A Word on Party Loyalty: Wherefore Harrogate Cringes at Bloomburg and, Albeit to a Lesser Extent, Obama

Why does Harrogate Cringe? Wherefore Party Loyalty? A matter of a little something Harrogate likes to call If-Then propositions.

If ye understand, as Harrogate does, that the mainstream GOP as it is currently configured represents what is most base about America. That it is a Party Demarcarted by Violence and Repression on the economic, social, and foreign policy fronts equally.

The list is long. That some require its listing is unfortunate, after all this nation has been through. That some continue to believe in GOP officials as individuals rather than as representatives of something bigger than any one of them, is unfortunate also. That people want to say it is Bush that we rail against, when really it was always the GOP writ large and for which he so magnificently stands, may be the saddest of all.

There is in the GOP an intrinsic loathing of government programs, excepting the police and military element. Hell, they run for office on platforms preaching that government can solve no problems except military ones. They appoint incompetents to head agencies, and then when the agencies screw things up, they say see, government doesn't work. Draconian faith in mandatory minimum sentencing defines the Republican Party from the top down.

A kick the door in foreign policy that maintains you are a dove if you don't buy into their warped cravings for ideological manifestation. Harrogate, like most Democrats, is no dove. He only humbly requests that military action be driven by necessity, not saving face, or experimentation, or economic aggrandazation, or as a method of consolidating political power stateside.

There are of course the "Values" Republicans, who exploit working class peoples throughout the nation by preying on what is worst in us. Hatred, fear of difference: Homophobia, racism, sexism, loathing of the arts except in their most commodifiable form, these are a few of their favorite things.

But the Heritage Foundation contingent, the economic conservatives--and yes, this includes George Will (and from what Harrogate knows about him, Bloomburg) are the worst of all. Consolidate media into fewer and fewer hands. Champion more and more concentration of wealth, in fewer and fewer hands. Drawlers of the bootstrap narrative, preeners of individual responsibility as they continually manufacture and exploit loophoples in the tax code. Ralph Nader, ass that he is, had a point when he asked, why don't we tax speculation? Indeed. A symbolic question that can be extended to interrogate the entire eco-con movement. Hatred of unions. Hatred of the FCC except in its capacity for punishing wardrobe malfunctions. And yea and verily, the list goeth on.

If ye understand all this. Instead of pinning it all on George W. Bush. Or instead of stupidly conflating the Clinton and Bush Administrations. If ye grasp that for all its flaws, cowardices, and Right of Center tendencies, the mainstream Democratic Party at the very least offers sanity, and shreds of decency in the way of foreign, social, and economic policy. But this election is not about the Democratic Party as much as it is about getting off the reckless course we are currently pursuing. It is all about endgame. "My friends," we must remove the indecency, the insanity, from the White House.

If ye are in touch with these truths, THEN ye will not be able to help but smile at arguments that say hey, they just have different ideas, let's get together and work things out. The notion of the GOP coming to the table in good faith because Bloomburg or Obama or anyone else asks them to.

Now, it is important to note the biblical truth of forgive them Father, for they know not what they do. Many Republican voters are being gamed. Only a cacophony of pissed-of voters in their own ranks, is going to make them change their ways, from the bottom up. Citizens tired of being exploited. The best thing Harrogate can say about Barack Obama is, he is the best possibility for effecting that particular result that we have left.

But conversely, Hillary Clinton has consitently demonstrated an exponentially more comprehensive grasp of the dangers the GOP poses, and has made a far more cogent case for why the Democratic Party is better. Yes, like all of them, she is ambitious and believes. Yes, she believes, like Harrogate, that she is the best most competent available choice left for President. But in the end, she is also a Party Loyalist through and through, and God love her for it. She knows that Obama, for all his immense political skill (obviously his political skills are more pronounced than hers, he may even be more skilled than Bill Clinton or George W. Bush--time will tell), simply isn't going to get that result solely by being positive.

At some point Obama will have to let his "claws come out," and tell these Red State voters the truth about what is being done with them. And the truth aint purty.

More on this in the not-so-distant future.