In what strikes me as a sign of desperation, Republicans have been trying to scare people with the prospect of what the Democrats might do if they take over Congress. Socialized medicine! Tax hikes! Impeachment! The destruction of the country! You just know that a bunch of people are going to go trick-or-treating as Speaker Nancy Pelosi this year, claiming it's the scariest thing they can think of.
I won't get into the silliness of such claims, like the National Review claiming Charlie Rangel would eliminate 529 savings plans or abolish the child tax credit -- all because he said he couldn't think of a single Bush tax cut he liked.
Then there's the little matter of Pelosi specifically ruling out impeachment proceedings.
And I'll content myself with briefly noting that Democrats have been in charge for much of this century and the country is still standing, still a superpower, still the biggest economy on earth, and best I can recall we haven't been invaded and conquered during that time.
Set all that aside. Let's assume the Democrats are in fact Communists in Donkey dress, and if elected they will shed their disguises and put a bust of Lenin in the House chamber.
So what?
Even if the Democrats take both the House and the Senate, they will not command veto-proof majorities. Bush may have to exercise his veto pen for once, but his vetoes will stick unless his own party revolts against him. And the Republican minority will use all the procedural tricks they've decried for the past decade -- filibusters, Senatorial holds, what have you -- to derail Democratic bills they don't like.
The most significant threat, in fact, doesn't involve Pelosi at all; it involves Harry Reid. Because if the Democrats manage to take the Senate, they can block a lot of Bush's judicial appointments. But even that power is limited; they can block, but they can't nominate. And Bush can make recess appointments, or simply make hay out of all the judicial vacancies the Dems are letting pile up.
So the plain fact is that all the nation risks by letting the Democrats take over is a two-year standoff with the White House. That may actually be a good thing; but in any event I'd rather risk that than let the GOP remain in charge after the hash they've made of things in the past six years.
It's time for a change. Republicans had their chance; let's see what the Democrats can come up with.
Bush, Congress, Reid, Pelosi, politics, midtopia
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
What if the Democrats win?
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4 comments:
Scare tactics have been the number one tool used by the right-wing Republican leadership. It's a despicable tactic, serving only to simplify, disinform, and dumb us down. Going hand in hand with propaganda, it's what got us into Iraq. The Rep leadership relies on making frightful predictions of the future rather than open and honest discussions about the present.
I'm hoping and praying for a Democratic win, perhaps even moreso than in 2004, just to put the brakes on this train wreck that has signified our leadership the past 4 years.
- Caracarn
Well, the Democrats have been known to do the same think themselves in the past. Scare tactics aren't the exclusive property of one party. And it goes hand-in-hand with the negative advertising that both sides run. But it is pretty ridiculous when you look at the actual Democratic policies--if this is socialism, Karl Marx is spinning in his grave. It is interesting, though, that at other centrist cites I frequent, Democratic policies are discussed as being socialistic--not necessarily as a pejorative--when, in fact, they are more along the lines of welfare statism.
As an aside, some friends from Alabama visited us recently and their daughter, a senior in high school, was complaining about a teacher. The teacher had asked the class to list socialist countries and, when my friend's daughter said "Canada" the teacher apparently said that was incorrect. In the daughter's mind (and probably my friends'), this apparently marked the teacher as a wild-eyed liberal.
As a Nevadan I'm disappointed that you didn't elaborate on your comment re:Harry Reid.
If you meant that Reid can sway more people than Pelosi because he is not a "wild-eyed liberal" then I'd have to agree but from your comment there is no way to tell exactly what you meant there.
Regarding Reid, I just meant "from the perspective of partisan Republican scaremongers." There's so much being made about "Speaker Pelosi" (brrrr!!!), when the only real point they might have is that a Democratic Senate could interfere with far-right judicial appointments.
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