When Republicans warn that a policy is a job-killer, Americans should listen. If any group of lawmakers and thinkers know about killing jobs it’s the Grand Old Party. In 2008, the final year of the Bush Administration, after two terms of careless deregulation implemented with bastardized pseudo-free market battle cries, the economy lost 2.6 million jobs. An annual job loss not equaled since 1945. When it comes to job extermination the GOP’s display case has a full assortment of trophies. So, of course Republicans are now the best authority on how not to kill jobs. Basically, don’t do what they did.
“The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is plotting a new massive job-killer that the American people can’t afford,” cautioned House Republican Leader John Boehner last week. He knows this because he was arguably privy to the “old” massive job-killer that Americans couldn’t afford.
Like the tobacco critic “Debbie” a life-long smoker who infamously took a drag off a cigarette through a hole in her neck for an anti-smoking PSA in the 1990’s — it’s not hypocrisy for the GOP to talk about what will or won’t tank the economy – it comes from their experience tanking the economy.
The GOP is solidly against everything in President Barack Obama’s agenda. Coincidence? No, it’s based on their record of being solidly for everything in President Bush’s agenda. They’re simply learning from their mistakes and gaining from their life lessons. That’s why they now are deficit hawks, because they’re trying to make up for their previous mistakes. That’s why they now want smaller government since they grew it. That’s why they now want to work on decreasing the debt since they increased it.
We need to start listening to the GOP and their leaders. They have a unique familiarity with the things they deplore. And that’s important in deploring things:
When RNC Chairman Michael Steele dismisses the Democrats for big spending, this isn’t his first prom. Steele can recognize a bulging budget by having doubled his predecessors’. He has studied the issue at length as the par-taying party chairman. He’s thought about the wasteful spending from his private jets and limousines. He can see the pork people who fly commercial would completely miss.
Chairman Steele has simply been doing research into fiscal conservatism from the opposite side of the spectrum. This way he gains the necessary perspective.
Recently Rush Limbaugh thankfully pointed out that the Obama administration is guilty of “character assassination.” Only a person who publicly accused Parkinsons patient/stem cell research spokesperson Michael J. Fox of faking his symptoms would have such an expertise on slander. You don’t just pick on the then 13-year-old daughter of the President, Chelsea Clinton for her looks and not know how to spot cheap shots. If you spend years comparing everything Obama does with Nazis you of course are going to be more sensitive to the assassination of other people’s character.
Were the convicts in Scared Straight discounted because of their crimes? No. They were the best people to tell troubled youths what not to do because they did it. Just like today’s GOP.
Who knows more about the inside than an insider? Who knows more about sin than a sinner? Who knows more about real Americans than the politically ambitious who overuse the phrase “real Americans?” No one, that’s who.
And who knows more about “socialized” medicine and its devastating implications than former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. He passed “socialized” medicine in his state four years ago this month. He told the Associated Press at a book signing near his current home in La Jolla, California that passing health care reform will cost Obama a second term. Is it because the nearly identical legislation passed in his state and he didn’t seek a second term? Yes. Romney knows about health care reform and re-elections. Or really just about health care reform and opting out of re-election.
How can we fault those who know the most about the hen houses just because they happen to be foxes? Do we want to live in an America that does?