Perceived Crimes And Collective Punishment

I'm honestly wondering if we do understand that the larger, more salient point of crazy, clearly unconstitutional insanity like Arizona's "right to fire people for using birth control" bill is to assure the Republican base that the coalition of "others" that elected Barack Obama to the White House: all "those" people who "don't know their proper place" like African-Americans, Latinos, young people, women, the LGBT community, and "traitor" liberals in general, are going to be punished in 2013 and only they will be punished, right?

Look, Republicans are basically saying "Hey, look, we know you're scared.  When push came to shove, the America you thought you knew sided with the black guy and for a lot of you that was pretty much the last straw.  So here's the deal:  we promise to make laws that will assure that, demographic shift be damned, they're never going to have that kind of financial or political power again for a long, long time.  We're going to force the reckoning that you know has to be coming soon and we'll make sure the bill goes to them, not you.  And here's the best part.  We'll design the laws to be guilt-free code-word stuff.  We'll give you the power to make the decisions on winners and losers and keep the losers losing for a long time to come.  We've got all kinds of experience with that.  Don't worry about the courts, we've got those covered.  If you side with us now they'll be backing us for decades, that's where there real long game is and then the control at the local and state level really pays off.  But we need you with us, because anyone against us, well...you don't want to be them when this train leaves the station, because it's going to run over everyone else, got it?  What do you say?"

And yes, that means that a healthy chunk of our political process in this country is motivated by the "plot" of GCB.  It's all about vengeance, both petty and fever-bright.  Never mind the GOP's real aim is to screw over the people who support them in the end, but they need the political support for now.  They figure once they get back into power, they won't make the same mistakes of the Dubya era as far as allowing that power to slip through their fingers again.  It's time to reboot America, they believe.  They're not too far away from being able to pull it off, either.  Demographic tides and all be damned if they can lock down power at the state level to simply ignore federal laws they don't like and simply treat the unwashed "others" unlucky enough to live in a red state as untouchable lepers who need to be driven off to the urban hellholes and liberal enclaves.

Something to keep in the back of your mind when you hear the GOP make their pitches this campaign season.