Rush Limbaugh
The nation's right wing pundits can't seem to find a groove these days, or for that matter, a really good scapegoat. And apparently, they feel they need one. After all, their chatter in the last two presidential elections failed to make a big enough difference for the Republicans.
OK, granted the Republican candidates didn't exactly come up with such great ideas of their own in the last presidential election. Rick Santorum, for instance, chose to rail against contraception and folks who had sex for sex sake, rather than to conceive a child. It was a good idea, but only about 100 years too late. The rest of the group had its targets, including Mitt Romney who blamed the no-good 47 percent of the country who he implied took handouts. And all jumped on the anti-Obamacare wagon.
Now, Politico reports that the right wing pundits have found a new pinata: Detroit. For these folks, apparently the city is the perfect symbol of all that is wrong with liberalism, unions and the Democratic party.
Frankly, wouldn't they be better off sticking with the Hillary bashing?
But nooo.
Hadas Gold writes in Politico:
In one place, conservative pundits have found a symbol of everything they charge is wrong with the left’s policies.
Welcome to Detroit - the latest bull’s eye for commentators on the right who have zeroed in on what they see as the three evils of liberalism, neatly condensed within city limits: Unions run amok pillaging the city’s coffers; corrupt Democratic politicians with no Republican in power since the 1960s; and a failed big-government welfare state.
The Motor City’s epic downfall, the conservatives pundits say, also is a warning sign to the rest of the country of what can happen if liberals continue in power, unchecked.
As if that weren't sad enough, Gold writes that Republican strategist Mike Murphy suggested on Friday that the Republicans take advantage of Detroit's sorry state as a symbol of Democrat's failing and hold the Republican National Convention there in 2016.
“Hey RNC convention, why not Detroit ‘16? Just like 80. Tell a story, start the comeback,” Murphy tweeted, according to Politico. “Detroit is a big message opp.”
If ever there were a message opp, perhaps it's this: The right is so wrong. Find a better target. Find something based on fact.
It's easy for the right wing pundits to overlook the true picture: Decades of decline, the deconstruction of industry, flight to the suburbs, poorly managed government, corruption and some administrations in Washington that snubbed urban America where some presidents had little hope of ever garnering many votes for re-election.
Of course, Rush Limbaugh, a first-rate race baiter, has an opinion on Detroit. He said on Fox News:
“The town has been a petri dish of everything the Democrat party stands for. You have massive welfare states where citizens are given things left and right in order to buy their votes. You have no opposition whatsoever.”
Others conservatives have also offered up very black and white, simple explanations.
Ann Coulter on Fox News stated : “(Detroit was) the gem of the United States of America. First, it was destroyed by the mob with the race riots. Then it was destroyed by the unions driving the jobs abroad.”
Charles Krauthammer in his column wrote: “It doesn’t take a genius to see what happens when the entitlement state outgrows the economy upon which it rests. The time of Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain, the rest of insolvent social-democratic Europe — and now Detroit — is the time for conservatives to raise the banner of Stein’s Law and yell, ‘Stop.’ You can kick the can down the road, but at some point it disappears over a cliff.”
