Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

Recently, Dawn was asked by a newcomer to our shores to characterize the Republican Party. "Simple," came Dawn's reply. "Just remember the three Rs: rich, racist, and rotten."

Not wanting to burden the NCTOS with countless historical examples, Dawn confined the argument to recent events.

Rich. Dubya, with scripts written by his corporate sponsors, has peddled massive tax cuts for the super wealthy as an "economic stimulus" package. What chutzpah! If economic stimulus were the goal, the $600 billion would go to poor and working people. Instead, it goes to fatcats like Dubya himself (estimated windfall: $44,000) and plutocrat pal Dick Cheney (estimated windfall: over $300,000). This raid on public monies, coupled with Enron and WorldCom-type corporate transfers of working people's pension funds to tycoons' (read, "Republicans'") pockets, means Dubya has overseen the theft of over a trillion dollars! As massive government deficits return, the unemployed, hungry, and homeless are told there simply isn't enough to provide jobs, food, and shelter....

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Racist. When LBJ signed civil rights legislation in the 1960s (opposed by Republicans, including Dubya's Poppy), he lamented that he was assuring Republican hegemony for decades. And he was right; unreconstructed white racists enrolled in the GOP, creating a "Southern strategy" (read, racist) that every Republican national candidate has exploited since. From Reagan's apocryphal tales of boozy "welfare mothers," to Bush Sr's infamous Willie Horton ads, to Trent Lott's too-public salute to Jim Crow, Republicans depend on white racists voting against their own economic interests in order to vent their racial bigotry.

Rotten. White House pollster Karl Rove announced in January '02 that the GOP would do well in mid-term elections because they would create an "issues context" favorable to their candidates in October. Thus, he telegraphed the soon-to-be "discovered" "crisis" in Iraq. Challenging the Prezdent as he battled with Saddam/Satan was equated with treason/sin. (Too bad those dastardly North Koreans exposed Dubya's crass political ploy; if "weapons of mass destruction" in the hands of "murderous despots" were the real concern, we'd be deploying troops around the Korean peninsula... not prepping them to seize oil fields to be turned over to Exxon, etc.) All of this from a party that impeached the previous president for being a Democrat and subverted the last presidential election, substituting five Republican votes on the Supreme Court for thousands of uncounted Florida ballots.

The Republican Party. Utterly shameless, thoroughly dangerous.