Eastwood, the GOP, and the Harvey Syndrome

I’m a great fan of Clint Eastwood: Unforgiven; Gran Torino; Bird; Play Misty for Me; Sudden Impact; Escape from Alcatraz – all were good, as were the spaghetti westerns. The same can be said of the Dirty Harry movies. I’ll even give him a nod for The Bridges of Madison County.


But the last night of the Republican National Convention made me think he was having either a "senior moment" as Rex Reed declared several years ago when he was accused of shoplifting CDs at a Tower Records in Manhattan; or a Pee Wee Herman moment when he was caught pleasuring himself in a movie theater in South Florida; or maybe it was an Elwood P. Dowd moment when the empty chair on the stage in Tampa seemed to take the shape of a 6-foot invisible rabbit named Harvey.

Either way, the rambling, often off-point speech Eastwood made Thursday night seemed to say so much about the 2012 Republican National Convention. There Eastwood stood, talking to – and sometimes admonishing – an empty chair, not totally aware of what his own actions meant. An American icon reduced to a caricature. It was a disturbing scene, awkward in its execution, so eerie that one could not easily turn away. As Tom Brokaw tweeted: “Clint Eastwood became huge star as a man of few words As a surprise guest on the Tampa stage he had too many words.”

Even worse, Eastwood seemed to be leading tens of thousands of Republicans in a mental self-pleasuring while millions of people watched dumfounded, shocked at what they saw. Indeed – to borrow from Mike Lofgren, a former 30-year Republican staff member on Capitol Hill – the GOP looked like an “apocalyptic cult.” Forget the Kool-Aid; we’ll take the arsenic straight up, no chaser.

That was true of so much of the GOP convention. As I watched the unfolding of the coronation of Willard Mitt Romney as the Republican presidential candidate, I kept thinking of his party as a horde of petulant children. After breaking all the lamps and light bulbs in the house, they complained of the darkness and demanded that someone else pay the repair bill. The Republicans, particularly those in Congress, have spent nearly every day since Jan. 20, 2009, distorting America’s light until all that was left were shadows, a shadiness steeped in claims that President Barack Obama has been a failure, an un-American, post-colonial Kenyan Socialist.

Obama ignored an urgent report by his own 18-person debt commission, the Republicans said this week without mentioning that Rep. Paul Ryan, their vice presidential candidate, led the GOP charge to ignore that urgent report and to strike it down. Obama failed to save a GM plant in Janesville, WI, the Republicans said without mentioning that the decision to close the plant was made six months before Obama was elected. Obama is taking the work out of the welfare-to-work program, the Republicans shouted without mentioning that two Republican governors were among the five who recently sought waivers that would give each more flexibility in meeting federal work requirements.

And there were the claims that Obama had destroyed the economy, despite evidence that Obama has created more jobs in the time since the economic downturn ended than Ronald Reagan did in the same period of his presidency after the end of the economic recession of the early 1980s.

Of course, we expect a certain amount of fudging of facts in a political campaign, a certain amount of hyperbole, and a certain amount of partisanship. Political conventions are infomercials, a chance to sale the nation your candidate, to keep them from ordering the Jinsu knives or the Amway products being hustled on the other cable channels.

But this year’s GOP infomercial went beyond what we normally expect. It was peppered with outright lies and grand omissions, a floundering about in the marketplace of ideas. Racial overtones and undercurrents hovered over the Tampa Bay Times Forum. Concrete details about policies and national direction were as scarce as the number of dark-hued faces in an arena in a state where tans are ubiquitous.

Yet, that was nothing compared to the Hollywood deity who was once the Pale Rider, a gun-toting avenging preacher. He stood talking to a chair, looking not much different than Grandpa Simpson, a crotchety old man. Eastwood would have been better off if we could just chalk it all up to a “senior moment.” We can’t though. No wonder even Republicans take issue with their party. Let’s hope the Democrats do better when their turn comes up.

When the "Big Tent" Collapses

One has to wonder what is happening to the Republican Party and its members. Is the party’s establishment having a Grinch moment, finally coming to its senses on a myriad of issues, growing a heart where one did not seem to exist before? Or is it having a Scarecrow moment, finally realizing that having a brain is about whether one actually uses it? What about its members? Are they having the opposite experience, rejecting both the Grinch and the Scarecrow?

Those are some of the questions that hover over the GOP national convention in Tampa, Fla., this week. While the party of Lincoln appears united in its desire to defeat President Barack Obama, it seems more divided than it has been in some time, with various factions trying to out conservative the others, instigating a battle over such hot button social issues as abortion, making xenophobia part of the party identity, and articulating a disdain for government that has made the GOP far too extreme for most Americans.

Even Republicans – from Dan Quayle to George Pataki to Chuck Hagel to David A. Stockman to Jeb Bush to Mike Lofgren – have articulated the problems stemming from the party’s hard-right turn.

“The Republican Party needs to re-establish its philosophy of the big tent with principles,” former Vice President Dan Quayle told The New York Times recently. “The philosophy you hear from time to time, which is unfortunate, is one of exclusion rather than inclusion. You have to be expanding the base, expanding the party, because, compared to the Democratic Party, the Republican Party is a minority party.”

Former New York Gov. George E. Pataki said: “What I fear is that that very positive desire to limit the power and the role of the federal government could turn into a philosophy that is antigovernment. Sometimes, those who I fear have that antigovernment view, as opposed to the limited-government view, rise to the center of the nominating process. I think that is not a good thing for the Republican Party.”

Indeed, the GOP has moved so far to the right that Ronald Reagan, the man neo-conservatives praise repeatedly as their beacon, would not want to be part of it, according to Chuck Hagel, a former U.S. Senator from Nebraska who now teaches at Georgetown University.

“Reagan would be stunned by the party today,” Hagel told Josh Rogin for a story posted in The Cable on Foreign Policy’s Web site in May. “Reagan wouldn’t identify with this party. There’s a streak of intolerance in the Republican Party today that scares people. Intolerance is a very dangerous thing in a society because it always leads to a tragic ending....

“Ronald Reagan was never driven by ideology. He was a conservative but he was a practical conservative. He wanted limited government but he used government and he used it many times. And he would work with the other party,” Hagel said.

Hagel compared the battle over the soul of the current Republican Party to a similar battle in the 1950s, when such moderates as Dwight D. Eisenhower fought such conservatives as Joseph McCarthy. The moderates won that battle. Their heirs are losing this one.

“Now the Republican Party is in the hands of the right, I would say the extreme right, more than ever before,” Hagel said. “You’ve got a Republican Party that is having difficulty facing up to the fact that if you look at what happened during the first eight years of the century, it was under Republican direction.”

Hagel decried the current Republican Party as schizophrenic and intolerant of dissent. He cited the resignation of Republican senator Lamar Alexander from a leadership post last year as a clear indication of how the party has changed. “There has been a litmus test, purity factor that has been applied over the years. I saw it in the Senate myself,” said Hagel, who was in the Senate from 1997 to 2009.

Hagel is not alone in his assessment.

In an Aug. 13 op-ed piece in The New York Times, David A. Stockman, the former head of the Office of Management and Budget from 1981 to 1985, described Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan as “the same empty conservative sermon.” Stockman should know since he was the person that oversaw Reagan’s budget office.

“Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to ‘job creators’ (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse,” Stockman wrote. “Mr. Ryan professes to be a defense hawk, though the true conservatives of modern times — Calvin Coolidge, Herbert C. Hoover, Robert A. Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, even Gerald R. Ford — would have had no use for the neocon conservative imperialism that the G.O.P. cobbled from policy salons run by Irving Kristol’s ex-Trotskyites three decades ago. These doctrines now saddle our bankrupt nation with a roughly $775 billion ‘defense’ budget in a world where we have no advanced industrial state enemies and have been fired (appropriately) as the global policeman.”

Stockman went on to say that Ryan folded “like a lawn chair on the auto bailout and the Wall Street bailout.” (Ryan the shrink-the-government radical also sought federal dollars to save a GM plant in his hometown, the same one he has repeatedly accused President Obama of failing to protect. GM announced in June 2008 that it was closing the plant, which happened in December 2008.)

“But the greater hypocrisy is his phony ‘plan’ to solve the entitlements mess by deferring changes to social insurance by at least a decade,” Stockman said. “A true agenda to reform the welfare state would require a sweeping, income-based eligibility test, which would reduce or eliminate social insurance benefits for millions of affluent retirees. Without it, there is no math that can avoid giant tax increases or vast new borrowing.”

The criticisms of the GOP by its old guard go further than just the budget lies being told by Romney and Ryan, and the abandonment of what were once Republican principles. Jeb Bush assailed the party for its harsh anti-immigration stance, saying in essence that the GOP is becoming the party of angry white people. Bush urged his colleagues to recognize that the shifting national demographics mean that the party must soften its rhetoric if it wants to lead.

Possibly more revealing was the warnings presented by Lofgren, who spent nearly 30 years as a Republican staffer on Capitol Hill. In a September 2011 article for Truth-Out.org, Lofgren lambasted both the Democrat and Republican parties for their ties to corporate America. He also described each as being rotten, but he was especially harsh on his fellow Republicans.

“Both parties are not rotten in quite the same way,” Lofgren said. “The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP. To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics.”

The “crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center” of the GOP today, Lofgren said. “Steve King, Michele Bachman, Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy,” he said.

“It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” Lofgren wrote nearly a year ago. “This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.”

He is right.

Pride in the Lies

How does one start to discuss the absurdity and hypocrisy of the 2012 Presidential campaign? Does one begin by detailing the outright distortions – actually lies – that are being bandied about? Does one seek the high road in assailing the transgressions of the candidates? Or does one simply jump into the fray, taking off the gloves and dropping all pretense of neutrality? Deciding which to do in this campaign season is difficult because one cannot be honest without stating the unadulterated truth, without seeming to take sides in a partisan manner.

Campaigns are always filled with innuendo, half-truths, political spin, and hollow promises. What one candidate sees as a strong plan to move America forward, the opposition sees as a plan to move the nation backward. Such arguments are legitimate because one person's great idea is another person's folly. It is part of our political process that we debate such things, that each candidate presents his wares in the marketplace of ideas, and the shoppers choose what they see as the best, the most worthwhile product.

That has not occurred so far in this election cycle. This presidential election has taken lying to a new low, has created an environment where there is a strong aversion to facts, has resulted in the greatest secrecy in the history of modern elections. And so much of it lies with the Republican Party and its presumptive nominee Mitt Romney.

Never before has a campaign shown such a disdain for truth. Never before has a campaign so openly lied to the public. Never before has a campaign so brazenly admitted that it is lying. Never before has a campaign hid from voters details of what its candidate believes for fear that knowledge of those ideas will result in his not being elected.

But Romney has done each. He has resorted to the age-old GOP ploy of turning a campaign that should be about ideas into one couched in racism and resentment. Worse than his actually doing those things is the inability of too many people to see the danger in his lies, to see the deceitfulness in his secrecy, to see the recklessness in his disregard.

A look at the ads offered by the Romney campaign is a good starting point in discussing the deceit and the manner in which it has gone without enough challenge. Early in the campaign Team Romney took a quote from then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama about how the economy would play in the 2008 campaign and presented it as if President Barack Obama had recently uttered those words. The edited quote was a response to Sen. John McCain and the Republicans. When challenged about the obvious inaccuracies in the ad, a Romney campaign advisor said:

“First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business…. Ads are agitprop…. Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It’s ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context…. All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art.”

Indeed, ads are about persuading people, convincing them that they must buy what they may not need nor want. Yet, there needs to be some truth in them, a sense that there is a foundation on which to build. Not for Team Romney. Outright lying is all within the framework of its idea of fair play.

The misuse of President Obama's quote was not an isolated incident. Recently, Team Romney took a portion of a presidential speech, edited it out of context, and argued that Obama is against small businesses. That the quote reflects an idea – no one is successful without help from somewhere or someone else – also expressed by Romney during the XIX Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002 was unimportant to Team Romney.

The same can be said of the effort to paint Obama as the "food stamp" or welfare president – code for Obama wants to take the hard-earned money of white America and give it to all those lazy black and Latino people sitting at home on welfare. Instead of honestly debating whether it is right to give states more flexibility in moving people from welfare to work, Team Romney seeks to paint a picture of Obama as simply wanting to send government checks to people unwilling to work. If one listened only to the Romney campaign one would not realize that Romney sought such a waiver while he was governor of Massachusetts or that two Republican governors sought those waivers from the Obama Administration.

The lies and deceit do not stop there.

In a speech in Colorado Thursday, President Obama said:

“I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back and GM is number one again. So now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs not just in the auto industry, but in every industry. I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China. I want them taking root in places like Pueblo.”

Republican sycophants quickly proclaimed that Obama said he wants to create an auto-bailout like policy for other industries.

As if that is not enough, the Democrats and Republicans agreed to cut defense and domestic spending by $1 trillion over 10 years as part of the debt ceiling deal. Team Romney and the Republicans now call those President Obama’s defense cuts.

Romney also refuses to detail how he will cut taxes by 20 percent in a supposedly revenue neutral plan. He says only that he will make changes to the tax code by eliminating deductions. Will those deductions be on capital gains? Mortgage interest deductions on second homes? Multi-million dollar tax right offs for owners of NASCAR tracks? Or will those deductions be the ones that middle- and working-class Americans depend on: the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, the Tuition Tax Credit?

We do not know because Mitt Romney won't say. We could probably bet that most of those deductions he plans to eliminate will not include the areas from which he benefits. Of course we can’t tell for sure since he refuses to release more than two years of his federal tax returns.

The Battle for America's Soul

It is a burgeoning protest, one spurred by anger that seems to keep growing. And like any action borne of anger, it has the potential to wreak havoc on society, to become a volatile mix of arrogance and self-righteousness. That is why we cannot dismiss nor ignore the frustrations emanating from the “Occupy Wall Street” encampment in Lower Manhattan or the other demonstrations sprouting up around this country. For those demonstrations are battles in the war over the heart and soul of this country, the possible beginning of an American Autumn.

Some time ago, I wrote about the growing disconnect that is occurring in this country, the manner in which our political leaders – and many of us – have lost sight of what America is and what America should be. Too often, the policy decisions coming out of Washington have divided this country: One seemingly for the rich, another seemingly for the rest of us. The result has been a palatable discontent with a world that views any shift from the conservative orthodoxy as treasonous.

That discontent was not borne with the Tea Party, though the Republicans and the Tea Party gave face to it during midterm elections in which the GOP seized the U.S. House of Representatives and several state legislatures across the country. Instead, it was borne from a crumbling economy in which the working- and middle-classes saw their modest wealth slip away, and the people who robbed America of its stability rewarded with bailouts, some of which were used to pay exorbitant bonuses.

Now, as we head into a new election season we have witnessed what anger can do to a nation, especially when that anger is accompanied by demagoguery and stridency. Washington – and some state legislatures – has been paralyzed, unable to do the people’s work, unwilling to help the millions devastated by the greed and recklessness that dominated the last decade. Jobs are needed in this country, yet Washington cannot pass a jobs bill. The infrastructure needs repairing, yet Washington wants to cut such spending.

“Occupy Wall Street” can – and should – be the pushback against the flag draped conservatism that tears at the heart of our nation and threatens to destroy its soul.

A cursory glance at “Occupy Wall Street” shows the disenchanted, the disillusioned, the disaffected, people Republicans have assailed as jealous of the wealthy, as soldiers to class warfare. But if we look beneath the surface we see a cross-section of society: students and teachers; parents and children; the employed and unemployed; the elderly and young; homeowners and renters; artists and business people; citizens and foreigners. All are of different races and political attitudes.

Just a few months ago, many may have been apathetic. They no longer are because the issues we face are not Democratic, Republican, black, white, Asian, or Hispanic. They are man-made ills that plague all of us. That is why this is a fight for the soul of America, a battle to determine if we will be a callous, vengeful, and barbarous nation, or if we will be a caring, forgiving, and civilized nation. Xenophobia and brutish ignorance have made us a suspicious people who no longer strive for what is the best in us.

Three years ago, we seemed to be reaching for all that is good. In 2008, many young people – some once apathetic toward the political system – voted for Barack Obama. Those young men and women became engaged in the life of our country after spending part of their lives decrying the corruptness of the political system, refusing to vote or even read about Washington for fear it might taint. A year ago, the Tea Party forced some of the most absurd amateurs into our lives and into the national arena.

We have come to understand what happens when we allow extremists to take our country from us. Now, we must decide – each in our own way – how we will regain control of our collective destiny, to reassert our belief that America is more than platitudes about exceptionalism. That is what some of the people are doing at “Occupy Wall Street,” seeking to force America to be America again, pushing her to open her arms and heart to her children.

That’s why we must support them, and why we must help them to understand that protesting Wall Street is not the end. It is only the beginning. Wall Street is not the sole problem that we face. Draconian immigration laws in such states as Alabama and Arizona are forcing immigrants to cower in fear of being detained, regardless of whether they are here legally or illegally. Farmers who once brought Mexican laborers in to harvest crops under the country's H-2A farm visa program are discovering that farm jobs being held for Americans are going unfilled because many of the unemployed find the work to back breaking.

The New York Times recently reported that John Harold, a 72-year-old farmer in Olathe, Colo., decided to hire fewer Mexican workers this year in an effort to save jobs for unemployed Americans in his community. "It didn't take me six hours to realize I'd made a heck of a mistake," Harold said, explaining that many of the local workers started the $10.50 an hour jobs at 6 a.m. and quit by noon.

Another farmer, 49-year-old Kerry Mattics, had the same experience. "It's not an easy job," Mattics said. "It's outside, so if it's wet, you're wet, and if it's hot, you're hot...They wanted that $10.50 an hour without doing very much. I know people with college degrees, working for the school system and only making 11 bucks."

There are even more without jobs, and they are occupying Wall Street to show their displeasure. One such person is Jon Reiner, a former marketing executive and father of two boys. Reiner says he has been laid off three times in five years. He also says he has sent out 2,000 resumes, according to MSNBC.

“You were a member of the middle class, you were at a point in your life where you thought you’d be at the zenith of your career or upward trajectory, and all of a sudden you find yourself marginalized,” the 49-year-old said. “The term that I’ve begun to use is unemployable.

“What this rally – this organization you know – represents is to try to give voice to the have nots, who are a huge part of this society, and who no longer have the means or the opportunity to contribute,” he added.

Indeed, the protests that began with a few on Wall Street has to be carried to the ballot box, where both major parties and independents should have to vie for votes through policies that help the majority of Americans, not policies that seek revenge or to divide. “Occupy Wall Street” is an early salvo in a long war, one that with discipline, patience, and honor can accomplish as much – if not more – as the Arab Spring.

The time is ripe for us to harvest an American Autumn.

Setting the Tone for a Presidential Narrative

After more than half a year of pugnacious Republicans bellowing about what they will not accept, it was refreshing to hear President Barack Obama go on the offensive in his speech before a joint session of Congress Thursday night. Now we have to see if he will maintain his assertiveness.

The President’s speech outlining the American Jobs Act contained the passion and no, nonsense tone that was missing from the White House and the Democrat Party. For too long, the GOP and its “tear down the government” minions were allowed to dictate the narrative coming out of Washington. In doing so, they created a false debt crisis that wasted precious time that could have and should have been spent on improving the American economy. And during that time, Obama and his party seemed content to allow the petulant children run amok through our nation’s Capitol.

But Thursday night the President stood firm, outlining a jobs package that should help to ease some of the pain cutting across our nation. Of course, the proposed jobs act will not solve all of our ills. Anyone who believes that it will is delusional. It can, however, be a driving force in restoring confidence in our national economy. Because of the dysfunction that is being passed off as political discourse, too many business leaders and consumers doubt our ability to throw off this economic malaise.

It does not matter that businesses are sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash; taxes for corporations are at an all-time low with some companies paying little or no taxes; interest rates are well below anything we might have expected; the stock market, though volatile at times, is strong; and profits are high at many companies. There remains a disbelief about how we govern ourselves, and whether we will work together to move this nation forward.

That is why it was important for the President to speak to the heart of America, and it is even more important for Obama and the adults in Washington to be steadfast in seeking solutions to our nation's woes.

“No single individual built America on their own,” Obama said. “We built it together. We have been, and always will be, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all; a nation with responsibilities to ourselves and with responsibilities to one another.”

While that declaration was a reminder of what it means to be an American, Obama's speech was an important call to action, an admonition that the problems we face are man-made, and, therefore, can and must be fixed by man.

The United States has been at its strongest when government, academia, labor, and business have worked together. The four did not have to always agree, nor did they have to be warm and fuzzy with each other. They just needed to respect what each brought to the table. When they did America emerged as a superpower, an exceptional example of not only what can be, but what should be. It is through that paradigm that America will again emerge strong.

If we rebuild the infrastructure we will create jobs that will provide people with disposable income, as well as upgrade the transportation system. If we invest in updating the electrical grid we not only create a better energy network, but we increase the potential for even more jobs. If we invest in research we can provide an environment that encourages new industry. If we revamp the business and personal tax codes, as well as set reasonable regulations on energy and the environment, we can give businesses the confidence that actions taken now will not be reversed after the fact. And if we increase the amount of money spent in the short-term, we can create the demand that leads to long-term development and job growth in the private sector.

“We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union, founder of the Republican Party,” the President told us Thursday night. “But in the middle of a civil war, he was also a leader who looked to the future – a Republican President who mobilized government to build the Transcontinental Railroad, launch the National Academy of Sciences, set up the first land grant colleges.”

Indeed, it is that kind of vision that we need now, not the myopic view of the world that permeates our national debates. We have allowed our eyes to become jaundiced, and in doing so we can no longer see what makes America great. It is not proclamations made by self-described patriots or damnations issued by political provocateurs. It is the willingness and the ability of Americans to come together to build, to fight for what is right, to put the nation above ourselves, to recognize that ideology, while a subtext in our story, is not the story.

“Ask yourselves – where would we be right now if the people who sat here before us decided not to build our highways, not to build our bridges, our dams, our airports?” Obama asked Congress. “What would this country be like if we had chosen not to spend money on public high schools, or research universities, or community colleges? Millions of returning heroes, including my grandfather, had the opportunity to go to school because of the G.I. Bill. Where would we be if they hadn’t had that chance?

“How many jobs would it have cost us if past Congresses decided not to support the basic research that led to the Internet and the computer chip?” he continued. “What kind of country would this be if this chamber had voted down Social Security or Medicare just because it violated some rigid idea about what government could or could not do? How many Americans would have suffered as a result?”

The answers to those questions may be too terrifying to ponder.

Obama's "Backdoor War" Nears Success

The news came as a surprise, and as a welcomed relief: Rebel forces had made their way into Tripoli, the capital of Libya, and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s 42-year grip on power appeared to be dissolving with astonishing speed.

Indeed, after six months of war in which rebels, who began as peaceful protesters, took up arms against one of the world's most tyrannical leaders, it was with a certain amount of trepidation that the news reached us. One never knows what the man who President Ronald Reagan called a "mad dog" will do. Even as rebels claim to control 95 percent of Tripoli and two of Quaddafi's sons are reported to be in rebel custody, there remains a realistic fear that Quaddafi and his supporters could begin attacking civilians.

As of Monday morning, tank battalions and snipers loyal to Quaddafi were taking a last stand against rebel forces near Quaddafi’s fortified compound, according to International news reports. Quaddafi, who had been urging civilians to take up arms against the rebel “rats,” was nowhere to be found. He did broadcast a statement saying he was in the city and would be “with you until the end.”

The rebels and those civilians seemed to feel that that end was near. "Gadhafi is finished. Now we are free," one rebel, named Abdullah, told a Reuters reporter over the sound of gunfire and shelling, as his group consolidated its position to the west of the city center.

The 69-year-old Quaddafi has been a cancer on the world for more than four decades, sponsoring terrorism at home and abroad. After the Arab Spring led to the ouster of leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, the resistance mounted in Libya was a welcome sign. Yet, unlike Tunisia and Egypt, the protests for freedom and human dignity in Libya turned bloody with Quaddafi slaughtering his own people to maintain control.

The uprising, led by dissidents in the east of Libya, was indeed wrought with problems. More important, though, it was peopled by those who had the most to gain -- and loose -- from Quaddafi's ouster.

"This is a dream come true, something we have all been waiting for," a 19-year-old Libyan woman told CNN Sunday night. "I can talk on the phone without being scared someone is coming to get me."

Indeed fear permeated Libya, where finding the truth was difficult to say the least. Libya is a country that lacks the national institutions that can grow without a cult figure. Now, its people, like those in other Arab and North African nations in this year of change, must learn to depend on themselves and not some seemingly omnipotent leader.

According to The New York Times, the rebel leadership group, the National Transitional Council, issued a mass text message saying: “We congratulate the Libyan people for the fall of Muammar Qaddafi and call on the Libyan people to go into the street to protect the public property. Long live free Libya.”

As is customary with him, President Barack Obama, said in a controlled statement Sunday night that Qaddafi and his inner circle had “to recognize that their rule has come to an end.” He also called on Qaddafi “to relinquish power once and for all,” and he urged the National Transitional Council to avoid civilian casualties and protect state institutions as it took control of the country.

“Tonight, the momentum against the Qaddafi regime has reached a tipping point,” the President said. “Tripoli is slipping from the grasp of a tyrant. The Qaddafi regime is showing signs of collapsing. The people of Libya are showing that the universal pursuit of dignity and freedom is far stronger than the iron fist of a dictator.”

Now that the people of Libya have shown their mettle, the United States must now show its support so that it can help the rebels win the peace. Lest we forget, it was Obama who pushed NATO to oversee bombing raids in support of the rebels, a move that led Republicans to attack the President for his "backdoor war."

The people of Libya feel that they have gained "the freedom that we all deserve," one young woman told CNN Sunday night. "I think we have proved that we are smarter than him (Quaddafi) at the end of the day."

"We are now different people," the young woman added. "And it's not even the end yet."

That's why America and NATO have to take the next step and help Libya become the nation that it can be.

The Pandemic of Foot-in-Mouth Disease

Politicians have always been susceptible to foot-in-mouth disease, but we appear to have reached a pandemic since Barack Obama became President. Nearly every day, some Republican, or one of the party’s erstwhile supporters, comes down with the disease. Instead of seeking treatment for the affliction, each compounds it by claiming that the illness was misdiagnosed by others.

For example, Mark Halperin was infected on national television, making a scatological reference to the President. He later offered an unctuous apology. In Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the disease manifested itself when he proclaimed:

“Everybody goes to clinics, to hospitals, to doctors, and so on. Some people go to Planned Parenthood. But you don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.”

When told that only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s work involves abortions, Kyl proclaimed that his statement was not meant to be taken as fact.

Halperin and Kyl are not the only ones. There have been countless other instances in which Republicans have either used racially charged language only to claim it wasn’t meant to be racial, or have made blatantly false statements only to claim the statements were not meant to be taken as facts. The most recent example of this is Rep. Doug Lamborn, a conservative Colorado Republican. Last Friday, Lamborn went on the radio and proclaimed that working with President Obama would be “like touching tar baby.”

“I don’t even want to have to be associated with him,” Lamborn said in an interview on the Caplis and Silverman radio show on KHOW 630 AM in Denver. “It’s like touching a tar baby, and you get it – you know, you’re stuck, and you’re part of the problem now, and you can’t get away. I don’t want that to happen to us, but if it does, or not, he’ll still get – properly so – the blame, because his policies, for four years, will have failed the American people.”

The “us” Lamborn is talking about are Republicans. The person who will be blamed for the problems is of course Obama.

Lamborn’s comment raised the ire of numerous people, including the heads of the local NAACP, the Urban League of the Pikes Peak Region, and the El Paso County Democratic Party. Each decried his comments as racist because the phrase "tar baby" has been used to denigrate black people.

“The world already views (El Paso County) as ultra conservative, ultra-right-wing, Tea-Party-loving, gay bashing, an epicenter of hate,” Rosemary Harris Lytle, president of the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP told The Gazette newspaper. “With two vitriolic words, our own Congressman again sealed our fate.”

Lamborn’s people denied his comments were racial in nature. Instead, they said the reference was made because working with Obama created a sticky situation, a quagmire. The dictionary does indeed define tar baby as “a situation, problem, or the like, that is almost impossible to solve or to break away from.” But if Lamborn only meant to suggests a sticky situation, then why use a term that could so easily be seen as racially derogatory? Why not just say quagmire? Why liken the President, instead of the situation, to tar baby as was the case when the fallout from the Iran-Contra affair was dubbed George H.W. Bush's tar baby?

The reason, I believe, is simple: He knew what he was saying (“and you get it”), and he knew that he could cite the folktale “Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby” for cover. Lamborn also may have made a Freudian slip, giving away more about how he and the Republican Party view the President.

Allow me to elaborate in a conspiratorial way: Brer Fox (the GOP) hates Brer Rabbit (Obama), so Brer Fox creates a tar baby (the debt ceiling crisis) in order to trap Brer Rabbit and destroy him. Why? The answer may be as simple as Brer Rabbit is to sassy, to uppity for Brer Fox. Brer Rabbit eventually was able to trick Brer Fox, who threw Brer Rabbit into the briar patch. Brer Rabbit, sullied by the tar baby (debt ceiling debate), was able to escape.

With the debt ceiling debate over for now we have irrefutable proof that the role of the GOP (Brer Fox) is to destroy Obama (Brer Rabbit) by any means necessary. Now Obama has to figure out how he will deal with the GOP from this day forward. No longer can he look to them to make compromises that are good for the country. He has to understand that from now on, he must seek the support of his party faithful and any moderates on the other side of the aisle.

While many Republicans, especially those buoyed by the Tea Party, see their roles as burning down the house that is the federal government, polls show that many supporters of the Tea Party (57 percent in some polls) seek compromise. They supported the Tea Party not because they wanted to destroy the government or Obama, but rather because they wanted a government that would work, that would no longer follow the status quo.

Instead, those people helped to create more dysfunction than ever. And now it is up to Obama to remind them of that mistake so it can be corrected in 2012.