Fed Up with the Right

Over the years my political views have evolved. I started out as a sort of orthodox liberal who would have sided with the Democrats on virtually every issue except abortion and gun control, on which I have always consistently had conservative opinions. I gradually drifted in a far-right libertarian direction and while I most identified with the Libertarian Party of the two major parties I usually sided with the Republicans. I even had plenty of praise to offer to the Tea Party movement when it got started in 2009. In the past year, however, and especially in the past couple of months, my politics have drifted increasingly to the center. Up until the debt ceiling fight began I would have said I was leaning Republican. In light of it and the decline in the stock market and the downgrade I am done, my flirtation with the right is over and if I could go back and revoke the support I gave to Republicans in 2010 I would. Not only will I not be supporting Republicans for Congress in 2012 but at this point barring Jon Huntsman coming from behind and pulling off an upset in the Republican primary I will probably be voting for Obama in 2012.

So what happened? The same things that once came out of my mouth come out of the Tea Party. I was the Tea Party before the Tea Party was cool. No longer. Theory is one thing, practice is another. The far right are like Marxists: absolutely up to their heads in theory but incredibly weak on practice. Libertarians and Marxists can explain their own theories better than anybody out there, they are the Jehovah's Witnesses of politics. In the end though when applied to life their theories fall flat on their face. Marxism has failed wherever it has been tried. I gave the right my chance and their ideas are failing too. When the facts change it comes time to change your opinions and the time has come. Other countries are trying what the right wants and it isn't working.

In 2010 I saw the Conservative Party swept into power under David Cameron in Britain and an austerity program immediately began. Because Britain has a parliamentary system it is much more easy to exact change through the political process. If one party gains control that party has control: end of story. There is no such thing as "divided Congress" or "gridlock" in Britain. There is no division between the president and the Congress, which is why Britain has been able to change more rapidly over time. Britain, under the control of Conservatives and their allies in the Liberal Democrats, have gone forth with austerity measures and the result is that top economists have said it hasn't worked. Growth has gone flat in the six months since Conservatives took power and a double dip recession looms. The reason is that the "cuts, cuts, cuts" policy does nothing to drive economic growth. Make no mistake, the driver of economic growth is not the rich, or the "job creators" but a boost in aggregate demand. The wealthy will buy a couple mansions and then save most of what they make. The best way to boost economic growth is to get money into the hands of the people who spend most of their money, namely the poor and the middle class. Meanwhile the right holds back any tax increase on the wealthy while stopping a temporary cut in the payroll tax, a tax cut that would put money in the pockets of consumers. These are the people who will spend money but Republicans instead prioritize tax cuts for the rich, they do it because that is what they are, a party of the rich by the rich and for the rich. They dress it up in the rhetoric of freedom because this is the only way they can sneak it under the public's nose.

When an idea comes out of your own mouth and you are the minority it doesn't sound so bad. When an idea is confined to the realm of theory it seems merely edgy and radical. That is how it was for libertarians only a couple years ago, but in a couple years it has changed. Now libertarian ideas are mainstream thanks to the Tea Party and the Republicans and now people's livelihoods are in jeopardy. The right threatens to eviscerate the welfare state as we know it and to sabotage government from ever doing anything positive again. They see tax cuts as a panacea to all society's problems and refuse to accept that there is ever a case when government has to be involved in the economy. It is cut, cut, cut. They refuse to consider that the government ever does any good or that the private sector is ever inefficient. Yet to those who think the free market is going to solve all of our problems let me link you to this article. Corporations in this country are literally sitting on cash and not hiring. So much for the "job creators." Oh wait a minute, maybe they aren't the job creators, maybe the consumers are the real job creators. The middle class who actually spends most of their hard earned paycheck as opposed to the wealthy who stock away most of it.

The final straw for me, the straw that broke the camel's back, the thing that got the scales to fall from my eyes, the thing that really turned me off to the right-wing, to conservatism, to libertarianism, to the Republican Party was this debt limit debate. We got a downgrade from S & P and the stock market crashed, it began going down in the days leading up and crashed after the downgrade. S & P specifically cited the toxic political environment as rationale. They specifically stated that they would have supported Obama's plan of cuts in spending along with revenue increases. Sorry to the far left and far right but one side of the equation alone won't cut it. In the end it has been Obama that has been the adult in the room and recognized this. He could have put his foot down and said, "No, my precious ideology tells me that entitlement programs are sacred and I shall not budge on this point one iota, now raise taxes on the rich up to 90% or I'm going to blow up the country to save my precious welfare programs." Did he do that? No. He compromised. He accepted he could not get everything he wanted and he compromised. I'm sure that Barack Obama is a liberal but he set aside ideology for the good of the country and for that I am profoundly thankful he is my president in spite of all the criticism, much of it deserved, I have given him over his handling of various issues. Republicans could not find even an iota of maturity and pragmatism within their souls. They remained steadfast that the wealthy must not pay a higher marginal tax increase and they remained steadfast to the bitter end. Anybody who talks of compromise talks of poppycock. This was not a compromise, this was merely a deal that was less right-wing than it could have been. Still it wasn't enough for the Tea Party and many Republicans on the far-right. Thank God a rational man like John Boehner stopped them from taking us off the cliff. I like John Boehner, I give him credit for manning up at the last minute. If all Republicans were like John Boehner I might be a Republican but the bottom line is that not all Republicans are and in fact the Republicans have a major constituency that refuses to accept rationality. They reject science on global warming, they refuse to believe Obama was born in America, and now they refuse to accept even basic mathematics. What next?

As long as the Tea Party stands this country is not safe. As long as this radical group remains free to ravage the country unchecked we will never have a commonsense solution because they will not accept them. It is their way or the highway and the good of the country be damned. They care not for practice but whether or not a policy is ideologically palatable. Yes, there were foolish Democrats who tried to hold fast onto their left-wing beliefs but they were fewer and further between than the Republicans. I am not a liberal, but I am gradually moving to being a moderate Independent who leans Democratic. The reason is that I agree with Republicans 50% of the time and Democrats 50% of the time but more and more I feel that Democrats are willing to look past what I disagree with them on whereas Republicans are not. I feel like people like me have no place in the Republican Party anymore. Perhaps we did in the days of Eisenhower, or even Reagan, but not anymore. Reagan would be insufficiently conservative for Republicans today if his actual policies were separated from his mythology. I feel like I can break bread with the Democrats but if I try to break bread with Republicans but not go along 100% they will label me a communist. I feel like Democrats are more willing to look past my disagreements with them on gun control than Republicans are on health care.

I plan on voting for Obama in 2012 and voting for Democrats in Congress and Senate not because I suddenly have become a liberal and now agree with Democrats. I am a moderate, not a liberal or conservative. I am voting for them as a way of rejecting Republicans because Republicans have gotten so radical at this point in their ideology and so ideologically hardened and so immature in their way of bashing the president that they have totally lost me. Is wasn't because Democrats proved to me they were good but because Republicans have crossed so many lines that I can't support them anymore. I am not saying I will never vote for a Republican again but in the near future it is more and more unlikely. John Boehner and reasonable Republicans need to wake up. I am the sort of voter Republicans need and Republicans are doing all they can to lose me. If they keep this up they may lose me for life. Yes Republicans have had short term success but how much more radical can they get before people begin to get turned off. I already am turned off and I doubt I am going to be the last.