Most politicians focus on the MPI axiom, money equals power and influence, especially when setting out to win an election. It’s no secret that the candidate with the biggest, bulging war-chest is most likely to have greater influence giving him or her the best chances of winning. What the GOP and the Tea Party hasn’t figured out yet is that this is not a stand alone axiom; there’s much more to consider. When you take a one-dimensional approach to MPI, the axiom arrogance equals greed followed by stupidity (AGS) steps up.
We’ve seen politicians from all sides make all kinds of fools of themselves because of arrogance followed by doing stupid stuff. The GOP seems to be stuck on AGS (or stupid). They act as if they sold their souls to the highest bidder (a few malignant, deep-pocket industry folk and special interest groups whose priorities have little to do with the public they serve or the quality and safety of the products they make) to fill their war-chests, to wage a never-ending culture war to win in 2010. It worked; it got them in the door. But all their strate-gems being one-dimensional, that’s all they won – a seat at the table with no place setting, no meat and no potatoes.
On the surface, it seemed that the President got a tough message. He tried to work with the unworkable. On the surface Republicans thought that they could wield their newfound power to control their donors and their Tea Party base. Instead, arrogance and power-lust got the better of
them and they ignored the funky brew laced with homophobia, xenophobia and intolerance on all levels festering beneath their noses.
Instead of pushing back on an unreasonable minority, the GOP followed behind the Tea Party and fringe special interest groups, and did all kinds of stupid stuff including waging a state by state war on unions and the middle-class that has become a significant factor in driving unemployment up because they’re destroying government jobs. It seems the GOP has forgotten that government jobs keep the economy going; especially in hard economic times.
Then came the GOP pièce de résistance, the debt ceiling debacle resulting in the Tea Party downgrade, coupled with tax breaks for the rich on the backs of everyone else, and compounded by a promise to do away with Social Security and Medicare, which would adversely affect the largest voting block of every political party. The result: 83 percent disapproval rating and a rising chorus of dissent from their constituents at town hall meetings in their home district during the recess.
So what did the GOP miss? Among a host of other things, GIGO, the axiom garbage in equals garbage out. What’s more, they keep repeating themselves and each time, it gets worse. It’s like watching a combination of the movies, Groundhog Day and Frankenstein’s Monster.
Will they win in 2012? Even they don’t like their pool of candidates. Meanwhile, those axioms are hard at work. The current pool of GOP presidential nominee hopefuls wreaks of GIGO and seasoned conservatives — not the Tea Party — knows it. Can President Obama get his ratings back up? Yes, and he can still win this election. The GOP will hang themselves. It’s not the President they have to worry about, it’s the American people who are finally waking up.
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