David A. Schwinghammer, click here
to update your web pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by David A. Schwinghammer
Independent Voters Need to Pick a Side 6/11/2012 8:12:47 AM
There's a vast difference between GOP ideologues and the Democratic Party.
The recent recall election in Wisconsin was instructive in that independent voters carried the day for Scott Walker. Who knows what their reasoning was. The democrats didn’t run the strongest candidate. Walker had already defeated Mayor Barrett of Milwaukee in the previous election and perhaps they felt Walker shouldn’t have to run again. Or maybe they fell for the GOP reasoning that private sector pensions and health care benefits were not competitive. Apparently independent voters haven’t noticed what modern capitalism is doing with pensions and health care. Everything is bottom line these days. And if those voters have pensions and insurance through their employers, they won’t have them long. If they want to keep their jobs. Unions are dying faster than dodo birds. Independent voters need to make up their minds. You don’t vote for Michelle Bachmann in the congressional election and turn around and vote for Barack Obama. 2010 voters sent people like Chip Cravaack to congress. He was a former veteran and airline pilot who retired because of sleep apnea. He also claimed to be a member of a union when he was a pilot. Union members don’t support the Republican party, much less run as one for congress. Cravaack also criticized James Oberstar, his predecessor, for living in Maryland. After he pulled off his stunning victory, Cravaack immediately moved his family to New Hampshire. He also belongs to Michelle Bachmann’s Tea Party caucus. That’s the bunch who would have shut down the government prior to the Christmas holiday if they could have had their way, causing your IRA to plummet into the nether world. I have a feeling independent voters don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference between the parties, the good old red devil blue devil notion that Khrushchev espoused. That’s just not the case, especially with the new far-right GOP that values ideology above people.
The GOP is homophobic, sexist, and anti-science. You need look no further than the proliferation of Marriage Act legislation. The constitutionalist party (that’s sarcastic) is willing to deny basic rights to American citizens. There’s no reason why gays can’t get married. Marriage between same sex partners is not catching. The GOP and their fundamentalist religious allies would have you believe that homosexuality is a matter of choice. As my eighth graders would say, “Duh!” Women are also being denied basic human rights. Republicans are fighting equal pay legislation and contraception rights. Apparently women are supposed to stay home and have babies. Which would explain Rick Santorum’s appeal. Republicans are anti-science in respect to such areas as global warming and stem cell research, which could cure paralysis and make organ donors unnecessary. Guess what? Republicans oppose therapeutic cloning, too.
Republicans are also anti-education. Reagan’s “Nation at Risk” distorted reality, claiming America was at competitive risk economically because of the deplorable state of American high schools. Today the national media seems to have latched onto that idea as fact, despite what I call the watermelons and raisons comparison. Finland is supposedly the number one country in the world educationally, especially in math and science. Finland treats its teachers like rock stars; Finland also has only five million people. Meanwhile Scott Walker denies negotiation rights for teachers in Wisconsin, and this is supposed to improve education in the state. Perhaps a more telling point is that our universities are the best in the world. Students from other countries clamor to come here. If our secondary schools are so terrible how do our universities manage to retain such stature?
Meanwhile the Republican alternative is home schooling and voucher systems, which are really plans to thwart the democratic base.
Perhaps the biggest reason not to vote Republican is their reliance on their fundamentalist Christian base. Come on, Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann? Wasn’t Sarah Palin bad enough? Do we really want to go back to the 19th century when women weren’t allowed to vote, blacks were lynched for looking at a white woman, and the robber barons did whatever they felt like. We also forget that there was no unemployment compensation and your savings were fair game during bank runs. Children were also forced to work.
Okay, enough of that. Let’s look at the democrats. Despite what Teabaggers might think, the democratic party passed social security, Medicare and Medicaid. They also passed the Civil Rights Act, Child Labor laws, and gave women the right to vote (They returned the favor by electing Warren G. Harding). Then there’s the G.I. Bill and the Marshall Plan. When American veterans returned from the wars in Europe and Japan they were compensated fairly. These days they have to beg for medical treatment, thanks to Republican austerity programs (which work so well in Europe). Republicans sent National Guard members to fight their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because they knew the draft wouldn’t work. All hell would have broken loose, just as it did in the sixties. Ironic considering George W. Bush couldn’t be bothered to fulfill his term in the National Guard.
These days we have a president who tried to get us single payer health care. Thanks to the democratic Blue Dogs that wasn’t possible, so he settled for a former Republican pan that would allow parents to cover their children under their own plans until they’re 26; it also prevented unions from turning people away with prior medical conditions. The Supreme Court, with five conservative judges, one who pretends to be a moderate, are about to declare “The Affordable Health Care” unconstitutional. If affirmed, so called Obamacare would save each citizen not qualified for Medicare or Medicaid approximately a thousand dollars a year. If overruled we’ll still be paying for those who go to the ER where they have to treat you. The main bugaboo seems to be the individual mandate which requires everyone to have health insurance. What the administration lawyers didn’t tell you is that we’re talking cataclysmic insurance here, with very high deductible. It’ll help you if you have cancer, but not if you break your arm. And you have a chance to choose between private health insurance and the federal plan, which will lower rates. Not too shabby.
Believe me, I can understand why some people are independent voters. They think they’re being fair. I voted for Reagan. I didn’t even know what conservatism was. I didn’t have a problem with Pat Robertson running for president. But that was because I was reading the sports pages and the funnies and ignoring the front page and the editorials. I beseech you, independent voters, do your job. Become informed before you go to vote. Don’t vote for a pit bull because he says he’s pro-life; he’s probably lying anyway. If you still decide to vote for Chip Cravaack or a Republican bully who cut off a gay student’s hair when he was a teenager, I hope you can live with your conscience.
