EVERY REPUBLICAN MUST GO!

"I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends...that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them." - Adlai E. Stevenson, speaking many decades ago -

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Republicans lied during the 1930s, '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, and '00s, and they are still lying today. Rachel Maddow did a superb job last night of exposing Republican lies and hypocrisy on her MSNBC TV show. She illustrated 21 separate cases where Republicans, when they were in the majority, had passed bills via reconciliation. She pointed out how Republican Senators now decrying the use of reconciliation, notably John McCain, Lamar Alexander, Orrin Hatch, and Charles Grassley, had each supported the action and she outlined their votes. She also cited examples of them being in support of certain provisions of the new health care reform bill until the Pr4esident came out in support of the same provision, at which point these Republicans all took an opposing stance. She showed how Republicans not only lie, but also contradict themselves. They are obsessed with playing politics, not shaping policy beneficial to all of us. They are engaged in obstruction, not good governance. For these reasons, they do not deserve to gain or maintain public office!

Independent voters, this post is directed primarily at you. Over the past few days you got a very good look at what conservative Republicans are like, and why they should not be elected or re-elected to Congress this fall. The fact of the matter is that they do not care about average people who are struggling in the terrible economy that THEY created under the Geoirge W. Bush administration and which still plagues us today. The proof you got just this week was how ultra-conservative Kentucky Republican Senator Jim Bunning single-handedly filibustered and held up a bill which would have extended unemployment benefits to 200,000 people whose unemployment had run out. His action also caused the layoff of 2,000 other federal workers, and it was totally unnecessary and irresponsibly cold-hearted. Millionaire Bunning, like most of his conservative Republican counterparts, obviously understands nothing about how pressed millions of his fellow citizens are at this time, nor, apparently, do they care. Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl even went so far as to suggest those on unemployment are merely sitting on their fat asses collecting checks and enjoying themselves. He is evidently unaware that unemployment amounts to only about half of what a normal paycheck would bring in, or that with loss of job often comes loss of health insurance too. It was a stunningly revealing and typically cold-hearted remark from conservative Republicans who care nothing about about average people just like YOU! Independents: if you are rightfully upset with the state of this country today, don't be fooled by the continual barrage of conservative Republican lies. Don't blame the progressives and Democrats for the slow rate of economic recovery - they've been sabotaged and obstructed by corporatist, conservative Republicans from the very start. THEY didn't ruin this economy; corporatist, conservative Republicans did. THEY have been working since January 20, 2009 to create jobs and extend unemployment benefits to those whose jobs have been lost; conservative Republicans have opposed them and stonewalled every step of the way. THEY have pushed for universal medical coverage and regulations on greedy insurance companies; conservative Republicans have fought them on this, too, and told wild lies designed to protect the insurance companies and defeat health care reform since day one.

So do not make the horrible mistake this fall of electing more of these lying, obstructionist Republicans to Congress. These Republicans are uncompromising and are not looking out for your best interests at all. If they were, they wouldn't vote as a bloc against health care coverage for all. They wouldn't vote as a bloc against plans which put people to work. And remember: it's not just their leaders stonewalling and voting against your needs as they do: it's ALL of them. So, come November, remember this and know beyond any doubt that EVERY REPUBLICAN MUST GO! Remember most of all: Every single obstructionist








conservative Republican you elect to office gets a salary of $174,000 that YOU are paying for! All the more reason not to elect or re-elect any Republicans this fall! EVERY REPUBLICAN MUST GO!

WARNING: INDEPENDENTS MAY GO REPUBLICAN IN 2010!

I received this which I post below from Nancy Hanks, creator of THE premier progressive independent website The Hankster , which can be found at http://grassrootsindependent.blogspot.com/. For those of us who may mistakenly think President Obama won the last election simply because of strong support by Democrats, that just isn't so. He won by capturing a large bloc of independent voters.

As Nancy points out in her current blog post, there is a very real danger that the Republican right may lie their way into siphoning off a number of independent votes next year. Coupled with the namby-pampy support we've seen the President get so far from "Blue Dog" Democrats during his term, large conservative gains could prove disastrous toward passing and implementing the progressive agenda this country so desperately needs. We cannot allow Republican gains to push the moderate/conservative "Blue Dogs" further to the right. Read and learn here in Nancy's informative post. With Nancy's blessing, please feel free to share her post with all the liberals and progressives you know. We cannot allow ourselves to become complacent and thus enable the far-right Cheneyesque factions to strengthen their hand or even regain control of Congress!
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Independents are vulnerable to being peeled away by the Republican right. The Pew Research Center reports that were the 2010 midterms to be held today, independents would lean towards Republicans by a 43 to 38 percent margin. But, the evolution of a 21st century independent movement is not that simple. First, the movement is very fluid and very new. Historical movements develop through twists and turns, not in a straight line. The far right has attempted to take over the independent movement before. In 1994, Newt Gingrich crafted the “Contract with America” to woo Perotistas back into the Republican tent. And in 2000, social conservative Pat Buchanan hijacked the Reform Party presidential nomination, though he was roundly repudiated by independents in the general election. [FULL PIECE BELOW]


SERIOUS AS A HEART ATTACK: THE INDEPENDENTS’ STORY
By: Jackie Salit

When we finally get far enough down the road on health care reform, it will become clear that a driving force in the intensity of the fight was a heart attack. Not the medical kind. The political kind.

Independents swung decisively to Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. And it is this shift by independents – who repositioned themselves from center-right to center-left – that gave the Republican right the political equivalent of cardiac arrest.

In 1992, 19 million independents voted for Ross Perot. In 2008, 19 million independents voted for Barack Obama. Over the span of 15 years, the largely white, center-right independent movement re-aligned itself with Black America and progressive-minded voters.

This did not happen out of the blue. It did not happen by magic. It happened because the progressive wing of the independent movement did the painstaking and often controversial work of bringing the Perot movement and the Fulani movement together at the grassroots. The Fulani movement refers to the country’s leading African American independent, Dr. Lenora Fulani, who exposed the black community to independent politics and introduced the independent movement to an alliance with Black America.

No doubt the dramatics that the right wing brought to the Town Hall meetings this summer were intended for the television cameras. But the organizers, strategists and radio personalities who orchestrated the theatrics had a particular audience in mind: Independents. If they could tarnish Obama’s image with indies, they could damage the black and independent alliance and re-establish the Republican Party as an influential force amongst independents. Some of that could be accomplished, they felt, by claiming Obama’s health plan would drive up the national debt – a concern that animated the early Perot movement. Some Republican strategists felt that if they simply branded Obama a socialist, it would scare independents away – not from the health care plan (everyone recognizes a plan of some kind will get passed) but away from the center-left coalition that elected him.

If indies are feeling somewhat disillusioned with President Obama over the health care reform fight, it has more to do with fears that he is being overly influenced by the partisans in Congress. Since independents voted for him to be a more independent president, it’s easy to see how some felt disappointed by his handling of the Republican onslaught. Obama’s independent appeal was based on his challenge to the prevailing culture of Clintonian opportunism in the Democratic Party and partisanship inside the Beltway. Put another way, the independent vote for Obama was an effort to define a new kind of progressivism, one that was not synonymous with Democratic Party control.

After years of hard work and organizing, independents have become a sought-after partner in American politics. They elected President Obama and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, arguably the country’s two most independent and pragmatically progressive elected officials. No wonder the Republican Party right wants a clawback.

Independents are vulnerable to being peeled away by the Republican right. The Pew Research Center reports that were the 2010 midterms to be held today, independents would lean towards Republicans by a 43 to 38 percent margin. But, the evolution of a 21st century independent movement is not that simple. First, the movement is very fluid and very new. Historical movements develop through twists and turns, not in a straight line. The far right has attempted to take over the independent movement before. In 1994, Newt Gingrich crafted the “Contract with America” to woo Perotistas back into the Republican tent. And in 2000, social conservative Pat Buchanan hijacked the Reform Party presidential nomination, though he was roundly repudiated by independents in the general election.

If Republicans are increasing their influence among independents, it’s also because the Democratic Party Left has not been a friend to the independent movement. Sure, Democrats were happy that indies broke for Obama. But they were disappointed that we didn’t become Democrats. They equate progressivism with being in the Democratic Party. But they’re wrong.

Neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party has been enthusiastic about the development of indies as a third force. For different reasons, surely. But they share a common goal: to maintain the primacy of two-value logic (where there is only one or the other, never neither) and make sure independents are passive companions. That’s one reason that the fight for open primaries – which allow independents to cast ballots in every round of voting – and the campaign to appoint independents to the Federal Election Commission are so important. Those fights are about our right to participate and our right to represent our interests in changing the political culture.

The independent movement went left in 2008, after many years of grassroots organizing to link it to progressive leadership. Now the right wants to peel it back. Obama, presumably, wants to hold on to the partnership, but must also privilege his own party, which turns independents off and makes them more susceptible to Republican attacks. Meanwhile, independents are working hard at the grassroots to hold our own.


Jackie Salit is the president of IndependentVoting.org and the campaign coordinator for Mike Bloomberg’s mayoral campaign on the Independence Party line.