The Sunshine Empire

The Republican, like any political animal makes outlandish predictions. Yet the alarmist rhetoric is never revisited when it proves to be historically untrue. In 1993 then President Bill Clinton’s budget passed without a single Republican vote. Not only did the Republicans not vote for the young president’s economic plans, they roundly guaranteed that it would lead to unmitigated calamity for the largest economy in the world. “This is really the Dr. Kevorkian plan for our economy.” stated California Republican representative Christopher Cox after the bill passed in 1993. Now I’m fairly certain that Dr. Kevorkian was not known for breathing unprecedented life and vigor into his patients, nor did he balance the federal budget and leave his successor mountains of surplus.

Now so many years later the players are different but the playbook seems to be just the same. When President Barack Obama was elected and began to serve, Republicans again began to make outlandish claims. As the financial meltdown was in its full effect early this year Republicans and conservatives claimed the stock market’s decline was directly the result of the market reacting to the mere presence of Obama in the White House. When things are dire they are the direct result of a Democrat being in the Oval Office, but when they go well they are happening in spite of that Democrat being in the White House. Now that the Dow is back to pre-election levels and all indicators point toward a recovery beginning, the blame game doesn’t work the opposite way for our Republican friends. The same goes for claims that somehow now that we have a Democrat in the White House we would suddenly be less safe against the specter of terrorism.

President Bush always said the scorecard was preventing another attack. When asked for examples there were always fantastical stories of plans to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch or some such thing. Now as much as it may sound ridiculous, Obama has gone longer in his administration than Bush did before his first terrorist attack as conservative logic must go. The three terror plots uncovered and prevented this week by the Obama administration have shown earlier Republican claims that we are less safe to so far be a political fallacy. But that logic from Republicans is flawed in and of itself. Because it’s the men and women on the front lines that keep us safe, not some man in an office by sheer force of his will.