing is, after all, the definitive pandering.

And here is what the culture is saying through advertisements: We like racial diversity. Why can I say that? Because commercials not only have racially diverse groups of friends and co-workers – they now regularly feature bi-racial couples in ads. In a Budweiser Super Bowl spot this year, there were black men flirting with white women sans scandal. If those spots are moving widgets it means consumers agree with the message. It’s a type of voting. Even if some viewers don’t notice or don’t have a visceral reaction one way or another – it’s an indicator of a new cultural norm.

Also Americans are okay with homosexuals. The American Family Association, an association for only pre-approved families, threatened JC Penney with a boycott after they hired Ellen Degeneres as a spokesperson. Now, Degeneres, besides being a comedic genius, is also a successful talk show host and a popular pitchperson for brands like Covergirl and American Express. The market has spoken time after time, and Ellen is adored and sought after. She also happens to be a lesbian, which has made her the target of the AFA whose influence is clearly eroding.

What else does the market proclaim? Well, Americans widely approve of birth control. And yes, even legal abortion. In the dust-up last week between Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood the market picked the winner. It was Planned Parenthood. The nonprofit health care provider saw a spike in private contributions after Komen announced they would no longer give Planned Parenthood a grant to screen for breast cancer. And Komen’s brand has been forever tarnished by putting politics before their cure-finding goal. It’s already resulted in one resignation of the Vice President of Public Policy, Karen Handel.

You can think of the market as a leading indicator of our social mores and the Republican primary as a lagging one.

Disgraced former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, has been trying to play the well-worn Goldwater Southern Strategy to rile up the base. He calls Obama the food stamp president and said he wants to go talk to the NAACP about “why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” He also said immigrants should learn English and not use the “language of the ghetto.” That phrase hurt him in the Spanish-named (former Spanish colony) state of Florida. Why? Because the market has spoken, we have our first biracial president and we no longer care for these antiquated wedges Gingrich peddles.

The GOP-worshipped market has chosen the winner of the culture wars, and it hasn’t looked favorably on its most devout.

Of course, the market for Republicans is just like the Bible or the Constitution. They worship it piously as long as they believe it agrees with them.

If their deified market is all-knowing and all-powerful – it clearly favors a progressive social agenda…and not the GOP’s.

Yeah…tough sell.