The Republican Party and the Destruction of Political Speech
Political Speech is one of the most protected forms of Free Speech in our Democracy. However, because of a number of new technologies, it has sunk to a new low and the whole idea of its protection should now be closely examined in the light of these advances. I write this essay because of what I’ve seen in political ads by both the Democrats and the Republicans. Politicians have always stretched the truth and made wild assertions. Today, the Republican Party’s ads feature many citations. Because they have no platform, the only thing they know how to do is ratchet up the fear of the other by using bald-faced lies, phony and misquoted citations, doctored photographs and edited videos with phrases removed or videos taken out of context. In this election cycle, the Republican Party has no aspirations for the future and no platform except the “President’s” agenda. They seem to be against everything and for nothing. We need a viable two party system, but we do not have one because of the hypocrisy of the Republican party.
The definition of a hypocrite can be found in any dictionary. It is “a person who feigns some desirable or publicly approved attitude, especially one whose private life, opinions, or statements belie his or her public statements.” I call the Republican Party the Hypocrite Party because it claims to lead in a lot areas. Are these claims true? From 1961 to 2019, real data, as presented in my essay, “Behind the Republican Curtain” shows the party has not historically led in any of these: “family values,” GDP and S&P500 Growth, Manufacturing Job Gains and Losses, Job Creation, Public Health and Safety, Poverty and Education Rates. The party of “deficit hawks” runs deficits that are 33% higher than those of Democratic administrations. They are more corrupt than the Democrats in these years, based on indictments and convictions. Their economic orthodoxy of “trickle-down” economics has never worked in a real-world situation. Citizens in Hypocrite Party states receive three times higher tax subsidies than citizens in the Democratic states. So, is their behavior hypocritical? Obviously, their policies don’t work, even though they claim to be more successful than the Democrats. Is that the reason they suppress votes in elections? Is this the only way they can win elections because in the marketplace of ideas, their party is a failure.
I live in Arizona and have been watching the political ads from both parties. In the Mark Kelly-Senator McSally race, Kelly’s ads are mostly aspirational with attack ads that have citations that are correct. Whatever aspirations voiced by Senator McSally are contradicted by her behavior and voting history found in Kelly’s citations.
Many of McSally’s attacks are false and misleading, according to Politico (September 20, 2020). Her citations include Phoenix talk radio station KTAR, which some commentators have claimed to be to the right of Fox News. Other citations are to Real Clear Politics and the Arizona Republic. The articles cited do not say what her campaign claims they say. I guess her handlers think nobody will check her references. What she claims to want for healthcare is not how she votes, a direction 180 degrees apart from her campaign statements, all well documented in the Congressional Record
One of her biggest whoppers is that Mark Kelly took $15 million of taxpayers’ money to start his company. The truth is that Tucson built the facility and leased it to Kelly’s company. If the company had survived, and startups are always fraught with danger, the lease would have paid $23 million back to Tucson over the 20 year term of the lease. See the web sites apnews and Tucson (8/8/20) for the real story.
Most of the Hypocrite Party’s ads in the Presidential race seem to be lies and fabrications about the Democrats, calling Vice President Biden a “socialist” or even a “communist,” both charges being patently false, as are most of the assertions. For example, many of their ads on Healthcare predict expenses rising $2300 per year per family. The source of this assertion is the “Partnership for America’s Health Care Future,” a group consisting of major drug manufacturers. insurance companies and private hospitals that claims to be against all public health options. Another citation along the same lines is “Navigant,” a health care consulting firm mining the same territory. Both of these groups are not neutral on the health care issue. The web site seniorsbeware.com is a Hypocrite Party website spouting stuff from the two groups above.
The fear being spread about the Democrats destroying the economy comes from right wing researchers in the Hoover Institute with numbers like income losses of $6700 bandied about. Bloomberg News has challenged their assumptions. I have written before about how wrong conclusions can be reached from a perfectly logical chain of data if the premise is false. I believe the examples above and another citation, onlocation (a consulting firm for the oil industry) fit that idea. Remember that economics is not a science. There are both right-wing and left-wing economists. There is no right-wing physics or left-wing chemistry because both are real sciences.
The country needs a viable two party system with a center-right and a center-left party that can work together to govern without the nastiness, vituperation and outright class warfare that was started by Newt Gingrich and his “Contract With America” in 1994. The left and right wings of each party should be the ones that bring new ideas into each party, but should never be allowed to become ascendant like they are in today’s Hypocrite Party. But we cannot start on such a journey of reconciliation without the destruction of the Hypocrite Party in the coming election.
My America is a place where everyone is treated equally, a place where the religious stick to their religion and stop trying to get their beliefs translated into laws, a place where we do not have constant wars, a place where corruption in business and politics puts the perpetrators in jail, a place where experts are listened to and finally a place where health care is a non-profit enterprise.
