John Boehner, he of the (fill in your orange skin joke here), has said on multiple occasions that the recent elections, in which the GOP kicked so much Democratic ass that even downright scary, religio-crazy, swirly eyed yahoos won races across the country, were a mandate for the GOP agenda. Boehner has said Americans now want the Congress to roll back the health care law. He's also adamant that the victory gave him a clear mandate to extend tax cuts for all Americans, including the uber-wealthy.
Of course, neither of these things is remotely true. A post-election poll by the Associated Press found that a mere 31 percent of respondents wanted to repeal the health care law completely. Further, 20 percent want it untouched, and a plurality of 38 percent think the law did not go far enough. Sure, people are upset by the health care law. But most people are upset by it because they wanted more. Most people wonder what ever happened to the public option, which liberals conceded to as a fallback, compromise position from the single-payer system they wanted.
As for taxes, just yesterday, CBS News released a poll that found just a quarter of respondents wanted tax cuts for everyone, while 53 percent wanted tax cuts extended for just families hauling in less than $250,000 per year. A smaller group, 14 percent, want the Bush tax cuts ended for everyone, and hey, at least those people are deficit hawks worthy of the name, unlike the Republicans now in Congress. And here's the real kicker: Just 46 percent of Republicans polled, less than half, want tax cuts extended for everyone. That represents a plurality of Republicans, with 41 percent wanting just the middle class cuts, but if the Republicans in Congress aren't even carrying out the will of the majority of their base, and far from the will of the American people at large, just who the hell are they catering to?
What good, what usefulness, derives from the Republican agenda? The plan they now offer represents more deficits and cannot even claim the support of the GOP's own base, much less America. Who can support these jackals? And why?
Remember right after the 2008 election, when it looked as if the GOP would be wandering in the wilderness for the next decade or three? Back then, a lot of commentators said that the Republican Party had become a regional phenomenon, a Southern, white party with little cachet in the rest of the country. Those commentators were right, after a fashion. The GOP is a minority party, but the South is just a desperately needed voting base. The real clientele of the Grand Old Party are, solely, the people who stand to gain from income tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, from the abolition of the estate tax, from cuts in capital gains taxes. The GOP, at this point in its history, represents solely the interests of the stratospherically wealthy. When their agenda isn't popular with America, or in some cases even their own party, but would benefit almost entirely the wealthiest people, that is the only rational conclusion.
Conservative commentators would call what I just wrote "class warfare." They'd say that I'm fomenting resentment of the rich for no good purpose. To them, I offer the words of Warren Buffett: "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."