Short Term Memory Loss

Mark your calendars.  It's only 86 days until another Continuing Resolution is needed to keep the government operating . . .  and 109 days until the debt ceiling imbroglio raises its ugly head once again.  Apparently, polling as of yesterday indicates that 43% of the voting population still consider themselves as Republicans and I ask myself why?   After carefully musing over this question, I slap my head as the answer appears in a bold headline right across the window of my brain;  ‘Republicans Suffer from Short Term Memory Loss!’   During the latest Republican exercise in taking our system of government to the brink of disaster, a selective loss of memory occurred time and time again in a substantial portion of the public resulting in a fearful feeding frenzy about long term debt and short term Obamacare.  Republicans tend to forget that it was the Republican Party that cut taxes at the same time the country went into unfunded wars in two countries and passed a likewise unfunded part D of Medicare (which was nothing more than a gift to the pharmaceutical industry).  Thus it was necessary and essential to spend money to attempt to restore the economic climate of the country as Obama took over.

These efforts fed into the litany of Calgary Cruz, et al as support for their unconstitutional intransigence.  Never before has a political party hijacked the government because they did not like the laws that were passed.  As Jon Stewart on the Daily Show commented, it was like a football team losing a game 31-6 and then claiming victory.  The immediate crisis may be over, but we've merely dodged a single bullet and kicked the can down the road for too brief a period of time. We haven't seen the last of the Tea Party, and the depths of their destructive potential has hardly been touched.  With guaranteed safe enclaves in their gerrymandered districts, they are assured of returning to Congress. With a percentage of voters immune to empathy for their fellow citizens and resentful of welfare recipients (Apparently all of them are moochers, even the 27% of our nation's children who go to bed each night hungry) the Tea Party will be well represented in the national picture.   They will move to other issues; immigration, abortion, civil rights, voting rights, environmental regulation, the progressive income tax, open carry, and the teaching of creationism in public schools, to name but a few.  Even mainstream Republicans have reacted
 with horror at what has been created.  Let us all hope that their short term memories serve them better the next time around.

Just saying . . .