"One day after Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) stirred controversy by withholding funds for tornado relief, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) took the extraordinary step of declaring Rep. Cantor a disaster area. Within hours of the declaration, FEMA officials were dispatched to assess the damage to Mr. Cantor’s status as a human being capable of empathy."-- Andy Borowitz, in the
Borowitz ReportMan, I hate to steal
Cesca's ongoing refrain, but seriously -- keep it up guys, you're doing great. The supposedly mainstream Republicans have allowed themselves to be completely hijacked by the loud but relatively small contingent of tea bagging nutjobs at the fringe of their party -- and they're going to pay a huge price for it with the voting public. Need proof? Last night a nobody Democratic candidate named Kathy Hochul won a stunning victory in a special election in New York's 26th district; that's a district that votes Democrat about as often as Burlington, Vermont votes Republican. Hochul won by hammering home the point I made just a couple of hours ago: whatever this hyper-libertarian brand of politics is that the Republicans are now engaging in in an effort to appease the Tea Party dolts, it's metastasized into something that doesn't care one bit about the average American. From Paul Ryan's Medicare-decimating budget to unconscionable dog-shit like Cantor's willingness to hold federal funds for tornado victims hostage, the message is clear -- and if it keeps up it's going to spell destruction for the GOP, at least in the short term.
But now that I'm bringing it up, there's something else I've wanted to touch on for a while. Yes, it's true that stupidity, like shit, rolls downhill, and dumb parents will inevitably pass on their dumb traits to their kids, creating an entirely new generation to populate the Idiocracy. But the demographic make-up of the country is changing rapidly: it's becoming "browner," more multi-cultural, more of a true melting pot than it's ever been before. And if you don't think that the Tea Party, above all else, is a response to that terrifying scenario for white, Christian America, you need to have your head examined (provided it's still covered by your insurance carrier). I've said for a long time now that the Tea Party "revolt" is based not exactly in racism, per se, as much as profound xenophobia -- the knowledge by those who have traditionally been in power that "their country" is being systematically taken away from them. It's inevitable that eventually America will be not simply home to but
in control of people from many different backgrounds (and nothing proves that more than the election of President Obama, hence the visceral hatred of him by some). What does this mean for the Republican party as it now exists and for what it now believes in? One word: doom. The Tea Party outrage is basically the death throes of the current GOP political model. What the Republicans have stood for, campaigned on, pandered to and enabled over the last several decades is, to put it bluntly, unsustainable. This isn't opinion -- it's fact.
