HOW THE GOP FOOLED THE ENTIRE COUNTRY

Much of what Republicans have said and done over the past six years has been nothing short of mind-bending.

But the strategy they employed in taking control of the Senate during the recent mid-terms goes beyond the merely jaw-dropping or politically cynical. In its intent to manipulate the visceral fears, visceral resentments and long-held racial/cultural prejudices of a demographic that sees its relative numbers---and, thus, power---diminishing at what seems like light-speed, it approaches the dubious status of a pathological lie knowingly projected as objective reality onto a national screen.

The lie, of course, is that responsibility for the partisan gridlock in Washington, the inability of the Congress to get anything accomplished other than the naming of a few post offices, the paralysis of the American political system which has had paralyzing effects on the country itself, lies at the feet of the president and Harry Reid.

Jimmy Williams, a native South Carolinian and Citadel graduate who serves as a Democratic political consultant when taking time off from his day job as a political commentator, recently opined that Mitch McConnell and his GOP buddies have a singular focus (and it has nothing to do with policy): “They are obsessed---consumed---with denying Barack Obama any policy victories or strategic successes that he could turn into a legacy. They don’t like him. They don’t want him to be president. And, until the day he leaves office, they are committed to tarnishing any of his administration’s positive achievements in service of their greater goal of delegitimizing his presidency.”

That, of course, resonates with what we now know happened on the night of the president’s first inauguration when, instead of attending the gala events celebrating the nation’s first African-American president, the Republican power elites met at a high-end Washington establishment---the Caucus Room---to begin planning the process by which they would, in Mitch McConnell’s now infamous words, “insure that this will be a one-term president.”

According to Robert Draper, in his book Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives, and confirmed by New Republic writer Alec MacGillis in his new biography of Mitch McConnell, The Cynic, the plan was to block every single legislative policy proposal made by the new president, thereby bringing the country to a virtual halt. This would, of course, undermine---“sabotage” might be a better word---any hope of a quick, meaningful economic recovery following the 2008 Financial Meltdown and would, thus, set the stage for a Republican takeover of both Capitol Hill and the White House in 2012.

One supposes that there was no discussion that night or in the ensuing days about how four years of legislative obstruction might further the financial uncertainty and insecurity of the American middle- and working-classes, not to mention America’s poor. Or, about how it might dash the retirement dreams of hundreds of thousands of fifty-somethings as well as the career dreams of hundreds of thousands of twenty-somethings.

But a discussion of that supposition is perhaps for another day. Or, more probably, given that Republicans and their minions have not, in the past six years, either introduced or supported a single piece of legislation directed at helping anyone other than the wealthiest of the wealthy, not.

In the six years since their plotting began, the Republican Clown Show in the U.S. House and the GOP Caucus in the U.S. Senate have meticulously followed every detail of the plan, including the addition made by Jim DeMint---by then having resigned his Senate seat in order to transition the Heritage Foundation from a sometimes respectable conservative “think-tank” into a purely political mouthpiece for far-right elements and big-money interests of the Republican Party---in the run-up to the presidential election of 2012, when he sent every congressional Republican a letter advising him/her to “investigate and litigate, but don’t legislate.” In other words, don’t allow the country to do anything other than tread water but cover your malfeasance with a flurry of headline-grabbing “investigations” of phony “scandals.”

Thus, while John Boehner and his Clown Show were spending over $55 million of taxpayer funds to vote over 50 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they were refusing to allow presidential initiatives intended to spur economic growth and create jobs---the American Jobs Act, the Infrastructure Bank Bill, to name two---to even be discussed in committee, much less brought to the floor for a vote. They were also sending over 300 DOA deregulatory bills (gutting environmental, worker rights, worker safety, and wage guarantee regulations)---most passed on straight, party-line votes---to the Senate and, with straight faces, terming them “economic growth” and “job-creating” bills.

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell was authoring over 550 filibusters in the Senate. To put that into perspective, consider that Lyndon Johnson, during his six years as Majority Leader of the Senate, faced one filibuster.

McConnell, smilingly taking pride in his obstructionist efforts, began to reference himself as “the guardian of gridlock” and even admitted that the gridlock for which he and his fellow Republicans were responsible was meant to fulfill the goal set by him and other GOP leaders on the night of the president’s first inauguration; i.e., to make him a “one-term president” and/or to deny him any presidential legitimacy.

While spectacularly unsuccessful in their effort to achieve those two goals, it cannot be denied that Boehner, McConnell and their fellow members of the Crazy Caucus were spectacularly successful at using government paralysis to minimize recovery gains for those Americans most hurt by the recession and maximize recovery gains for those wealthy Americans who have actually profited from the economy’s decimation.

Which makes it all the more amazing that, when Republicans sat down to devise their political plan for the 2014 mid-terms, they decided, on the one hand, to proudly take credit for the gridlock/obstruction that prevented the president’s policy proposals from even receiving a hearing in Congress while, on the other hand, blaming the president for the very gridlock/obstruction for which they were proudly taking credit.

Hence, the truth of the lie: Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and the Republican power/money structure swept the 2014 mid-terms by fooling Americans into believing that the president was responsible for the only Republican success of the past six years---bringing the country to a complete halt.