Week of 02/07/2011

2012? NO! Not Yet!
– by David Matthews 2

I didn’t want to hear it.

I really didn’t.

Just the thought of it brings up feelings of utter revulsion. I have to fight the urge to do something very primal and very instinctive.

But it’s too late.

It’s already been brought up.

Names are already being floated. People are already thinking it. The machinery is already primed to go.

It’s… the 2012 Presidential Election.

NO! Not just “NO”, but “HELL NO!”

Don’t go there! Not now!

Unfortunately it’s not OUR choice to make. It’s all in the hands of “the machinery”. The party bosses and media bosses are the ones that make the ultimate decision as to when “The Season” will start up.

But they are itching to shove it in our faces all over again, aren’t they?

It’s not like this is anything new. Right after the 2006 mid-term elections, when the Democrats suddenly found themselves in control of the House and the Senate, the “machinery” started cranking up all over again. Names were being floated, candidacies announced, pollsters were running around asking people what they through about certain names for President.

“MOMENTUM!” cried the Democrats, seeking to keep the winning streak going all the way to the White House.

“SECURITY!” retorted the GOP, panic-stricken over the prospect of seeing everything they had built up for five years come crashing down just because some of their “family values” champions were being embarrassed, indicted, or even convicted. How DARE they be sent to prison for stupid things!

But a funny thing happened on the race to the White House in 2008. We forgot something very important.

We forgot about 2007.

We pretty much forgot all about that whole year, didn’t we?

We forgot that we had a new party in charge of Congress. We forgot about the things that they promised to do if they got control of the Congress. Remember those promises? What happened to them?

If you are scratching your head right about now and saying “What promises?”, then in the words of an infamous banner on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln: “Mission Accomplished”. As long as we were fixated on the 2008 Elections and who would be running and what they were saying, then we didn’t care what the Democrats were doing in the Congress, were we? We didn’t care that they were rubber-stamping the Bush Imperium appointees and programs and renewing the expiring legislation like they were card-carrying members of the GOP. We were focusing our attention on Obama and Clinton and McCain and Romney and Giuliani and all of the other people that were being shoved in our faces.

Now think for a minute about the things that could have been done in the year that we forgot about. Even in 2007, the signs of economic trouble were standing out more blatantly than Mike Tyson’s face tattoo. Congress could have acted to minimize the damage, but they didn’t, because we weren’t putting on any pressure for them to do it. We were thinking 2008.

And so here we are again, fresh off another mid-term election with another change of power in the Congress. They just got started and already we are hearing talks about 2012.

NO!

I am telling you right now DO NOT DO THIS!

DO NOT buy into their games again!

Look, the GOP wants people to believe that they’ve “learned their lessons”… that they can be worthy of the trust they squandered before. How can they do that if their own machine is shoving the events of another year in our faces and telling us to forget all about 2011? How can they PROVE that they are worth our trust in 2012 if they can’t show it in 2011?

While some people think that getting a whole year’s jump into the next election season is just a matter of “brand recognition”, I have to suspect something a little more sinister. Let’s get brutally honest here… I suspect that this push to get us to focus our attentions from one election to the next is really an attempt to PREVENT us from keeping an eye on the people IN power! The Democrats did this in 2007 and I can see the GOP trying to pull this one on us for 2011!

Think about HOW the GOP managed to get control of the House… in addition to the continual failures of the Democrats, the GOP managed to convince the voters that they really were this “new” kind of politician called the “Know Nothing”... oops, I mean the “Tea Party” politician. They spun this yarn about how they’re “anti-Washington”, “anti-Beltway”, “anti-Politics-As-Usual”, and pretty much “anti-” everything that they were before 2006; and they promised that if they were given the opportunity that they’d make “the system” work for “the American People” instead of for the power elite. Come on guys, it was just LAST YEAR! I don’t think that’s too long of a time for you to forget about that!

So now it’s time for them to put their money where there mouths are… and isn’t it interesting that the temptation is to suddenly talk about NEXT YEAR?

No. Don’t let them do this.

Don’t let them write off 2011 by hyping up 2012.

If the GOP is honest about wanting to be “better” than before with their new “Know Nothing”… oops, I mean “Tea Party” faction, then they need to actually PROVE it instead of playing distraction games. They need to demonstrate that they’re not there for the sake of amassing power and bigger campaign war chests, because we SAW what happened the last time we were told “Trust Us” by the GOP! Thousands of soldiers died in Iraq, Afghanistan was left to fester and re-militarize, billions wasted, and those “precious civil liberties” that the “Know Nothings”… oops, I mean “Tea Partiers”, love to wail about were getting slashed to pieces in Executive Orders and Signing Statements and thousands upon thousands of new regulations. And we’re talking GOP! Not Obama and the Dems! (Maybe that gaffe about the “Know Nothings” has more than just a historical reference?)

But we’re not going to KNOW just how good their “reformed” word is unless we are given the opportunity to see it in action, as they are RIGHT NOW… not after next year’s election.

So to those who wish Sarah Palin would throw her hat in the ring, and to those bit players who are eager to be the next “Senator Obama” to Palin’s “Senator Clinton”, how about you do the American people a favor and hold off on the 2012 rhetoric until you know from real-time experience what kind of Congress you’re probably going to work with? After all, why speak of Reagan-esque dreams if the Congress you’re probably going to be working with is more Hoover than Reagan? And yes, I mean Hoover as in the vacuum as well as the former President.

2012? Go to hell.

Let’s worry about 2011 first.