How to Fool a Republican

Take an issue, one that may even make a bit of sense on the surface such as making English the national language. I mean, 84 percent of us speak it as our native language. It appeals to a lot of people and it is a seemingly easy fix...

Except there's no problem. Even those for whom English is a second language are calling the proposal to make English our official language after two hundred thirty years without one "reactionary" and "cultural nativism". The latter, by the way, is the tag for Conservatives who, sons and daughters of immigrants, are against further immigration. So if you live in Saint Francis (San Francisco), Saint Joseph (San Jose), School Mountain (Schulenberg, Texas), High Ground (Terre Haute, Indiana), Mill-mountain county (Muhenberg County, Kentucky), or even the state of Dark and Bloody Ground (Kentucky), or Red Colored (Colorado), you may want to stop and think of the stupidity of the Senate using their time to debate this openly frivolous issue while we have greater tasks at hand.

I mean, there's the chance that gay marriage could destroy every hetero marriage in the country. Now there's an issue the Republicans can sink their dentures into.

It's easy to fool a Republican. Take a wedge issue such as immigration, a national language or gay marriage and convince them it's more important than domestic espionage, China foreclosing on our national debt or spiraling oil prices. The wedge issues will get them back, rescue the Shrub from the results of his own incompetence and keep the Dems out of the leadership of the Congress. They'll believe in the one in a billion shot as the benevolence of the angry God they worship while denying all the scientific evidence that their SUV, the one with the fish on the back, is warming the globe dangerously. They are launching a campaign aimed to do exactly that with global warming, presenting the false dilema of a pre-industrial world where all labor is manual and all transportation on foot or the current world of wasted energy as if there's no middle ground. And it will fool a number of Republicans, sheep in the hands of the wolves who feed off them while posing as their watchful shepherds.

Just as tax cuts fool them. They'll gladly give a millionaire a $45,000 annual boost in their incomes, oblivious to the fact that when you give rich greedy men more money all you get is richer greedy men, while accepting a $20 tax cut and believing it's somehow stimulating the economy. They'll lose more than that in inflation caused by the national debt devaluing the dollar and making foreign goods, the kind we buy by the billions at Wal-Mart, more expensive.

The false patriotism of the Right fools them as well. They fly the flag, preach God and country and a strong national defense, staying the course and supporting our troops while cutting $500 million in Veterans' benefits. Somewhere there's a vet, possibly of Vietnam, of Gulf War 1 or even this one who will be denied services to give the Right's millionaire buddies $45,000 per year and to build 370 miles of fence to protect a 2000 mile border. Even Dr. Who's TARDIS can't make that space-time distortion work. In the actual bill, in exchange for the $500 million for veterans, we got $500 million in pork. While I'd love to have a bike path under Hampden Avenue, I'd rather a veteran, of which I'm one, to have the benefits. I can cross the street. The veteran I'm thinking of may not even be able to walk.

From domestic spying through tax cuts through torture at Guantanamo through protection of the flag through official languages through almost any issue, the masters of the Republican party have become masters at painting their sins and prevarications as progress and patriotism. They are neither. It's just they have a group of willing dupes, the hard core, the 25% who still supported Nixon on the day he left office. That base must be very easy to fool. They keep voting Republican.