The 2010 midterm race is shaping up to be another silly election where people get so mad at the Washington establishment they line up to vote their own futures and jobs away.
Americans voted for change two years ago, but they are impatient. Now they are ready to go in a completely different direction. Many voters today seem fixated on a meaner version of change. I’m talking about the Tea Party candidates.
I can’t blame anyone for wanting to vote a politician out of office. Picking candidates has become a choice between bad and worse. Money has polluted the political system and a lot of times, both sides seem corrupt.
And at best for years now, most of the efforts of both parties have seemed like exercises in futility. If you ask me, the Republicans haven’t fielded good candidates since Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. The last great president we had was Franklin Roosevelt. And the last truly great piece of legislation that Congress can claim was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The right-wingers have been trying to overturn it ever since.
But this is the price we pay for democracy; Americans deserve what they get. How else could we have managed eight years of Bush?
This is how silly Americans are: Joe Barton, a Republican congressman from Texas publicly apologizes to British Petroleum (BP) for being shaken down for restitution to Louisianans. But if the Republicans get the majority, Barton is likely to return to his post as chair of the House Energy and Commerce committee.
Americans deserve the last decade of losing jobs, bailouts, and corporate greed. These days right wing propaganda comes disguised as entertainment. What started out as colorful conservative viewpoints on Fox News have over time degenerated into open displays of hatred for an American president and outright calls for revolution.
It seems like it’s the same cast of characters: Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck to name a few, all using the cynical tactics to rile up the masses. They promise tax cuts and limited government. They demonize illegal immigrants and gay people. Some of these new Republicans are so extreme you think that they would be happy to turn the clock back to the Puritan Age.
I guess it’s clear by now I have little faith in American voters. I still cross my fingers that they will at least bother to read a newspaper before they vote.
