|  | | | A NOTE TO OUR READERS: Jeff Koopersmith regrets that Ms. Ingraham has discovered that she has breast cancer which may require multiple surgeries and radiation treatment. "Whatever I feel about Ms. Ingraham's politics and her ingenuous pose, I wish her a full and quick recovery and a long and liberal life," he remarked. 
By Jeff KoopersmithApril 27, 2005 -- WASHINGTON (apj.us) -- The alluring-to-herself Laura Ingraham wrote late last week: "There is an undeniable fury building among Republican voters coast to coast. It has now been almost six months since that euphoric day last year -- November 2nd -- when Republicans stunned Democrats across the board. Not only did President Bush handily beat John Kerry, but the GOP did what few predicted -- it managed to pick up four seats in the Senate. John Thune's victory over Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in South Dakota was extra sweet."
One can't help but laugh.
I am not certain who Ms. Ingraham is talking with, aside from the usual right wing fundamentalists who are simply earning their keep by spouting vicious comments about anyone and everyone not signing up for the latest Bush Putsch, but the many Republicans I know aren't giving any thought to the issues that Ingraham brings to the fore -- not a single person.
ingraham appeals only to the fringe within her own party, the sickest-of-the-sick Neofascist suck-ups that believe the pap she parrots or feeds them and embrace the pipedream that the masses (if they go to church and work a seventy-hour week for her parents) will one day take their places at the nearest exclusive primed-for-bigots country club.
 Ingraham started her tirade, titled "Anger on the Right," with the specious claim that Mr. Bush beat Mr. Kerry "handily" -- when in fact the Bush "win" was a shock to almost everyone interested, including Karl Rove. Whether or not Mr. Thune's victory over Mr. Daschle was "extra sweet" depends on where one sits -- in wisdom or in foolishness, with fools like Ingraham bowing before the Thune Senate throne.
Ingraham pointed out truthfully that President Bush is already almost a lame duck and that the fate of the Republican Party will depend largely on what the GOP-controlled House and Senate accomplish over the next few years.
What she failed to mention was that congressional leaders, specifically Rep. Tom DeLay and Sen. Bill Frist, are almost a bio-guarantee that the Republican Party will go down in flames -- not because they do nothing, but because of what they try to accomplish, namely the cloaking of GREED in the cloth of family values.
I ask, as always: WHOSE family values, Ingraham?
Ingraham called the Terri Schiavo "Don't kill her" Bill and the so-called Bankruptcy Bill (which is essentially a greed-fueled attack on the poor and ill) "good stuff." Could anyone be not only more obtuse but a more obvious liar? Does Ingraham actually believe that the Bankruptcy Bill was anything more than a payoff to the wealthiest and healthiest sector of the American economy: robber bankers and their cronies? In forthcoming "slop-eds," it's practically certain that she will call for debtors' prison as she sips margaritas as the Peninsula Hotel.
If Laura Ingraham isn't a WASP clone of Ayn Rand, Tom Delay ain't the Orkin Man. As far as the tragic Ms. Schiavo goes, I supported the battle against her husband, unlike many of my liberal colleagues -- but to claim that a GOP-led Congress gone wild with posed outrage was "good stuff" is at best laughable.
Ingraham crucified her own leadership as she lamented Mr. Bush's appellate court nominees twisting in the wind -- when they in fact should probably be twisting at the end of a rope. She claimed that Democrats have blocked 20% of the President's judicial appointments - which is, of course, another lie. She cries over the derailment of John Bolton's appointment as UN Ambassador when she instead should be chastising the President for being so moronic as to appoint a United Nations antagonist as our "Sham-bassador" to the rest of the world.
What Ingraham should be doing is congratulating the Gestapo that now runs Capitol Hill on its ability to control the media -- including her, by affirmation -- and berating them at the same time for wasting their stranglehold on the news.
Like a good Hitler Youth, Ingraham, a born-again Christian herself, does throw kudos to the Senate for passing what she calls tort "reform" -- but which is, of course, another defense of greed, this time the avarice of nefarious medical practitioners who judge their personal value on how many patients they can see within a ten minute period between calling their brokers. It is not the good doctors that tort law evolved from, Ms. Ingraham -- it is from the bad, the incompetent and the cruel.
When you are old enough to understand this, then perhaps you will realized that tort "reform" was just another pay off, this time to the insurance industry, not the medical community whose lobby is the weakest possible in light of its potential economic strength. It's insurance companies cloaked in doctors -- greed cloaked in putative values.
And does Ms. Ingraham actually think that GOP candidates give a rat's derrière about "thousands of volunteers (who) work(ed) tirelessly to give the GOP this majority only to allow the minority to roll them on judges, policy, and other nominations?" The real question is whether the GOP cares about FOX News, its biggest "volunteer." Everyone in Washington, especially Ingraham, should know that volunteers serve a function, but that they are largely inefficient and so overzealous as to be embarrassing. No, the GOP leadership does not care about what volunteers think of what Ingraham labels their "creeping wimpiness" -- those volunteers were "used" as they always are: to do the dirty work that couldn't be bought with corporate contributions.
Predictably taking her marching orders from the White House, Ingraham impaled the only true and wise Republican leaders: John McCain, Chuck Hagel, Lincoln Chafee, and George Voinovich, claiming they "help the Democrats when we needed them most".
Huh?
First of all, she mixed tenses, displaying her lack of intelligence (which raises the question: how the heck did she get into Dartmouth?); second and more importantly, just what is the issue that makes these Republican men so desperately needed? Here's the answer: packing the courts with knee-jerk Conservatives, of course, ensuring that the damage done by Reagan and Bush the First is continued and, of course, making sure that whacked-out Bolton moves to the United Nations chair to disgrace his country.
What Ms. Ingraham failed to see and continues to fail to see (most likely because she is so new to the mass recognition in which she how basks) is that the majority of Americans, by a very large margin, do not agree with her, Mr. DeLay, the disgraced physician Mr. Frist, or any of their proto-brownshirt compatriots. Frist amazingly but belatedly recognized this and is busy trying and failing to extricate himself from the gang of thieves that now control his chosen political party. DeLay, a shoo-in case for the psych ward, notices nothing but his personal bottom line, and I don't mean legislative victories. His indictment cannot come soon enough.
Ingraham also whined that the Republican Party has no clear front-runner for the upcoming GOP nomination for President. Is she insane? Does the name Jeb Bush strike a familiar note? Perhaps even Nurse Laura realizes that Jeb isn't up to the family heirloom which has become the Oval Office, but her worry that her buddies and biddies are not riding hard enough on the broken backs of the most impoverished and underrepresented classes in our country is simply shameful.
She urged "a senator or governor" to seize the moment and bond with conservative crazies the same way that George W. did during his nasty battle with John McCain. (She forgot to write "Republican" senator or governor, though.) Ms. Ingraham can't seem to name one, however, and that's because there isn't anyone quite as stupid, quite as ill-educated, and quite as mediocre as George W. Bush to seize those reins.
Finally, Ms. Ingraham, I think it's time someone gave you fair warning: your greedy little tea dance is almost over. Soon you and your jackbooted friends on talk radio will be cast into the dumpster of history where you will find the dessicated remains of Joe Pyne, Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy, Joseph Goebbels, Father Charles Coughlin and the rest of the slime that believed they could brainwash the people -- even the dumbest among us -- to embrace "values" that, stripped of their spin and buzz-phrases, stink of impossible cravenness.
JEFF KOOPERSMITH is a political consultant, opinion research authority, policy analyst, and self-described "renegade lobbyist." |
