The Republican Playbook

1. Get elected any way you can. 

Lie cheat steal. It's all good if it gets you elected. 

Take money from any corporation, billionaire, or foreign state that offers it. It all spends the same.

Blow that racist dog whistle. Blow hard! All of those people who say, "I'm not a racist, but..." will appreciate your efforts.

Make up shit about voter fraud. Smart people realize that it is so infrequent and so statistically insignificant that it can barely be measured. But our base isn't smart, so...knock yourself out!

To attract independents, make up some bullshit about inflation, or baby formula, or Afghanistan, or somebody's laptop. Is Benghazi still a thing? Please, please, please let it be!

Whatever deviance you practice, claim your opponent practices it first. 

Do whatever you can to keep people of color from voting. Same thing applies to young people of all ethnicities.

Remember, rampant hypocrisy is a feature--not a bug. 

2. Once in office:

Continue spreading all the garbage that got you elected. You now have a pulpit. Use it!

You have one job: and that is to help the richest people get richer. Know which side your bread is buttered on, for Christ's sake.

After all, poor people are a drag. They need things. You know, food, education, affordable housing, health care they can afford. And, on top of all of that, well, let's call it what it is, BEGGING, they don't have any money to help your campaign.

STOP anything that might be good for the majority of Americans. Sane gun control, universal health care, higher minimum wage, etc etc etc. Repeat after me, You Are Not There To Help The People Who Need It. That's socialism, after all.

And always remember this: We are all good Christians--and they're not.

Sadly, despite your best efforts, and all that Koch and NRA and foreign money, ultimately you may lose re-election. So make sure that you've fucked up so many things, so thoroughly, that the Democrat who replaces you will have a mountain of things to fix.

3. Then, and this is the really fun part, start complaining as often and as loudly as possible, that they haven't fixed everything fast enough.

It's Money That They Love

Dear Republican voters,

It should be evident to all but the dullest of you that your elected officials, the men and women with that R next to their names, the ones you've sent back to Washington over and over again, despite their utter lack of achievements, love one thing and one thing only:

Money.

Oh, sure, at every election they are masters at playing to whatever pet prejudices you, their easily fleeced flock, are currently in an uproar about.

Could be abortion. Could be welfare. Could be immigration. Could be guns. Could be health care. Could be "them" and what "they are doing to ruin this great country of ours." (The "them" being people of color, or the gays, or feminists, or those wicked, wicked liberals.)

Could be all of the above. They know you are haters and they willingly cater to your hatred.

But unless you are a complete dolt, (and I recognize that complete dolts make up a sizeable percentage of the Republican Party), you have to by now have recognized that what truly motivates all but the worst of the worst (i. e. the Gohmerts and Kings and Franks of the Grand Old Party), is money, and its non-stop pursuit.

Take the latest rip-off, aka the Republican tax plan. Unless you are a millionaire, better yet a billionaire, this "plan" will not help you at all. It will in fact hurt you. Deeply. Now, you might think that the fine Christians you helped elect would not want to hurt their constituency. Hahaha! Once again the joke is on you.

See, the vast majority of you do not give millions of dollars to the Republican party. So, honestly, what do you expect all the God fearing Republicans in Washington to do for you? You have no quid in the quid pro quo game. But billionaires do. Folks like the Koch brothers, the Mercers, the Ricketts, and Sheldon Adelson. They bought them a bunch of congressmen and women and a so-called President, and they expect to get something in return.

Like massive tax cuts and an end to the estate tax. And if they don't, they won't send millions of dollars to the Republican Party anymore. And the Republican Party will cease to exist. Pretty simple.

Now, somebody has to pay for all those pretty pretty toys the Defense Department really really needs, and if it isn't the wealthy, and it won't be, guess who it will be. Same for whatever few threads are left of the safety net.You might think that the safety net is only for "them", but you will find out very quickly that you need it, too.

Gee, I wonder whose taxes are going to go up if the richest amongst us have their taxes go down?

Uh, that would be you.

Again, hahaha.

Uh, Guess What? Trickle Down Economics Still Doesn't Work

You have to give it to the Republicans. Like particularly avid terriers, once they get their teeth into something, they never let go.

Take tax cuts for the very, very wealthy. Despite all evidence to the contrary--decades and decades of it, in fact--once again the GOP (Grand Oligarch's Party) presents us with the miraculous wonder of trickle down economics.

If we just let the richest amongst us pay less in taxes--a lot less--everything will be alright. They will create all of these new, well paying jobs, and all the proletariat will prosper and rejoice! Hooray!

In fact, everything will be perfect!

They try this nonsense every chance they get.

It started with that bullshitter nonpareil Ronnie Reagan. When Saint Reagan first proposed it, George H.W. Bush had the good sense to point out that this was "voodoo economics".

But "Poppy" lost the nomination, and given the chance to be honest or be Reagan's veep, well, he quickly fell in line.

So we tried it--and it didn't work.

Well, actually it did work, for the rich. They, big surprise, got even richer. Hooray! The rest of us, the pluribus if you will in e pluribus unum, didn't get diddly.

I will take a wild guess here and say that hey, maybe that was the plan all along...

You would think that an engaged, enlightened electorate, would laugh anybody who tried that scam again right out of the building.

But this is America, and, well, we ain't so good at learning or remembering stuff.

The Conversation Going On Inside The Minds Of Republican Politicians

Wouldn't it just be easier to reach out to Hispanics, and women, and blacks, and gays, and students with policies that don't hurt them?

No. That would just make us like liberals. Yuck.

No, the easy thing is to work nonstop 24/7 to keep all of the above from voting, or at the very least make it so hard for them to vote that they don't. After all, it's what we're good at. God knows we can't govern worth a damn.

(laughter)

But aren't we the Party of Lincoln?

Of course we are. And we must constantly remind our good, overwhelmingly white, supporters of that. Otherwise they might start to think that we're all delusional racist bigots, consumed by greed, fear, and envy. And that would hurt their self-esteem. Because they keep electing and re-electing us.

Shouldn't we try to do something about all the guns in the hands of unstable people?

Second Amendment rights! Second Amendment rights! Second Amendment rights!

Ok. But do we really need all of those rapid fire rifles and pistols on the streets?

Yes. Mass shootings help to distract the common folk from all the truly awful things we're trying to do to them.

And that, after all, is the primary objective. Take as much as we can from the poor and middle class, and give as much as we can to the rich.

Amen!

Very Rich People Don't Really Like Democracy Much

Don't get me wrong, now.

They LOVE this country.

Not enough to pay more taxes, of course.

Not enough to worry about inequality. No.

Not enough to fight for health care and a quality education for all.

Not enough to be concerned about voter suppression and gerrymandering.

Not enough to be angry when the cops gun down another unarmed black or brown person.

No, that's not the kind of "love" we're talking about.

The kind of "love" they mean is "tough" love. Where they tell the rest of us to stop complaining about these issues and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps...because this is the "best country on the face of the earth" and "God loves the USA" and "poor people are lazy" and "welfare cheats are stealing from us all" and "food stamps make people dependent and obese" and "health care isn't a right" and "corporations and wealthy people are hideously overtaxed" and all of the other nonsensical bullshit they're so fond of spewing.

That's the kind of love they understand.

The wrap yourself in the flag, wave your Bible, and bitch about the "takers" kind.

Those Poor, Unappreciated, Needy Billionaires

Why do some billionaires, who have self-evidently benefited from our system to an extreme, want to destroy our system?

This is a puzzling question, to me at least.

Take the Koch brothers (please).

They are each worth upward of 50 billion dollars. Think about that for a second. 50 billion is 50 thousand million. If they never made another penny, they could each spend a million dollars a day for 137 years.

They achieved some of this wealth from inheritance, of course, but the vast majority of it they have "earned" under our system of government, including our economic system, and our taxation system.

Unfortunately, 50 billion apiece just isn't enough. In some way they still feel cheated. Poor things. They think they are overtaxed and over regulated, and that they would've done much better in the imaginary, libertarian, no-holds-barred, free market paradise that they dream of. 

So they've decided to buy up every politician they can to make sure that in the future they get a "fair" shake.

Perhaps by doing away with pesky things like clean air and water laws, OSHA, the EPA, unions, the minimum wage, and estate taxes.

Of course, contrary to 37 years of Republican economic policy, the more that flows to the top .1% the less there is for everyone else.

What pleasure do they, and their ilk, get from taking things away from poorer people? It must be intense, perhaps even sexual in nature.

Welcome to West Kansas

Ya gotta give it to Arizona's Governor, Doug "Cup Or Wafflecone?" Ducey.

He can follow a plan!

ALEC and the Koch Brothers tell him what to do, and by golly, he does it. After all, he's already been bought and paid for, so he better deliver if he knows what's good for him.

What we see happening in Arizona is an almost exact duplicate of what's happened in Kansas.

A little something I like to call Modern Reactionary Republicanism Run Wild.

Now, if you keep up with current events you know that Kansas is a fucking disaster zone.

That's a fact.

And it's all because of the Republicans who control that state's government.

Their only goal is to cut taxes to "starve the beast" and put a few more dollars in their rich backers' pockets.  So public services fall apart, including education. And, of course, the economic miracles that are supposed to result from cutting taxes never happen.

But "facts" have no place in today's GOP.

And Republicans are incapable of learning from their mistakes.

With time and repetition tragedy becomes farce.

So welcome to West Kansas, er, I mean Arizona!