Massive Republican Fail

Well, the Republicans sure did fight for their beliefs last week, didn’t they? Quite an impressive move standing up for CEOs during the first bailout, then attacking the workingman during the second bailout. It takes either a huge set of balls or being so distanced from reality that they don’t realize they have once again, decreased their followers. It will certainly backfire, as everything the Republicans do these days seems to.

It is hilariously heinous and a sign of the morally bereft that they would actually claim that Detroit’s autoworkers are paid too much, while also claiming the rich are taxed too much? How fucked up of a human being do you have to hold such fucked up beliefs. They are no better than vermin.

Take the simple minded Tennessee Senator Bob Corker. Bobby believes the horrible unions should accept “parity” with workers from his state. By “parity” he means the workingman should make less, like in his state, where autoworkers of foreign car companies live with discriminatory, anti-labor laws designed to keep wages low. Notice Bob didn’t say this about Wall Street. He failed to mention the insane CEO salaries and ridiculous bonuses of the banking crowd. No, it’s the workingman getting ahead that is dragging our country down. Yes, we need workers to make less money. That is obviously the problem with the auto companies. I can see no other problems. None at all. Other than the horrible unions, the Big 3 put the A in awesome.

So, the answer is to drive down the wage of blue-collar, mostly black workers. Hopefully, at some point, the wages of the workingman in this country will be on par with those in Mexico. Then the companies would really thrive! Hey, Bob, why don’t you make the same as a city councilman in Des Moines? Wouldn’t the federal budget be better off if you Senators weren’t making so much money? Don’t be greedy, Bob. You’re killing your country. Just take the pay cut down to the level of a guy living in a different place, but working in the same business.

Here’s an insane idea: Workers who produce things of value deserve a decent living. I know. It’s like I just wrote the words of Satan. Jesus would be disgusted. It’s also become more and more obvious in the past week that the only way for the workingman to achieve a decent living is through unions. That’s why they exist — because of assholes like Bob Corker.

The auto companies have actually been turning things around. The unions have made quite a few concessions over the past two years and GM, Ford and Chrysler cars are matching the quality of Japanese cars consistently. No excuse can be made for the insane over-production of gas-guzzlers. But the credit crunch is what really killed them, not the unions.

So, why does my headline say this is a massive Republican fail? They blocked the bailout, didn’t they? That will kill the union, won’t it? No.

Bush will bail out the auto companies, mostly because Hoover wouldn’t have. Keeping people employed in times like this is how you avoid a great depression, allowing millions to lose their jobs in this kind of teetering economy is what leads to great depressions. Anyone who knows how to read should understand that. So, Bush will do the right thing and bail out the auto companies — and there will be no strings attached.

Everything the Republicans wanted they will not get. The unions agreed to meet the Republicans demands, but just not in the time frame the Republicans wanted. Now that is gone. There won’t be a “car czar,” there won’t be a plan to place the burden of the bailout on workers, instead of upper management. Basically, Democrats are going to get the auto bailout they wanted from day one. Republicans won’t get shit.

No, actually, that’s not true. They will get something: The loss of support of many, many people in the Midwest whose lives rely on the auto industry. Those people have all watched as southern Republican Senators attempted to protect the interests of foreign-owned auto manufacturers with companies in their states. They watched as Republicans blatantly decided it was more important to blame the workers than the management that had made shitty decisions for years, while they took huge salaries. Republicans have literally come to a place where they are fighting against American manufacturing. That’s an insane stance to take in our country.

The Republicans just withdrew even more into the south. Good luck winning Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota ever again. If they had made a decent, reasonable argument to oppose the bailout, they may have had a chance. But they didn’t. They offered no clear explanation of the dangers of failure. They only attacked the unions. One conservative blogger put it succinctly:

I keep thinking about Mitch McConnell saying yesterday that he’ll oppose the bailout even though it’s “impossible to know” what the consequences of bankruptcy would be. Hey, Mitch? Not good enough. No one’s asking for absolute certainty on the outcome, which really is impossible; what I want is a good-faith attempt at assessing costs, benefits, and probabilities of all courses of action.

But make the case. Explain to me why, in the middle of a global economic crisis, propping up a failing industry to save jobs at least until the crisis is over is a worse option than pulling the plug now. The prospect of being taxed to support a $100 billion rescue of the auto industry is awful, but not nearly as awful as the cascade effect of consumer purchasing power drying up and me losing my job as part of a $500 billion hit to the economy. Is that what we’re looking at here or is it something less, or more.

They did not. Because this was not about the economy, or doing what is best for the country. This was about the sticking with exact same rigid ideology that created the Great Depression and stubbornly ignoring the obvious lessons learned from Hoover's and Mellon's tactics. They are literally attempting repeat the exact policies that led to the Great Depression. Next they'll try to balance the budget during this mess, because Hoover was right!

Republicans only attacked the unions. The workingman is under assault, which just happens to be the Republican bread and butter. Democrats won't lose any of their base pursuing the action everyone expects them to take. Republicans will. This was a shockingly stupid political move to say the least.


FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday for more from FearTheReaper and read his blog, Stop All Monsters.

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