The Republican Party is a conservative party in a time when conservatism has lost much of its appeal. The base of the conservative movement is over 65 and, without putting too fine a point on it, is dying off. The boomers are a split group politically, while the Generation X-millennial cohort wants nothing to do with the movement that brought them the Iraq war and the Great Recession. During the 2014 campaign, now entering its home stretch, they have not even bothered to make this a campaign of issues, because they know perfectly well that the issues are against them. One of their leading media mouthpieces, second-generation hack John Podhoretz, has gone so far as to speculate in print that this failure may even end up costing them control of the Senate. And he may even be right.
But that hasn't stopped the Greedy Old Party from playing its Number One political trump card: fear.
You can barely open your shrinking newspaper, play with your remote or click on your mouse without tripping over the latest effort to scare you into voting Republican. Fear of Ebola. Fear of an assassination attempt on the President, or other public officials. And, of course, when all else fails, there's always the magic terrorist button to push. Down in Arkansas, where Tom Cotton is trying to unseat long-time Democratic Senator Mark Pryor, this button is being pushed to a ridiculous extent. This race is still close in the polls, so it remains to be seen how well this strategy will work.
But the precedent set by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the wake of 9/11 should be very much in everyone's minds when someone tries to turn your ballot into a panic button. They launched a senseless war that bankrupted our Treasury and tore apart a country of seething factions, all because they wanted to look for non-existent weapons. And what happened to those factions, once the "democratic" government we imposed showed signs of collapsing. At least some portions of them morphed into ISIS. To which we are now being once again asked to respond with fear. And more boots on the ground. And more money that we don't have. And so on.
Let me be blunt. Obama didn't create ISIS; Bush and Cheney did. And Ebola has been a health menace long before Obama reached the White House. And the intruders in the White House might not have made it in as far as they did had sequestration not denied the Secret Service an additional 500 agents (a story you'll find on the Internet, but not on our so-called "liberal" mainstream media). Just as we might have had a head start on dealing with Ebola had the Senate, with the help of the National Rifle Association, turned the President's nomination for Surgeon General into a political sideshow. (One wishes, in fact, that Obama would do this, but it's too theatrical for him). If you feel that you have a reason to be afraid, here's a dirty little secret for you: the people pushing fear are the ones who gave you a reason to be afraid.
So do yourself and everyone you know a big favor. Don't cave in to their craven, cowardly attempts to manipulate you. Stand up. Speak up. Talk to your friends, your co-workers, your family, your neighbors, total strangers if you have to. Remind them of the old expression "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." And then remind them that we've been fooled by these people triple-digit times. And that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting a different result.
If you do all that, it just might work. It just might save the country. And yourself.
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