Obama’s showed at the Baltimore town hall encounter with the Republican House Caucus a week ago that he isn’t going to be easy to shove over despite the missteps of the first year. The direct confrontation with the assembled enablers of the teabagger fringe was delightful for the complete mastery Obama showed over these whiny conservatives and how easily he dismantled their bubble-world when given a platform from which to do so.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the meeting was hearing how convinced Republican politicians from Texas and West Virginia are that they’re being mistreated and sidelined by bad old Nancy Pelosi, forgetting, of course, that they (1) were repudiated in the last election and (2) did far worse when they had the chance and now fairly gloat that they will do so again as soon as they get back in the driver’s seat. To hear them tell it, Obama’s team are the ones refusing to seek bipartisan cooperation, not them.
What a wacko universe they inhabit—probably from watching Fox News all day long in their offices. The party that has made an explicit, public virtue out of total obstructionism projects its bullying intransigence onto the other guy.
As many commentators—including Obama himself—have pointed out, there is a danger in pumping up blatant fantasies and falsehoods for short-term (electoral) gain because people start to believe the horror stories and act upon them. Republicans might think it’s cool that nearly half their loyalists think Obama’s not a U.S. citizen and another quarter are ‘not sure’ because these frightened bunnies are more likely to pour into the voting booths later this year and give them a few more seats.
But that’s playing with fire. Encouraging people to blast the system as illegitimate as soon as they lose undermines our democracy, which is a lot more fragile than most of us suppose. Obama struck a brilliant note by walking into the lion’s den and showing how flimsy the teabagger/Republican discourse really is, and he showed some teeth (at last) in not letting them getting away with their absurdities.
However, I’m not holding my breath to see a repeat. I can’t imagine anyone at the Republican National Committee supposing that they won points with this public display of their bratty attitudes and intellectual puniness. If only we could have Question Time and see both sides slug it out British-style, our political discourse would be elevated by several levels of magnitude. To which end, I enthusiastically signed onto this: and invite you to do the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment