Rural America

Did Veiled Anti Semitism Help To Defeat Eric Cantor In His Congressional District?

Ronald 2 Comments

Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, lost his party’s nomination to an opponent who constantly talked about his Christian faith, and credited his victory to God!

Cantor is the ONLY non Christian Republican officeholder in Congress, a proud Jew of the Conservative (moderate) brand of Judaism, and a very strong supporter of Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He managed to win public office in Congress, and earlier in the state legislature, despite his being jewish in an area around Richmond, where the Jewish population is only one fourth of one percent!

Since only 65,000 people voted in the GOP primary, in an area with many rural voters, many of whom have never interacted with Jews, it makes one wonder if anti Semitism may have played a role in his defeat. The margin of victory, about 6,500 votes, makes that scenario a possibility!

This is not an assertion that Eric Cantor lost for this reason, as his arrogance and cockiness, and lack of contact with much of his district, spending an inordinate amount of time in nearby Washington, DC as second ranking Republican, certainly played a major role in his defeat. His stand on immigration reform may also have undermined him, plus the opposition of right wing talk show hosts Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin (himself Jewish).

But since there is a right wing Christian element of anti Semitism out there in the population, particularly in rural areas, even the thought or possibility of Cantor’s religious beliefs playing a role in his defeat, is very disturbing!

It is certainly of concern, in any case, that the Republican Party in Congress now is all white (except for appointed Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina), all Christian (much of it extreme right wing), and heavily male and Southern or Great Plains.

This is not representative of America now, or its long range future!

Paul Ryan Self Destructs Any Chance To Run For President!

Ronald 10 Comments

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, who this blogger spent a lot of time working to undermine his Vice Presidential candidacy in 2012, and got blasted for it by right wing websites and bloggers, has again shown further evidence of what a terrible choice Mitt Romney made in his Presidential race, in selecting Ryan to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency!

Ryan, who knows nothing about budgets, except that the poor, the elderly, the disabled, veterans, and the young should see cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and other social programs; and there should be no extension of unemployment compensation for desperately unemployed people; and there should be no rise in the minimum wage, now has gone off the “deep end” with his assertion that those who live in the “inner cities” have no sense of the importance of work, and have not worked for generations!

This is a direct and racist assault on African Americans in particular, but also on Hispanics and Latinos, who are a majority of the poor in the urban areas of our nation.

But Ryan acts as if it is only minorities who are poor, and are unemployed, and in some cases, have not worked in a long time. From this statement, one would think that whites are not poor, that they all work, that they all have a heritage of understanding the point of work, and nothing could be further from the truth!

It is a fact, and always has been, that the vast majority of the poor do not live in cities, and are not minorities, although one would think so from a stereotype!

The fact is that there are millions of whites who live in the rural and suburban areas of the nation, and many are them do not work, have no hope of work, and live in depressed conditions often worse than urban slums. Many of these people are living in “Red” states, where Republicans vote to hurt their own constituents, while making it seem as if only minorities do not work, or have no work ethic. They live in Appalachia, the Great Plains, the Rockies, in comparatively sparsely populated areas, as compared to the urban areas on the East and West Coasts.

More whites receive food stamps, and the level of poverty percentage wise is higher in such places as Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and Alaska.

It is the lack of education; the tendency to have large families which are also dysfunctional; the reality of drugs and alcohol; the refusal of these state governments to give a damn about their white poor, along with minority poor; and the tendency to turn poor whites against poor minorities so that the GOP can keep power in the House and in the state legislatures, which is destroying generation after generation of deprived people of all races!

Only when there is a REAL war on poverty, instead of exploiting the issue based upon race, as Paul Ryan has now done, will we ever be able to guarantee a good future for millions of whites, as well as African Americans and Latinos!

And Paul Ryan, your potential Presidential candidacy is dead in the water, and while you might run, you have forfeited any realistic chance to be President of the United States, but that was clear, anyway, in 2012!

Rick Santorum And Rural America Vs Mitt Romney And Suburban America

Ronald Leave a comment

Tonight’s results in Michigan and Arizona preserved Mitt Romney’s lead, and edge in the battle for the Republican Presidential nomination.

But Romney did not knock Santorum out of the box, as the saying goes. Super Tuesday next week has the potential to assist Santorum in his battle promoting social conservatism.

And the new realization is that Santorum appeals to rural areas, which tend to wish for the past of America, when cities and suburbs were not so highly developed and influential.

Rick Santorum proved in the Michigan Primary that he could win the land and the rural areas, while Romney won the suburbs, although most urban areas are heavily Democratic.

It brings back memories of the struggle between urban and rural America that became most evident in the Presidential Election of 1896 (William McKinley vs. William Jennings Bryan) and the Presidential Election of 1928 (Al Smith vs, Herbert Hoover).

It is also the battle nationally, as the “heartland” is heavily rural and Republican, and the coastlines, highly urbanized and suburban areas, are Democratic.

This election is really a battle to move into the future, or to move backwards to the nostalgia of the past, and the future is the only sensible choice!

The Virtues Of A Perry Or Bachmann Candidacy: Long Range Positive Impact On America!

Ronald Leave a comment

With the growing likelihood, at least before a series of debates in a six week period in September and October that will test legitimacy, that Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann might win the GOP nomination for President, it must be said that there are numerous virtues if such an eventuality actually occurs!

The virtues are as follows:

1. The odds of such a far RIght WIng candidate winning the national election is extremely low, as America is a centrist nation, and will reject such craziness!

2. The Republican Party would be cleansed by the defeat of a Perry or Bachmann, and come back to its senses, moving to the center of the political spectrum, and by so doing, would have a good chance to win the White House in 2016, as it is not uncommon to have parties switch power in the Presidency every eight to twelve years!

3. The impact of the Tea Party Movement would be dramatically lessened, if not destroyed, by a massive defeat!

4. The Influence of the Christian Right evangelicals would be eliminated as a major factor in future Republican Presidential battles if the candidate loses in a disastrous way!

5. The urban-rural split within the country could be resolved by the triumph of the urban areas, where most of the people live–80 percent in 28 states with only 40 percent of the land area, as compared to 20 percent in 22 states with 60 percent of the land area!

6. Centrists and Independents would return to the Democratic Party in large numbers with an extreme right wing Republican such as Perry or Bachmann!

7. The chances of a strongly Democratic Congress in both houses would increase, as the “coat tail” effect of an Obama landslide would help to bring in Democrats, even in some Republican or swing districts, allowing the accomplishment of more of the President’s agenda, and making the GOP control of the House of Representatives a bad memory!

This election could be similar to the massive defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964, changing the political climate for nearly a generation, bringing to power a moderate Republican, Richard Nixon, as compared to Goldwater.

Of course, such a defeat does not mean the complete end of the Right Wing forces in the GOP, but it would set them back for a period of at least 12-16 years as occurred from 1964-1980. And even Ronald Reagan ended up smoothing the rough edges of the Goldwater ideology when he was President of the United States in the 1980s!

The purging, the purification of the Republican Party, from its extremist roots is necessary to make the party a true, legitimate alternative for America in the 21st century! The American people will not allow such reckless candidates, as Perry or Bachmann would be, to win the White House, as at least the vast majority of them, believe in American “exceptionalism”, a different kind that will not allow anyone in the White House who represents a threat to the whole 20th century democratizing and reforms, and wishes to promote theocracy in America! Even Barry Goldwater did not wish to do that, and in fact, opposed religious influence to dictate to the party of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Eisenhower!