Another Failure To Communicate

NY Times columnist Timothy Egan has noticed that the entire GOP strategy these days is making sure President Obama (and everyone who voted for him) fails.

It’s hard to remember a time when a major political party and its media arm were so actively rooting for fellow Americans to lose. When the first attempt by the United States to launch a satellite into orbit, in 1957, ended in disaster, did Democrats start to cheer, and unify to stop a space program in its infancy? Or, when Medicare got off to a confusing start, did Republicans of the mid-1960s wrap their entire political future around a campaign to deny government-run health care to the elderly? 

Of course not. But for the entirety of the Obama era, Republicans have consistently been cheerleaders for failure. They rooted for the economic recovery to sputter, for gas prices to spike, the job market to crater, the rescue of the American automobile industry to fall apart. 

I get it. This organized schadenfreude goes back to the dawn of Obama’s presidency, when Rush Limbaugh, later joined by Senator Mitch McConnell, said their No. 1 goal was for the president to fail. A CNN poll in 2010 found 61 percent of Republicans hoping Obama would fail (versus only 27 percent among all Americans). 

Wish granted, mission accomplished. Obama has failed — that is, if you judge by his tanking poll numbers. But does this collapse in approval have to mean that the last best chance for expanding health care for millions of Americans must fail as well?

Egan has some good points here, but let's go over two things here.  One, what's different about Barack Obama compared to the previous 43 POTUS, and two how terrified are the Republican tea party rump of an America that allows someone like Barack Obama to become President?

It's gotten to the point where not only Obama must fail and suffer, but everyone who supported him.  We all have to pay for messing up "their" America.  So yes, that includes anyone Obamacare is trying to help.  That includes making it harder for the people who supported the President to vote.  That includes making it harder for the people who supported the President to feed their families, and earn a decent wage, and get decent health care and schools and opportunities.

Which is fine with the GOP.  They don't see it as rooting against Americans, because they don't see us as "real Americans".  We're just "those people".