Be careful what you ask for

The election hangover is coming.  For all those who voted to put Obama back in office for another four years, you asked for it. 

So let’s not hear any whining from Obama supporters.

Obama and the Democrats ran big on everyone paying their “fair share” of taxes, especially “the rich.”  They wanted to let the Bush Tax cuts expire for families making over $250,000 a year – the reviled 1% we’ve heard all about.  In fact, just the other day Obama claimed that his victory was a mandate on raising taxes on the wealthy.

If that’s what they want, I say let them do it.  Obama won the election and it’s time to give his supporters what they voted for, whether they like it or not. 

Go ahead, let the cuts expire for families making over $250,000 a year in return for extending the tax cuts for everyone else. 

But nothing more. 

When Chuck Schumer makes his pitch again to preserve those same “unfair” tax cuts for families making up to a million bucks a year, turn him down. 

Apparently, Chuckie’s constituents in New York make a lot more money than a paltry $250,000 a year.  Which, I guess, makes them the rarest of rare – “good” 1 percenters.  Too bad. 

If memory serves me, his constituents voted overwhelmingly for Obama.  We’re only giving them what they voted for. 

You want to raise taxes on the rich?  Well, you got it.  No exceptions.

Take the same approach to ObamaCare.  Don’t try to repeal it. 

Instead, remove all the exemptions and exceptions.  Like the carve out for unions.  The waivers for businesses in Nancy Pelosi’s district.  The Louisiana deal.  The Cornhusker Compromise.  All the side deals and special interest payoffs.   Strip them all out.  And bring the individual mandate back in full force.  No exceptions. 

But leave all the taxes in. 

Like the tax on medical devices companies on their gross sales, not their profits.  That will be applied to everything from Pacemakers to MRI machines; you’ll be paying for that, too.  There’s also an increase in the rate employers pay for their contribution to their employees’ Medicare. There are new caps on Flexible Spending Accounts.  And more.   Goes on and on.   

By removing all the exemptions and exceptions, we can make ObamaCare  “pure” again and see how much people like it.   Let everyone feel the full weight of it. 

Let everyone see how under ObamaCare employee benefits are now treated as taxable income.  Yes, that’s right, employees will soon start paying tax, personally, on the value of the healthcare benefits they get from their employer.  That’s probably going to cost them more than the “free” birth control pills they’ll get.  Bet those who voted for Obama didn’t know that.  Or that a whole bunch of other ObamaCare-related taxes are about to hit. 

They thought they were voting for “free” stuff.  They are in for a surprise.   

Next up, the payroll tax holiday.  Let that expire.  After all, we’re worried about funding Social Security – and not cutting that entitlement – so let’s let the working Joe and Jill kick into it, instead of just their employers.  Plus, people voted to raise taxes, according to the Democrats. 

Again, give them what they wanted.    

People tried valiantly to tell the public that nothing is free.  Someone has to pay for everything.  Yet they voted for the party that promised them more free stuff, and a bunch of new regulations and taxes – but they always assumed those would be on someone else. 

Surprise.  Bad assumption.  You will get precisely what you voted for. 

The Republicans and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Republicans are long on theory; short on marketing their ideas.  It would be good for them to revisit Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from time to time – it might be a valuable wakeup call.  

You remember the pyramid?  With the most fundamental physiological needs at the bottom, then safety and security?  Higher levels of that pyramid – more “psychological” needs like  love/belonging, self-esteem and confidence, and self-actualization are important, but less so. 

Basic needs are most important.  This seems to be lost on Republican policy-makers and those tasked with winning elections for Republicans. 

Right now, Republicans too often focus on a 50,000-foot perspective and on the very top of Maslow’s hierarchy – morality and self-actualization – when they need to be closer to the ground and address fundamental needs.

If someone is out of work and looking for a job, they want a job, not a discourse on the role of “job creators”; they don’t connect their need for a job with giving tax breaks to businesses.  Regulations may be hurting small businesses, but the general public doesn’t see how that affects them directly – nor do they see how reducing regulations will help them.  

If people are having trouble paying for food, they want food prices to come down, not a tax cut.  And if gas prices are killing them, they want something to bring gas prices down, not a long-term plan for improving domestic energy security. 

The same goes for ObamaCare – it is going to restrict freedom and access to the best care, plus it’s already raising insurance rates.  But the public  wants to believe that  somehow they’re going to get healthcare they can afford, and insurance companies won’t be able to kick them out if they get really sick, which seems like a pretty good thing to most.   

Stable jobs, financial security and health fall into the two most important – and fundamental – needs of Maslow’s hierarchy. 

Yet Republicans addressed these … how?

Personal responsibility?  Restricting abortion?  Reducing burdensome regulations?  Fighting ObamaCare mandates on birth control coverage as an attack on religious freedom?  Promoting tax cuts?  Reducing the Federal debt?  Smaller government? 

Who cares about these things if you don’t have a job, worry about losing your job, or live in fear of being wiped out financially if you get sick?  

It’s been said that one reason America hasn’t been more successful in third-world nations is that we consistently promote things that have little immediate relevance.  We offer things like hydroelectric plants and democracy down the road, when what those people need is food, clean water and safety right now.  Yes, electricity and democracy can lead – over time – to more food, cleaner water and greater safety, but in the present you can’t eat electricity or democracy.  

In much the same way, the Republican Party is pitching the wrong stuff for today’s voters.  Sure, the Republicans have the right ideas about a lot of things, if you take a long view, especially when it comes to limiting the reach of government, cutting spending, and the need for people to be more focused on providing for themselves than relying on government. 

That said, Republicans will never win the culture wars.  That ship has sailed.    The best they can hope for is to moderate its course to a more responsible path.  Gently. 

The 1950s are gone; we’re never going to go back to Ward and June Cleaver, Ozzie and Harriet, and the Waltons as family models.  The nuclear family of Mom, Dad, Butch and Wendy still exists but is becoming rarer.  There are more households headed by single parents than ever before, and more children born to single mothers than ever before, too.  People don’t go to church as often.  Nor do they stay married as long.  Promiscuity doesn’t bear the baggage it once did.  What used to be considered porn and in bad taste is on cable TV.  Hardly anyone cares if someone is gay or not.  Hispanics are on their way to being an ethnic majority.  And white Christian males aren’t driving the agenda anymore. 

These are fundamental changes in America.  You may not like all of them, but they are reality.  You can either accept them and move on, or fight them and lose.

Still, Republicans can win other more important wars.  However, only if they win elections.  With enough House and Senate seats it makes little difference who the President is.  If Republicans want to cut the size of government, reduce profligate spending, wean the public off entitlements, and get the economy under control, they must play small-ball politics for a while. 

By that I mean focusing on the base of Maslow’s hierarchy.  Address basic needs in a meaningful way.  It’s about real jobs, with real paychecks, for doing real work.  It’s about making sure people have access to healthcare they can afford.  It’s about making people feel safe and secure about their present, and their future. 

Don’t fall on your sword for more tax cuts for everyone, including the wealthy – not now – but try to hold the line where it’s politically expedient on tax increases; there’s a difference. 

And get real about immigration – recognize that’s there’s no way in Hell we’re ever going to deport 12 million people, and if Republicans don’t find a realistic path to citizenship for these folks, the Democrats will.

Do that and you can get the support you need for the big things.  But not until then.  

More advice to the Republican Party – kick the loons to the curb.

On this, you need to learn from the Democrats.  About 20% of the voting public is far left and about 20% is far right.  The far left are used to being a minority in American politics.  Since about 40% of the public claims to be conservative, the far left don’t expect to get everything they want every time.  However, for some reason, the far right think they should always get everything they want.   

When elections roll around, the far left of the Democrat party tends to be relatively quiet – they don’t want to screw up their chances for getting some of what they want.

Not so with the far right.  They crank it up.  It’s all or nothing. 

So most of the time the far right gets nothing.  Or sometimes a Pyrrhic victory that ultimately bites them in the butt when general elections come around.

In the primaries the far right pushes warriors for their causes.  In the general elections those warriors become martyrs.  They get crushed.  And who can blame the public for that?  When you have Republicans like Richard Mourdock claiming pregnancy from an act of rape is what “God intended,” or Todd Akin stating there’s such a thing as “legitimate rape” that prevents pregnancy, what do you expect? 

How stupid and insensitive can anyone be?  They may have thrilled the right-to-lifers, but their bone-headed comments exposed a dirty not-so-secret of the Republican Party – there are way too many nut jobs in their fold.  Nobody rational in the mainstream -- which includes a lot of Independents and otherwise conservative-leaning Democrats -- is going to take the Republican Party seriously until they clamp down on their loons. 

The Republican Party is always afraid to do this.  They seem incapable of parsing the differences among varying degrees of being a conservative.  In reality, a lot of people are conservative about some issues, and not so much on others. 

I’ll use myself as an example.  I am a registered Republican; have been for years.  I am generally conservative about a lot of things; somewhat liberal about other things, especially when it comes to social issues.  I vote in every election. 

And I’ll be completely honest with you – there are some folks in the Republican Party that scare the Hell out of me.  Some of them couldn’t lead me out of a burning building, much less get my vote. They embarrass me.   At the same time, they are embraced by some extremists in the Republican Party as “true conservatives,” and keepers of the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

Reagan must be rolling in his grave.  He was a fiscal conservative, but in truth also governed as a social moderate.  These latter-day Reagan wannabes have as much in common with Ronald Reagan as Mary Poppins did with Lizzie Borden.          

Still, too many Republican Party officials keep thinking their strength – their “base” – is the far right, the evangelicals, and the extreme social conservatives who want the red meat politicians to preach what they  already agree with.   No matter how off kilter that may be to what reality is, or, in the case of Akin, what actual science is.

Some prominent Democrat called that base the “flat earthers”; he’s pretty close to correct. 

Here’s the math Republicans need to understand:  yes, 40% of the public consider themselves to be conservative – but to different degrees, and that’s far short of a majority.  And majorities win elections.  Of that 40% conservative audience, no more than a quarter or a half of those are far right extremists; in fact, the number might be much lower than that. 

Given the numbers, why does the Republican Party pander to them?  Or even let them out of their cages? 

Every time an Akin or Mourdock speaks, they stab common sense in the heart.  Every time a Christine O’Donnell wins a primary you set yourselves up for failure. 

The real base of the Republican Party is made up of some of these folks, just some, but a lot more people who simply don’t believe that big government and wasteful spending are the answers to every problem.  They think their government should focus on what’s really important to them and their families – like keeping them safe, keeping them healthy, access to a good education, and getting and keeping a good job to provide for their family. 

They don’t need government to tell them what to do, what to think, who to hire, who to help, or who they should have a relationship with and what that relationship should be called. 

Are there enough of them in the Republican Party to win elections?  Not alone – you have to find more people like them outside the party to win.  The good news is they are there to be had. 

But as long as the party allows the loons to take center stage, and doesn’t muzzle the most extreme elements, Republicans don’t have a prayer. 

If you feed the squirrels, there will be more of them …

And they’ll expect more and more from you. 

That’s one lesson from the re-election of Obama to another four-year term. 

Those who want more free stuff voted for someone they thought would give it to them.  They didn’t want the other guy who might stop giving stuff away so freely. 

Screw who pays for it.  Like squirrels, they don’t care.  It’s free stuff and that’s all that matters. 

Giving away stuff – or merely appearing to be doing so – was a masterful stroke by the Democrats.  They made it seem that people could have anything they wanted, and never have to pay for it.  They treated the voting public like a bunch of spoiled brats and the public sucked it up.  Democrats were benevolent grandparents who doted on every whim their constituents desired – I’m surprised they didn’t promise everyone a pony and a bag of candy. 

But they were aided in this election by the Republicans, who once again showed an uncanny knack of refusing to recognize the blindingly obvious. So before the shooting inside the tent gets really started, here’s some less than subtle tips for the Republicans … 

Get off the abortion issue.  Roe v. Wade is the law of the land.  Get over it.  Now.  The Republican far right never seems to realize – or apparently care – that this is an immensely personal issue.  Government has no role to play, either for or against.  If you’re a Catholic or right-to-lifer opposed to abortion, that’s your right; but that does not allow you to decide what is right or wrong for other people.  You don’t know their circumstances, you don’t know their situation, and you are not in a position to act as God, nor remotely qualified to take on that role, despite what your priests or ministers may encourage you to believe. 

Most Americans already think abortion should be “legal, safe … and rare.”  You are never going to change their mind.  Ghastly photos, debates over the precise moment life begins, and screaming protests aren’t persuading anyone to your cause.   It’s done.   

If you persist in your efforts to ban all abortions, you will lose elections again and again.  Trying to backdoor the issue by incrementally banning abortions a procedure at a time, or making it so unbearably difficult and personally degrading to request one will have the same effect.  You may think you are morally right and doing God’s work, but God doesn’t vote in elections … everyday normal folk do.   You’ll lose. 

And if by chance you do make abortion illegal, it won’t stop abortions – it will just make them horrifyingly dangerous again, performed out of sight of medical supervision and standards, resulting in increased deaths of women. 

That’s not what the public wants.  And it’s probably not what your God wants.

About social issues in general … Most Americans simply want to be left alone to live their lives as they see fit and not do harm to others. 

So take that cue – leave them alone.  You’re not the morality police.  Whenever you try to be it makes you look like a tool of small-minded, bigoted religious extremists. 

This is a democracy, not a theocracy; something the far right needs to remember. 

When you wander – or should I say blunder – around on issues that people feel are personal you come across as overbearing and insensitive.  And that costs you dearly at election time. 

You need to learn not to over-react.  You can’t let the most extreme social conservatives and religious fanatics in the party be in control and dictate what is or isn’t acceptable.  You need to view everything on social issues with a longer-term perspective, rather than rise to the bait on the cause du jour.  Taking the bait feeds the impression that Republicans are dangerous reactionaries, which, sadly, many times you seem to be. 

Not everything is a harbinger of the end of days. 

For example, Sandra Fluke is clearly an idiot.  Yet you made her a heroine by attacking her.   Forcing companies to pay for birth control may be over the top, and violate the beliefs of some Catholic institutions, but you should have let Catholics battle that out and not get involved.  Instead, you rose to take the bait too rapidly and aggressively and were soundly bludgeoned for seeming to oppose birth control in general. 

Planned Parenthood is a powerful organization, and yes, it does provide abortions, and yes, it does distribute birth control, and yes, Federal money does go to it.  However, Federal money – by law – cannot be used to fund abortions, and Planned Parenthood made a case that it was in compliance with that.  Anyway, without a lot of proof, you had to single out Planned Parenthood for cuts specifically to appease the far right.  And what did you gain? 

Then there’s your position on gay marriage.  Gay marriage has been going on for years abroad and here, and it’s not a big deal.  But you made it a big deal of it with stupid legislation like the Defense of Marriage Act – which will be ruled unconstitutional, as you well knew.  And even though everyone expects that to be overturned for any number of constitutional reasons, vocal members of the Republican Party keep waving the bloody shirt – like anyone really cares anymore

Your most radical elements may think promiscuity and homosexuality are sins.  Well here’s a wakeup call – neither of those “sins” are illegal between consenting adults, and you’re not going to make them illegal.  People are people and you can’t legislate morality any more than you can enforce the Ten Commandments.

And speaking of religion, people have the right to believe what they want, or believe in nothing at all.  What anyone believes is entirely their own business. 

Mind your own business before you start minding others’.   And pick your battles better

More to come in future postings …,