When Democrats Whimp Out

We had sometime ressembling a Town Hall meeting recently, at the Methodist Church on Lafayette Road and four reasonably hardy Republican delegates to the NH House of Delegates attended, along with a lady whose name I did not get, who identified herself as a Democratic delegate and a man, a delegate from Portsmouth, also a Democrat.

The agenda was the New Hampshire budget and the Republicans said, as they always do, the only way to approach any government problem is to cut "Spending."  They were, as they tend to be, a little vague (a lot vague, actually) about exactly what spending, but you got the idea they are against government spending, which is always BAD and they are against taxes, which are always BAD.

And someone from the audience said he didn't think taxes on the rich who can afford to pay more are so BAD.

That's when the really most depressing moment of the night occured: The Democrat lady started mewling about how if we raise taxes on the rich, the rich might just get up and move out of state. It was one of those, "Wah, wah, wah," moments, where she got all trembly lipped about how Daddy might just get mad and move away if we did anything as offensive as asking him to pay more taxes.

And I wanted to leap up and shout, "And where is he going to move to? One of those many states that don't have taxes?"

And I thought, this lady calls herself a Democrat and yet she's bought into the whole Republican rant about not taxing the rich because they are our Daddy, who dribble down all the goodies to us poor folk, as long as we behave ourselves.

And this morning I saw Eric Cantor on TV saying the same thing--we have big trouble in this country and it's all about high taxes and we've cut to solve all our problems by cutting taxes for the rich.

Yesterday, I saw Rand Paul say Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional because the Founding Fathers did not specifically mention these programs by name in the constitution and apart from a clause about raising taxes and providing for the general welfare, the constitution doesn't give specific permission for those programs, so ipso facto they have got to be unconsittuional and illegal.

And I keep thinking:  If the Republicans are this bizarre and the Democrats are beginning to sound just like them, where are we?

At least Paul Krugman seems to remain sane.  But he says he doesn't want to run for office because then he would be on the line to actually do something.

So there you have it: Patriots come sing the national anthem and praise Ronald Reagan and the trickle down religion and where is our great nation headed?