An Open Letter to the Party of No

Dear Republican Party Members of Congress and Mitt Romney:

Although we disagree on matters of policy, I offer no disrespect to those voters who support you. I don’t understand them, but it is not for me to understand. But you, sirs and madams, are another matter. I have watched as you refused to help this nation get out of its recession because you wouldn’t let President Obama succeed.  You were willing to sacrifice the whole nation to hurt the President’s re-election chances.  What kind of people do that?  And yet you dare to question our president’s patriotism and birthright?  As lowkell and teacherken have chronicled here on these pages today, even Mitt Romney has stooped to “birther” nonsense by mocking President Obama because lunatics still question his long-form birth certificate.  Mitt  pretended to walk back the remarks and say he was just kidding.  Yeh, sure he was.

The President has succeeded and the economy is better on many different indicators. But,, thanks to you, many are still hurting.  You didn’t want their mortgages restructured. You didn’t want public employees to have jobs.  You ran campaigns against whole fields of work because the majority of them happened only to be Democrats. But imagine how great a recovery we might have had had you not obstructed at every turn and then had the gall to blame him for what happened on Bush’s watch? You obstruct his jobs bill and ask where are the jobs?  Seriously? You thwart his efforts to extend help to small businesses. You encourage your corporate benefactors to collude with you and refuse to hire. Then you falsely label it “uncertainty.” Again, who does that? What kind of people are you?  And then you pretend that the President doesn’t support small business. Have you no shame?

You will notice that contrary to false claims to the contrary, Dems did not do that to your president, George W. Bush.  He was selected by a Republican Supreme Court, and yet, there were  Congressional Dems passing most of the bills he wanted passing and refusing only things such as draconian cuts to programs people really need.  They pushed Bush to up the schedule for body armor. But for the most part, they gave him his agenda. I wish they  had stood up to you more.  But they did not. They were more bipartisan than you deserved. But unlike you, for the most part, they know that their responsibility to to the citizens of the US and to the Constitution.  

President Obama yielded to your demands one after the other because he put the country and the need to compromise (even with the likes of you) above all else, only to have you pull the target back further each and every time. You played brinksmanship with our economy by trying to drive us off a cliff in Summer 2011 and you threaten the same again this year. You are charged to steward this country on behalf of ALL Americans, not Grover Norquist. And then you dare to question President Obama’s patriotism. Your unwillingness to do what you should –to lift the debt– ceiling is just unbelievable. But you refuse to do it and then you have the gall to try to pin the possibility of “sequestration” on President Obama.

You would throw hundreds of billions more to the insatiable, bloated, wasteful military-industrial complex, which swamps the military efforts by more developed nations combined, but not enough to help our wounded warriors. You don’t care if they are homeless or suffering from PTSD. You don’t care about the transition they must make from active duty to private life. You don’t give a damn about them or the other sons and daughters you send off to your corporate-sponsored wars. And you don’t give a damn about the rest of the US citizenry suffering from your starve everything except “defense.” (It is not defense, but hardware gluttony, sucking up money for programs and weaponry that even the military does not want.  Then you claim you oppose earmarks.)

You would rather coddle your billionaires than face up to global warming.  You would rather bleed every single drop of oil and every cubic ft of gas from the ground–no matter the cost to this country in destroyed water and air. You present nothing, no program of any kind and then lie about President Obama’s efforts to balance America’s energy supplies and look to the future.

And here you are, having waged all out war against our president with serial lies upon lies, each repeated over and over.  You and your candidate outright lie repeatedly to Americans, falsely claiming that he revoked welfare to work, lie about what he said (You didn’t build this?  You know damn well what he really said. You also know your duplicitous, tax-avoiding, offshoring creep-of-a-presidential candidate said the same thing.)  Every single ad from the GOP, GOP Governor’s, RNC, Americans for Prosperity, Chamber of Commerce, American Crossroads GPS, or Romney PAC of your billionaire benefactors are bald-faced lies.  

You stand on nothing. No cooperation to save the nation’s economy, no record, nothing but a house-of-card pile of lies.  Also refer to this list of lies (many more linked at the bottom of this article) and this.

And you dare to present as if you, your party and your candidates deserve any American’s serious consideration. I challenge every American to read Michael Grumwald’s new book, The New New Deal: The Hidden story of Change in the Obama Era. Then you will know why all the GOP has is fake claims that Democrats “will take their guns,” slander of Dems character, McCarthy-like false challenges of Dems’ patriotism, and pathetic pretense at religiosity. Never has a less religious contingent of pols every shown its face to America than today’s GOP Congressional delegation. You are hypocrites.

You would bestow full rights on fetuses, but not women. You would bring students of science and history to the Dark Ages, but savage climate scientists devoting their professional lives to serve the nation. You destroy public education while pretending to save it. You plan to destroy Medicare (privatizing and voucherizing it will ultimately end it you you know it) while claiming to protect it. You pretend to care about the truth of Obama’s birth, when you appeal to the basest racism. Then you purport that President Obama is divisive?  

You’ve got nothing, nothing, that is, except your empty, unaccomplished selves (your resume means nothing given your behavior these last three years) and you stinking, filthy lies. Oh, yeh, you’ve got the moneybags of the vapid Koch Brothers and the merry band of Peter Peterson fiscal stewardship pretenders.  They look out only for themselves and their 1% buddies. And so do you. Although a long-time Dem, I used to respect numerous Republican leaders.  You’ve trampled on all of them. You, sirs and madams, deserve no respect. And you won’t have it. Every day you get up and start another day pretending that your actions do not hurt real people.  You pretend you believe in something.  You don’t, well, except for yourselves.  And, believe me, that’s not much. Next week our nothingness will be on display for all the world to see. Just keep it up and you will lose. And then what will you have?