Perspectives

"Poor Johnny one note,

yelled willy-nilly

Until he was blue in the face

For holding one note was his ace."

—“Johnny One Note” lyrics by Lorenz Hart

Folks on the right think that if you don’t accept their ideas that you must also think they’re lily-white, raging, aging, racist pudge-balls. I want to assure them that nothing could be further from the truth. Not the lily-white, aging, pudge-ball part — no one really cares — yet that seems to go hand-in-hand with being a Tea Party apparatchik. No, it really is your “ideas” that single you out for derision, ridicule and scorn.

Actually, “ideas” is too generous an assessment. They have that one big idea: Guberment bad! That’s it. Guburment bad! Of course, there is the associated corollary to guburment bad! — Taxes bad! Hum now the above “Johnny One Note” lyrics.

It hurts a little bit, it does, to think that my father’s Republicans have degenerated into zombies. It was a toss-up between vampires and zombies. What with vampires being all the rage, you know, at the moment, well, zombies were not automatically my first choice. Think of the fat cat, special interest, corporate-welfare, drain-the-nation, bloodsucking vampire as the quintessential Republican standard-bearer. But that seemed a bit harsh, too extreme. Besides, vampires have brains. Zombies, however, have no brains and are therefore the perfect symbol for the modern Tea Party Republican movement.

Some will chaff that I equate being a Republican with being a zombie, but here’s my logic. Zombies won’t die. And, similarly, just because an idea won’t die doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea. Just because you mouth simple platitudes about the Constitution or repeatedly chant “Guberment bad! Taxes bad!” doesn’t make it so.

Remember President Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics? Let the rich keep more of their money (taxes bad!) and they will invest it in America and a bountiful harvest will rain down, will trickle down on the average worker. Well, there’s a lot of available research on trickle-down economics, and it’s a sham. Slashing the top tax rates doesn’t lead to economic growth, doesn’t lead to job creation, and leads to neither wage growth nor income growth. The only growth associated with cutting the top tax rates is growth in the size of the deficit.

David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director who oversaw trickle-down economics (presciently labeled voodoo economics by the first President George Bush), rips today’s Republican talk of tax cuts: “If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt … will soon reach $18 trillion.”

But zombie-like, it’s an idea that simply will not die. All these goofball Republican Tea Party types are one-note morons. Zombies! Stiff-legged, stiff-armed zombie ranting of the brain dead, “Guberment bad! Taxes bad!” Sigh. That’s modern Republicanism. The Zombie Party of “no!”

Oh, and about Republican racism, here’s what former Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer recently said about that subject and I quote, “Many within the GOP have racist views.” Imagine that?

Greer is one Republican many Republicans now see as dead. Ew! Zombies! Republicans!