Republicans, Still Doing the Scare Thing

No doubt about it, the country is awash in conflicted emotions and strained loyalties. It isn’t surprising that, at a time of severe economic duress, there would be divergent opinions about how to ease the concerns of a troubled nation. What is disturbing, however, is the degree to which some of the more bizarre, right-wing assertions have been taken to heart by elements in the population who are in panic mode as a result and whose conclusions about what is going on are based on a series of non sequiturs.

Whether it is the Swine Flu, gun control, bailouts, or attempts to resuscitate social issues, irresponsible members of Congress and fringe groups make irrational claims that play to people’s fears. It doesn’t seem to matter that many such positions rest precariously on thin air. There are enough takers who absorb the gibberish and pass it along the word-of-mouth route. For anyone who ever played the “telephone” game at a kid’s party, you know how twisted the original message becomes when the last person at the table repeats what was whispered to them. From a national perspective what starts out as twisted becomes nightmarishly perverse as it travels from place to place.

Unless one listens to the arch-conservative pundits on talk radio and the radical right’s floor speeches in Congress, it is something of a shock to hear the wild ramblings of some folks in the countryside. Obama is a socialist/fascist who will take our guns and set up FEMA indoctrination camps they say. Get your semi-automatic weapons and plenty of ammunition to stand against a government intent on enslaving you, they say. It doesn’t occur to them that if the government really had tyrannical motives a few guns in their hands would be no match for tanks rolling through their neighborhoods, but never mind.

One obvious source of inchoate blather of course is Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann who has been spreading fear about indoctrination camps and all manner of dastardly acts she claims the Obama administration and liberals in Congress are planning. In light of the Swine Flu scare she maintains that flu epidemics always erupt during Democratic administrations. Actually the last great flu epidemic occurred during President Ford’s presidency not that there is a relationship, in any case, between outbreaks of flu and the party occupying the White House.

Most recently her garbled message about the “Hoot-Smalley” (sic) act was just another in the long list of malapropisms and factually-bereft notions she has broached on the floor of the House. The Smoot-Hawley bill, that increased tariff rates, was promoted by Herbert Hoover, pressed by banking interests and passed by Congress in 1930. Seriously, someone should remove her children from their home-schooling program and place them in a real school where they can get educated, as opposed to being left in the clutches of someone so obviously lacking in academic credentials and common sense.

Republicans, also operating in panic mode, are gathering to begin the road back to relevance so they say. The ‘new way’ is to be fashioned by a crop of old hands led by Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, John McCain and others of similar mind. Included in the upcoming meeting of minds is Bobby Jindl, a newer face in the lineup of idea point men and someone with the added attribute of a willingness to perform an exorcism should the need arise. Jindl is considered by some, Joe Scarborough for example, as “up and coming” and a “good thinker” although evidence of the thinker thing hasn’t surfaced just yet. And RNC Chairman Michael Steele continues to flail around about the disarray in the party suggesting that it is really a big tent with people who just happen to wear their hats differently.

Meanwhile, with the retirement of Justice Souter from the Supreme Court and the new role Miss California has taken to “protect marriage” social agendas will no doubt inform the hubbub of opinions that always arise when court appointments are at issue. Apparently Republicans have already begun to vet the probable candidates on President Obama’s short list. And in all likelihood the religious right will try to impose its will if the choice made doesn’t conflate with its stringent ideological conditions.

One of the most important things the administration can do to counteract the effects of a bad “telephone” game is to keep pounding away with the truth even though people whose minds are made up will probably continue to resist being confused by the facts.