Cognitive Dissonance and the Republican Party
I'm sure that there are more than enough postmortems that are floating out in the blogosphere about what are the problems with the Republican Party. You have answers from those that feel this year John McCain wasn't Republican ENOUGH, then there are those that are saying that John McCain was TOO Republican. The truth of the matter is that it stems out farther than one candidate.
Let's open our eyes and take a look at the COMPLETE SHELLACKING that the entire Republican Party took this last election cycle. The lost over 20 seats in the House of Representatives, they've lost 7 seats so far in the Senate, and last but not least they lost the big Prize the Presidency of the United States.
Now I'm going to speak to you all of you as a former Moderate Republican myself. (You know from the wing of the party that looks at what Bill Clinton accomplished in the White House with the Republicans and says, "Yep, Bill was a Democrat In Name Only") I've been converted to center left. (Although socially, I'm liberal, my wallet is still very Conservative.) The Republican Party has had a very serious problem for years that has now started to bubble to the surface. The party has two completely incongruous messages.
Fiscal Conservatives love to scream about keeping the government out of their lives, keeping the government out of their business. They scream for deregulation and having the government stand aside and let the the strong survive in the business community. BUT here is where the dissonance occurs. At the same time these Social Conservatives want the government to be involved with the personal lives of its citizens. They want the government to regulate television content. They want the government to make it illegal for women to control their pregnancy. They want the government to make sure that gays can't get married. They want the government to intervene when someone is pulling the plug on a comatose family member.
How can you reconcile the message of Leave the Government OUT of my Business, but Leave the Government IN my house? That just doesn't resonate with people. That was the great thing about Ron Paul, as a borderline libertarian he wanted government to be out of everywhere (Although, I think his pro life stance as more because abortion cuts into his OB-GYN business). There was a certain cohesion with his message. He knew that government didn't belong in your wallet or in bedroom.
The Current GOP doesn't have any sort of cohesion. They are a hodgepodge of the Social Conservatives who want Big Brother in the Bedroom and the Fiscal Conservatives who want to murder the brother all together.
The Fiscal Conservatives have brought on a completely different set of problems with the Republican Party. They eschew big government for big business. They don't want government handling anything that a business can. I can see the upsides to that, but also there are some definite downsides. There used to be a day where the government kept a watch over corporations and made sure none of them grew too large or had too large of a market share in a particular entity. Remember the break of of Ma Bell. Can any of you guys remember the last big corporate break up. Nope. I can't either. But what I do remember is the number of Mergers, Consolidations, and Acquisitions that I've seen over the last 25 years.
With these companies becoming behemoths large enough to rival small Countries also comes the risk that when they fail they take a significant portion of our GDP with it. The FisCONS don't want government run health care but they'll take HMO or Kaiser. They don't want government run Utilities, but they'll gladly fork over cash to Enron. The problem that they cause to the message of the Republican Party is that over the last several years we've seen the result of corporate greed on the individual's life. We've seen Enron and Tyco destroying the wealth of retirement plans. We've seen AIG and Lehman destroy the credit of everyday working Americans.
How can the little guy resolve that we should let these guys have more control of our lives and money when we have no control over them? At least when the government is screwing you over, as a citizen you know that you can exercise your right to vote the idiot out of office in a few years. If its the CEO of Enron you don't have any control until you're money is gone and he's in a posh prison.
The Social Conservatives love to rail on about personal responsibility but they don't want any of that responsibility to be personal. The want to make sure that you're not able to make decisions about whats right and whats wrong or whats moral and whats just. They want the government to do it for you. What? Is God not doing enough in the afterlife? If God truly believed that Abortion is Murder wouldn't he punish the sinner for eternity in the next life? Same thing with Gay Marriage, and euthanasia. It's almost like they think that St. Peter isn't qualified to do the whole Judge, Jury, Executioner bit.
The truth is this, the Republican Party doesn't have much to be afraid of. The Democrats will do as they've done in the past, Fix the Problems by raising taxes and making responsible investments in jobs creation and infrastructure projects. Then once the problems are fixed and all is well in the world the Republicans will run against them saying those taxes and investments are harmful, oh and look, THE GAYS!!! That's right, once everyone is educated, employed, and enjoying the fruits of economic bliss they'll allow a Republican to ride in on a wedge issue and fuck it up again. Then we'll be writing about the problems of the Democratic Party.
Let's open our eyes and take a look at the COMPLETE SHELLACKING that the entire Republican Party took this last election cycle. The lost over 20 seats in the House of Representatives, they've lost 7 seats so far in the Senate, and last but not least they lost the big Prize the Presidency of the United States.
Now I'm going to speak to you all of you as a former Moderate Republican myself. (You know from the wing of the party that looks at what Bill Clinton accomplished in the White House with the Republicans and says, "Yep, Bill was a Democrat In Name Only") I've been converted to center left. (Although socially, I'm liberal, my wallet is still very Conservative.) The Republican Party has had a very serious problem for years that has now started to bubble to the surface. The party has two completely incongruous messages.
Fiscal Conservatives love to scream about keeping the government out of their lives, keeping the government out of their business. They scream for deregulation and having the government stand aside and let the the strong survive in the business community. BUT here is where the dissonance occurs. At the same time these Social Conservatives want the government to be involved with the personal lives of its citizens. They want the government to regulate television content. They want the government to make it illegal for women to control their pregnancy. They want the government to make sure that gays can't get married. They want the government to intervene when someone is pulling the plug on a comatose family member.
How can you reconcile the message of Leave the Government OUT of my Business, but Leave the Government IN my house? That just doesn't resonate with people. That was the great thing about Ron Paul, as a borderline libertarian he wanted government to be out of everywhere (Although, I think his pro life stance as more because abortion cuts into his OB-GYN business). There was a certain cohesion with his message. He knew that government didn't belong in your wallet or in bedroom.
The Current GOP doesn't have any sort of cohesion. They are a hodgepodge of the Social Conservatives who want Big Brother in the Bedroom and the Fiscal Conservatives who want to murder the brother all together.
The Fiscal Conservatives have brought on a completely different set of problems with the Republican Party. They eschew big government for big business. They don't want government handling anything that a business can. I can see the upsides to that, but also there are some definite downsides. There used to be a day where the government kept a watch over corporations and made sure none of them grew too large or had too large of a market share in a particular entity. Remember the break of of Ma Bell. Can any of you guys remember the last big corporate break up. Nope. I can't either. But what I do remember is the number of Mergers, Consolidations, and Acquisitions that I've seen over the last 25 years.
With these companies becoming behemoths large enough to rival small Countries also comes the risk that when they fail they take a significant portion of our GDP with it. The FisCONS don't want government run health care but they'll take HMO or Kaiser. They don't want government run Utilities, but they'll gladly fork over cash to Enron. The problem that they cause to the message of the Republican Party is that over the last several years we've seen the result of corporate greed on the individual's life. We've seen Enron and Tyco destroying the wealth of retirement plans. We've seen AIG and Lehman destroy the credit of everyday working Americans.
How can the little guy resolve that we should let these guys have more control of our lives and money when we have no control over them? At least when the government is screwing you over, as a citizen you know that you can exercise your right to vote the idiot out of office in a few years. If its the CEO of Enron you don't have any control until you're money is gone and he's in a posh prison.
The Social Conservatives love to rail on about personal responsibility but they don't want any of that responsibility to be personal. The want to make sure that you're not able to make decisions about whats right and whats wrong or whats moral and whats just. They want the government to do it for you. What? Is God not doing enough in the afterlife? If God truly believed that Abortion is Murder wouldn't he punish the sinner for eternity in the next life? Same thing with Gay Marriage, and euthanasia. It's almost like they think that St. Peter isn't qualified to do the whole Judge, Jury, Executioner bit.
The truth is this, the Republican Party doesn't have much to be afraid of. The Democrats will do as they've done in the past, Fix the Problems by raising taxes and making responsible investments in jobs creation and infrastructure projects. Then once the problems are fixed and all is well in the world the Republicans will run against them saying those taxes and investments are harmful, oh and look, THE GAYS!!! That's right, once everyone is educated, employed, and enjoying the fruits of economic bliss they'll allow a Republican to ride in on a wedge issue and fuck it up again. Then we'll be writing about the problems of the Democratic Party.
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The want to make sure that you're not able to make decisions about whats right and whats wrong or whats moral and whats just. They want the government to do it for you. What? Is God not doing enough in the afterlife? If God truly believed that Abortion is Murder wouldn't he punish the sinner for eternity in the next life?
This is also why government should not have laws against rape. It should be up to every man to determine for himself whether or not he needs to respect a woman's wishes when she says "no." If God disapproves, He will take care of it later.
(That was sarcasm, by the way).
The only way that the statement you made could make sense is from a standpoint that abortion really isn't killing a human being, meaning that you are begging the question. Or, I suppose, you simply have not seriously considered the possibility that people actually view abortion as killing a human beong.
November 12, 2008 9:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I very much understand the viewpoint that abortion is possibly killing a human being. But the question, I guess, that all of us have is: Are the coagulated cells a human being yet? I can truly say that I don't know. And for certain, no one really knows what is the truth in the eyes of God. That's what makes the decision so complex and the argument so great. It stems from a place of unknown and so many folks on both sides of this issue purport to be absolutely correct. My thought is the life of a fetus is a firm MAYBE. Now I wouldn't want to have a child of mine aborted, or a child of my child. But for me that isn't a decision that is the government's to make. In my estimation it is a decision for those that are a conduit for that life to occur. They're the ones that will proverbially have to live with that life or death decision.
You're right though, there is a little moral extremism in the case that I make.
November 12, 2008 9:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
"And for certain, no one really knows what is the truth in the eyes of God."
And bringing 'God' into it at all shows that this is a religious matter, which should be covered by freedom of religion. We don't bring up 'God' in a discussion of rape or murder, do we? Of course not.
But there's no way you can consider a fertilized egg to be a legal person WITHOUT invoking your personal religious beliefs. That's why we should leave any punishment for abortion to the hypothetical afterlife. If your god hates it, presumably he'll punish you for it then. Here on Earth, it should be considered a religious issue and therefore up to each individual conscience.
November 13, 2008 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do the rights of the coagulated cells predominate the rights of the raped teenage daughter?
Enjoy.
November 13, 2008 3:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
THE GAYS!!! That's right, once everyone is educated, employed, and enjoying the fruits of economic bliss they'll allow a Republican to ride in on a wedge issue and fuck it up again.
"The gays" is a wasting asset. Every day that goes by, homophoebia becomes more of a joke. Television, for better or worse, plays a huge role in the cultural mores of low info America. Many television shows have gay characters, but more important is how they're portrayed. For example, the American version of "The Office". Every time the gay character is shown, the punchline is always the stupid, awkward and backwards attitude of the office manager. A subtle, but even more telling aspect is another running gag - the office manager's latent homosexual tendencies.
This kind of portrayal has a very clear subliminal message: If you are homophoebic, you're probably a latent homosexual in denial.
I've noticed this metamorphosis even among hardcore Limbaugh macho types. They still want to prove to the world that they're straighter than straight, but to do so, they have to have a modern attitude towards gays.
This is reinforced by multiple news items - Ted Haggard, Senator Craig, Mark Foley, etc. etc. etc. - all frantically and vocally condemning homosexuality only to be exposed as hypocrites.
We're at the same point in the gay saga that we were at in the late 60s when two movies came out: "In The Heat of the Night" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner". That was the turning point in the acceptability of racism - even in the south.
Getting back to your original point, by the time the Republicans have another chance to use the gay wedge issue it may well backfire.
November 13, 2008 5:10 PM | Reply | Permalink