Nobody asked me, but Republicans are acting so stupid that it scares me. I find myself worrying that they know something no one else knows.
I saw a great quote the other day:
“Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect the one from the other”.
Yet, here are Republican office holders and candidates attacking public sector Labor Unions, women, the poor, seniors, immigrants, college students and all people of color. And they are doing it in an election year. It is as if they only need the votes of the rich.
First, the new Republican Governor of Wisconsin moved to wipe away the collective bargaining rights of public sector employees and earned himself a recall effort. Across the nation states are rushing to enact “right to work” laws. Unions and other opponents of these efforts dub them “right to work for less” laws. Basically, the laws would give workers the “right” to be hired into “union” shops without joining the union. Over a half century ago, when the right to bargain collectively was won, folks who went to work in union shops without joining the union were hired during strikes, and were called scabs. These laws would make union busting legal and easy.
Voter ID laws are aimed at suppressing the vote of college students, who often use absentee ballots, the elderly, who no longer drive, the poor and people of color. All are folk who came out in force to support the President in ’08.
But, the most amazing effort is the attempt to roll back the clock on Roe vs Wade and strip contraception from health plans.
The simple fact is, like collective bargaining, women fought long and hard for these rights years ago.
How rich and old and white do you have to be to be blind to the fact that women, married and single, have the right to have sex without risking pregnancy? Clearly, employers are wary of hiring women who might get pregnant and run up health insurance costs. Pregnancies also mean awkward, hard to adjust for, leaves of absence. Doesn’t it follow, particularly in this economy, that all working women would be as wary as employers are of all but the most carefully planned pregnancies?
It is as if, having driven huge numbers of young men of color out of the workplace and into prison; Republicans are now turning their attention to driving pre-menopausal women out of the work place and back into the American kitchens and bedrooms of 1945.
The logical extension of these right wing efforts is the Poll Tax and having Blacks recite the Constitution in order to be eligible to vote.
I hope the election of this nice, brown President has simply thrown these teabaggers out of all touch with reality. If not, they may have found some way to steal the White House like W and his family did in ’00 and we won’t realize it until we’re busy memorizing the Constitution.
So, if you’re not registered, REGISTER. If you’re registered, be sure to VOTE. And, if you have $5, send 50 cents to the Democratic candidate of your choice.
