Right

I've been quiet for a few weeks. Sometimes it takes me a while to get a thought all the way together, or at least together enough to write something. The recent talk about civility in politics finally pulled together a thought I've had pieces of for a while now. It starts and ends with Congressman Steve Cohen.

In case you missed it, Congressman Cohen compared the tactics of the Republican party with regard to the health care debate to the tactics of nazi propaganda ace Joseph Goebbels (apparently pronounced Gerbels, because the nazis also hated spelling, and R's I guess). Lovely work by the Congressman, way to be a grown up. We'll get back to him later.

While listening to the post-Tuscon shooting media bonanza,(liberals blaming conservatives, conservatives scrambling to defend themselves, everyone talking about being nicer to each other) I was reminded of something that's been concerning me for a while now. At this point in history, the Republican party, and really, most of the conservative side of our political debate, is intellectually bankrupt.

In the wake of the recent shooting, I heard no less than three conservatives on Fox tell me "guns don't kill people, people kill people". OK, but can we at least agree that people with guns are better at it? It's unbelievable to me that one of our political parties is still arguing against gun control. Guns have become a religion on the political right in this country. No compromise, no common sense, no rationality.

Where are the conservative solutions to gun violence? Thousands of people are killed by firearms every year in this country, you can't just point to the Constitution and say "it won't let us do anything, sorry". How about a 28th amendment repealing the 2nd amendment? Nice and constitutional. Or, how about we just stop ignoring the first part of the 2nd amendment? Or, how about a tax cut for not owning a gun? Republicans love tax cuts (I was joking about that when I wrote it, but then I thought about it for a few minutes and it might be our best shot).

I'm not saying just take everyone's guns away right now and that's the answer. I don't know what the long term answer is. I'm saying, if you're not a cop, you don't need a gun, but we've got two political parties, and the one on the right basically thinks gun ownership is an American birthright. That's my point. But hey, maybe if you just keep talking about the second amendment, people will just stop getting shot one day.

(Sidenote: Don't get me started on needing guns for hunting. Tricking a wild animal out into the open so you can shoot it in the face for shits and giggles isn't any less barbaric just because it's a family tradition and your great-grandpappy used to do it.)

A few years ago now, I watched one of the earliest debates for the Republican nomination in 2008, back when there were something like 39 people still in the race. The moderator asked them who believed in evolution. I think three of them raised their hands. People on the right do the same thing with climate change science, responding to facts and verifiable data by simply claiming not to believe in it. Science isn't Tinkerbell, we don't all have to clap to make it real. Reality doesn't require you to believe in it, it's just there.

I'd like to have two parties working together to see if they can come up with smart solutions on energy and climate change. Instead, we've got one party coming up with stupid ideas like cap and trade and the other party pretending the problems aren't real. I'm not sure that's going to get us anywhere, but if you just keep saying it's not real, maybe it'll go away.

The story on economics is similar. Every time we start arguing about the economy, Democrats start quoting economists while Republicans go back to Reagan's made-up bullshit economic theory, which has somehow become the economic theory of the entire party. Reaganomics only works to destroy the middle class, and Reagan already took care of that, so it's pretty much useless now. We keep cutting taxes, the economy keeps getting crappier, but maybe if you just keep saying tax cuts create jobs it'll start to happen.

Then there's health care, and we start circling back to Congressman Cohen and the nexus of right-wing stupidity and political civility. I think we all agree that nobody is Hitler except Hitler, and nobody is a nazi except nazis. The media got so worked up about how mean Steve Cohen was being that they mostly forgot to point out that, nazi references aside, the Congressman's point was 100% valid.

The whole Republican strategy on health care has been to come up with lies and keep saying them on TV until they become true. "Death panels", the "government take over of health care", the whole thing about how people in Canada can't ever see a doctor (which is double ridiculous because even if it were true, the bill the Democrats passed doesn't resemble the Canadian health care system at all). Does any of this unbelievable bullshit sound familiar? Has the Republican party even floated a credible counter-proposal? You want a free market solution to health care? So do I. You got one? Me neither.

Why does this bother me so much? Why I am so tough on Republicans? It bothers so much because the two party system only works if both parties are making good faith efforts to do what's best for the country. Right now, I don't know if either party is. For every Republican who's basically just a lackey for an oil company or a bank, there's a Democrat who just does the bidding of a union (or an oil company, or a bank. Seriously, the two parties are barely bought and paid for by different interests at this point).

So, why so tough on Republicans? Because I think they can be better. I think I'd vote for the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt if it was still the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. I want to vote for candidates who believe in limited government, but who also know that government has a role beyond blowing stuff up in other countries. I want to vote for candidates who believe in personal liberty and responsibility, but who also understand that personal liberty isn't absolute when 300 million people are all trying to have a society (Sidenote number 2: I'd also like to vote for an atheist for President, but I doubt I'll live that long). I'm tough on Republicans because I want to be a Republican, but I can't, because Republican leaders are morons who spend their days trying to come up with the best right-wing sound bite.

Why am I so frustrated? I'm frustrated because factual accuracy has become optional in political arguments. I'm frustrated because politicians are worrying about civility, and that's fine, but nobody cares who's correct. I want a government in which being correct wins you the argument, and I want a Republican party in which being correct is more important than being right.