Americans Embrace the Party of No

Well it’s a suck day for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Sestak lost, Onorato lost, the Democrats lost the state House and nationally, the US House. Expect more gridlock. Despite the fact that this administration, in two years, has done much to correct the failed policies of the previous one- the economy is, in fact, expanding. The middle class pays, in fact, less in taxes- because of the erroneous perceptions of Mr. and Mrs. Average American, fueled by a mountain of misinformation made possible by the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision wherein money equals free speech and mainlined into their brain via Fox News, as a whole, we will have to muddle through with uninformed idealogues who believe that God loves you if you’re rich. But there’s no help for you if you’re poor, or black, or a woman, or a child, or not Christian.

According to a Bloomberg poll, a majority of Republicans are dead sure they’re paying more taxes, and that the economy has shrunk on Obama’s watch. It’s not true. Yet it fueled anger that ushered in a gaggle of new Republican representatives, sent there, according to Sarah Palin and Mitch McConnell, to stop Obama. That’s the agenda.

According to CNN, the divide in the electorate is wide:

“Exit polls show Americans are divided on some issues: 68 percent of Democrats say government should be doing more, while 81 percent of Republicans say government should be doing less. On health care, 61 percent of Democratic voters want health care expanded, and 82 percent of Republican voters say the recently passed law should be repealed.”

And only in Bizarro World are health insurance companies the good guys. Is it any wonder that the same folks so willing to believe the worn-out mantras of their party are the same people who believe that Obama is a Muslim?

As Timothy Egan put it in his NY Times column, “It’s not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.”

There are still people out there who believe that the attacks on 9/11 were carried out in cahoots with Saddam Hussein, and rationalized the invasion of Iraq. It’s almost laughable if the consequences of such monumental ignorance weren’t so tragic.