The GOP Rerun

Years ago, well before Hulu, DVRs, and the Internet, people used to sleepwalk through their summer television viewing. Summertime used to be filled with re-runs and the only new shows were second tier fillers summoned to replace failed TV shows. And people used to complain and complain that outside of these shows. Even today, people get annoyed when they want to watch their favorite show, and it turns out to be a re-run.

And a re-run was what went the American people just went through. For those reading this that may be too young to remember the late 1990’s when Newt Gingrich was behind the government shutdown, what we went through this past week was just that, a re-run.

Only this time, the Republicans seemed to ratchet up a notch. This time, they opted to take the Affordable Healthcare Act and use that as leverage to hold the American people hostage. And despite how conservative news outlets like Fox News and CNN may have tried to play it off, it were the republicans that tried to hold the US hostage.

Let’s now take a look at what the GOP temper tantrum cost us. $24 billion dollars. Yes, 24 billion, billion with a B. So the party, who claims their hallmark is smaller government and less spending, just cost this country 24 Billion dollars. Federal parks lost revenue because of the shutdown. Retail stores like Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Kmart lost money because people were afraid to spend money, especially those folks on SNAP. Consumer confidence waned, and with the debt ceiling default looming, the US credit was downgraded to a AAA with negative rating, meaning, in a sense, the money was still good, however, tread lightly.

Now thankfully, the furloughed workers are getting back pay, despite Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, and David Vitter, all republicans, fighting the measure, saying that since the workers were not actually working, they did not deserve pay for those two weeks. And yes, you did read that right, they actually fought to keep them from getting money for lost work hours they had no control over losing.

However, considering that we may face this all over again to start 2014, it is no wonder that consumer confidence is going to slowly in its rebound. Our government is becoming so unstable that people are now afraid to spent money.  Especially those people who are on food stamps.

Now, before anyone goes off thinking that people on food stamps don’t contribute to the economy, let’s clear up that thinking. Food stamps work like credit cards. Each month, an individual on food stamps gets an established credit or food stamp limit. They then go to the store, spend money on food, and use that food to feed themselves and their families. If you take these food stamps away, these people aren’t going to the store, and instead will have to lean on food kitchens instead. What that means that the food they would have purchased in stores, stays on store shelves. That means those stores, and the makers of the products they would have purchased, lose money in loss of sale. It’s that simple. So forget the Ayn Rand bullshit that these people are takers. They are, in fact, functioning members of society who contribute to the local economy. By the way, I could insert a joke on during the waning years of her life, that Ayn Rand collected those social security checks that she’d spent a lifetime bashing, but that’s just too easy of a target.

Now, let’s shift out focus back to the political landscape. This morning, I was re-reading (maybe for the zillionth time) a book called Secret Lives of the US Presidents by Cormac O’Brein. I was reading the chapter on Benjamin Harrison. Harrison was a rather mundane president, not really a memorable guy. Some of his exploits include marrying his late wife’s niece, and when his children objected to the union, he not only cut them out of his will, but he also cut them out of his life, refusing to ever speak to them again. Known as the human iceberg for his cold personality, Harrison’s administration also saw wild spending. Known as the Billion Dollar Congress, the Republican dominated congress spent money like it was going out of print. It would lead to his downfall and ouster as president.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and that is where we are right now. The GOP, who claim to be the penny pinchers and calorie counters, now have a 7% approval rating the lowest ever since polls were first recorded. They cost this nation dearly, in stature, economic status, worldview, and it may have led to the downfall of their own party. They got into bed with the Tea Party radicles, and now they may pay for it. As we circle this back to the afore mentioned President Benjamin Harrison, we look at how the GOP ignored the wishes of the American people, got drunk with power, and it led to their ouster during the following round of elections. And ignoring the will of the American people has been what the party, along with its Tea Party radicals, has been doing for the last few weeks. The American people do want to take the new health care law for a test drive. And if it fails to catch on, guess what happens, it ceases to be. And for all of those talking about website glitches, citing that as a reason why the new health care is “failing”, that is a red herring talking point. Web sites crash all of the time. How many times have you attempted to log onto Facebook or Twitter only to have an error message appear? Every website can only take so much traffic before it causes a crash, hell, I’m sure any hacker could tell you that.  So don’t let them use “website crashes” as a reason not to visit the page.

And that has been the GOP calling card for much of 2013, fear and terror. And then finally, despite the fact that the highest court in the land up held the law, and the fact that they ran on their own health care law platform, and lost badly, the GOP ignored the wishes of the American people, took them hostage, took the US economy hostage, and nearly utterly derailed this nation. Keep that in mind, when you go to the polls come election time.