government over some phony propaganda videos about Planned Parenthood. It’s about obsessively attacking a modest health-care expansion and giving big tax breaks to corporations and billionaires at the expense of our schools and roads and state parks.
Most of all, the Republican brand is about a lot of destructive anger – at immigrants, at the government and civil servants, at black people and poor people and Muslim Americans.
Some of that destructive energy is taking a toll on Republican politicians like Walker and Boehner. And it threatens to immolate the party itself.
For decades, a right-wing propaganda campaign has been claiming, falsely, that our public institutions are no good, inefficient and wasteful, and that they should be handed over to private business. Part of the reason that message resonates with the public is that everyone has had a bad experience with bureaucracy; waiting in line at the DMV.
But here is something else Americans know from experience: In the deregulated private market, con artistry abounds. That’s why senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have struck a chord with their criticism of hucksterism on Wall Street. Credit card companies routinely take advantage of their customers. And millions of Americans know what it’s like to be ripped off by big banks and jerked around by health insurance companies. Fly-by-night voucher schools and shady charter-school operators are cashing in on public education funds by short-changing students.
Progressives need to stand up to this dystopian vision with better values: great public schools for each and every child, a well-maintained infrastructure and communities that are a great place to live for everybody – not just those rich enough to send their kids to private schools, buy up the prettiest land and build big walls to keep the rest of us out.
This article has been excerpted from: ‘Watching Republicans flail is not a strategy’.
Courtesy: Commondreams.org