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Rant 711: Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Republican

10/22/2022

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It is difficult in a limited space to document all of the innumerable duplicities that the Republican Party is showering down on the electorate. Here is a small sample:
 
Inflation 1. They blame Joe Biden for rising prices, but defend oil company windfall profits and conveniently ignore the pandemic (aggravated by Trump’s denials and incompetence), supply chain disruptions and Putin’s Ukraine war that created a global inflation epidemic. In Germany and the UK, for example, inflation is running at 10+ percent, higher than the U.S. rate.
 
Inflation 2. They also blame Biden for injecting too much money into the economy via the April 2021 American Rescue Plan, conveniently ignoring their own Tax Relief Act passed with bipartisan support only four months earlier that juiced the economy to the tune of $900 billion.
 
Inflation 3. Republicans’ inflation reduction plan calls for—wait for it—tax cuts for the wealthy without paying for them. Yet again arguing (for the umpteenth time since “Reaganomics” first reared its ugly head) that the trickle-down hooey that has been proven wrong every time would benefit the masses and jack up federal tax revenues. In addition to fitting in with the definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results) this would, of course, only aggravate inflation. Note: This is the same bonehead proposal that brought down UK Prime Minister Liz Truss after only six weeks at Number 10.
 
Crime 1. Republican candidates on the November ballot have turned to crime as one of the  leading issues with which they are bashing their Democratic opponents. This is rich coming from the party that has beatified the Second Amendment and advocated that every American be encouraged to carry an assault weapon everywhere they go. What did they think would happen if guns were everywhere? Meanwhile, mass shootings continue to rise, killing both Republicans and Democrats without distinction. The Republican position is that guns don’t kill and more guns don’t kill more.
 
Crime 2. Crime-fighting Republicans see no double standard in raging against high crime in Democratic-controlled cities while ignoring the data that show that rural, red state crime is skyrocketing.
 
Crime 3. Republicans see no evil in their completely lawless criminal leader snatching the most highly classified and super-sensitive national security documents extant and spiriting them off to his Florida resort which, for six years now, has been the target of virtually every intelligence service on the planet.
 
Crime 4. 205 House Republicans voted against mental health grants to schools after insisting that mass school shootings happen not because of easy access to guns, but rather because of students with mental health problems.
 
Abortion. They eagerly embraced the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and lauded states that subsequently embraced a total ban on abortions, only to take to the hills after their take-no-prisoners anti-abortion talk prompted serious voter concern about their extreme positions.
 
Disaster Relief. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis begged President Biden for billions in federal disaster relief after Hurricane Ian laid waste to the Gulf Coast. Yet in 2013, when DeSantis was in Congress, he voted to deny disaster aid to New York and New Jersey following the devastation of Hurricane Sandy.
 
Shameless Louses 1. Despite a straight party line vote against the American Rescue Plan, congressional Republicans are taking credit for the Plan funds flowing into their districts.
 
Shameless Louses 2. Despite voting against the Infrastructure bill, congressional Republicans are taking credit for infrastructure projects in their states and districts made possible by the bill.
 
GAGA, but not for MAGA. Although Republican officeholders proclaim that they have the interests and values of their MAGA voters at heart, they have done nothing to help those same voters. They are still obsessed with sending seniors to the poorhouse by slashing Social Security and Medicare and defending exorbitant drug prices charged by Big Pharma. They remain pro-corporation and anti-labor. They oppose food stamps for the poor. Any help the MAGA base has received came from Democrats.
 
Immigration. They denounce Democrats for “open borders” while opposing any legislation designed to tackle the immigration problem.
 
Election “Integrity.” They lie claiming a stolen election notwithstanding 62 court decisions that found no evidence of such, and invent solutions for this non-existent problem so that they can lay a foundation for stealing future elections.
 
Democracy. They claim they are defending democracy while planning for an authoritarian future.
 
The list could go on.
 
The Republican Party poses an existential threat to America. This dangerous collection of quislings and charlatans should not be allowed to subvert our democratic republic. The only way to stop them is at the polls. Go vote!
 
Dick Hermann
October 22, 2022

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    Richard Hermann is the author of thirteen books, including Encounters: Ten Appointments with History and, most recently, Mother's Century: A Survivor, Her People and Her Times. Soon to be released is his upcoming Close Encounters with the Cold War, a personal reflection on growing up in the nuclear age. He is a former law professor and entrepreneur, and the founder and president of Federal Reports, Inc., a legal information and consulting firm that was sold in 2007. He has degrees from Yale University, the New School University, Cornell Law School and the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School. He lives with his wife, Anne, and extraordinary dog, Barkley, in Arlington, Virginia and Canandaigua, New York.

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