O Tea Party, os republicanos, ou a ânsia de destruir a presidência de Obama. Shutdown hypocrisy: Republicans show disdain for their beloved constitution.

O Tea Party, os republicanos, ou a ânsia de destruir a presidência de Obama

Por Rita Siza

03/10/2013 in Público

Quando se fala no universo paralelo em que supostamente vivem os políticos de Washington, é disto que se fala: ontem, todos os agentes e intervenientes que forçaram a suspensão do funcionamento de parte dos serviços do Governo federal dos Estados Unidos criticaram e lamentaram o impasse político no Congresso, mas não tomaram nenhuma medida nem revelaram a mínima iniciativa para remediar a situação - com tudo a perder, todos acreditam que ainda podem ganhar.

Como explicava ontem o veterano jornalista político de Washington, James Fallows, nas páginas da revista The Atlantic, se o speaker do Congresso John Boehner quisesse acabar com o braço de ferro com a Casa Branca, acabava. "Se a Câmara de Representantes votasse hoje uma proposta de orçamento "limpa" - isto é, uma lei que permitisse a reabertura dos serviços governamentais sem exigir como contrapartida o fim do financiamento do programa de saúde do Presidente Obama - essa proposta seria aprovada", observava Fallows, pouco depois de 16 congressistas conservadores terem indicado disponibilidade para rever a sua posição.
No entanto, o afável líder dos republicanos, famoso pela sua bonomia, tem os movimentos tolhidos pela indisciplina e rebelião da facção fiel aos princípios do movimento anti-governo Tea Party - e poderá estar genuinamente convencido que a estratégia obstrucionista garantirá maiores dividendos políticos e eleitorais do que um compromisso com o Presidente.
A sua premissa é a seguinte: quando os norte-americanos começarem a sentir os efeitos nefastos do encerramento do Governo e da falta de serviços públicos, começarão a exigir que os democratas no Senado e a Casa Branca aceitem negociar o adiamento de uma lei que, mostram as sondagens, lhes merece muitas reservas.
O problema da sua lógica é que, pelo menos para já, a opinião pública e publicada atribui a "culpa" pela situação quase exclusivamente aos republicanos. Alinhando pelo mesmo diapasão do Presidente Barack Obama, os comentadores acusam os conservadores, e em particular o chamado caucus do Tea Party (que representa menos de 20% da bancada), de usar o Governo federal como refém das suas lutas intestinas.
"O encerramento parcial do Governo federal resulta de uma luta de facções entre os republicanos da Câmara de Representantes: a minoria ultra-conservadora do Tea Party contra a maioria que só é muito conservadora", resumia a The Economist. É o "colapso do poder institucional dentro da bancada republicana", referia Robert Costa, editor da conservadora National Review.
"Já não estamos a falar numa revolta contra a liderança republicana ou sequer contra o establishment do partido: esta é uma revolta contra quem está disposto a aceitar os constrangimentos da realidade política", escrevia Michael Gerson, o speechwriter do Presidente George W. Bush que tem uma coluna no The Washington Post.
As palavras do igualmente conservador Andrew Sullivan, que dirige o The Daily Dish, um dos sites políticos mais populares dos EUA, são ainda mais duras. O autor equipara a estratégia política dos republicanos no Congresso à "vandalização da Constituição que dizem celebrar e à sabotagem da democracia constitucional". Num artigo intitulado "o Partido do Nihilismo", Sullivan argumenta que o objectivo dos conservadores já deixou de ser apenas o de acabar com o chamado "Obamacare" - o pacote legislativo para o alargamento quase universal do acesso a cuidados de saúde. "O que os republicanos pretendem é anular a presidência", considera, sublinhando que por essa razão Obama deve manter-se "absolutamente firme. Não pode haver compromisso porque os republicanos não aceitam o compromisso". Como lembrava o analista do Washington Post Ezra Klein, ainda antes do shutdown estar confirmado, o Partido Republicano está disposto a fechar o Governo e colocar o país na bancarrota para "acabar com uma lei que aumenta os impostos dos mais ricos e reduz os subsídios às seguradoras privadas, para facilitar a compra de seguros de saúde pelos americanos de rendimentos mais baixos. É disto que se trata".
O teste para os republicanos será perceber se a oposição ao "Obamacare" é suficiente para anular o descontentamento com a paralisação da actividade das agências e departamentos públicos: ontem, uma sondagem CNN/ORC International mostrava que 56% dos americanos achava que era mais importante manter o Governo a funcionar do que desmantelar a reforma do sistema de saúde.
Para os democratas, que têm a maioria no Senado, e mais crucialmente para a Casa Branca, a situação actual pode não ser muito desejável, mas no campo da luta política, é a mais favorável. No arranque das negociações para a aprovação do orçamento, a posição dos liberais era tão irredutível quanto a dos conservadores - as propostas de cada lado excluíam-se mutuamente - mas os seus argumentos em defesa da manutenção da lei de Obama eram mais poderosos: a lei foi aprovada nas duas câmaras do Congresso e ratificada pelo Supremo Tribunal. E nas últimas eleições presidenciais, os americanos reelegeram o seu autor com uma votação expressiva.

Shutdown hypocrisy: Republicans show disdain for their beloved constitution

Maybe those of us who were sickened over the Iraq war and the the Bush/Cheney administration should have been more unruly

Laura Vecsey

theguardian.com, Wednesday 2 October 2013/ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/02/shutdown-republican-disdain-for-constitution

To think that some of us Americans waited painfully and patiently for the George W Bush/Dick Cheney error to end, and now this: a government shutdown because of the zealot-like righteousness of a few religiously-inspired martyrs in Congress who allege that they are champions of the US constitution.

That's the biggest thing that galls me – and makes me scared that we aren't far from lawlessness and mayhem, especially when you add in the voting rights setbacks that threaten future elections, local and national.

A few members of the US Congress (and one nutcase senator) jump the shark over President Barack Obama's signature healthcare reform law and we all have to sip the blood.

People joke about the Panda Cam at the National Zoo in Washington going dark, but what about the Federal Trade Commission investigators who aren't hunting down Russian hackers this week, courtesy of Senator Ted Cruz and House Speaker John Boehner's shutdown?

The practical mess of the shutdown is not funny, pandas and all. But what's really not funny is the perilous fight we have on our hands. Can we restore any integrity and faith in our own government? How can we, especially since Fox News has so successfully enlisted average Americans to rage against Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act as if they were fighting the Nazis.

How did this become progressives' war?

We could have tolerated conservatism's debate on smaller government. We get it. Government is a beast. It needs to be checked. A social safety net can create bloat and abuses. Let's debate each other about where to draw the line. Or, in the case of the Affordable Care Act, figure out what's working and what's not and fix it, constructively, so that health care safety and costs can be attained and leveled.

But to deliberately smash government, to vilify it and persecute it and kick it to the curb like one of those welfare takers Mitt Romney was never going to win over during his failed presidential run? That's another story. That's a rabid faction of Congress that can't be brought back to the fold. That's a faction of Congress that has teetered outside the bounds of rational discourse, fueled, likely, by copious amounts of booze and backslapping and safe pockets of gerrymandering that have created two Americas, one red and mostly Caucasian, the other blue and colorful, diverse.

What's hard for most of us to understand is this: Barack Obama rode to the presidency in large part because of the backlash against Iraq war and the neo-con lies perpetrated by the Bush/Cheney administration. A terrorist attack on US soil had fed an unchecked frenzy for an unlawful and unfunded war, yet by 2004, when evidence was in about the lies and abuse of power by the Bush administration, many of us were weathering a sense of almost unfathomable betrayal.

You would have imagined that under those circumstances, the seeds were sewn for lawless uprisings; for discontent (and worse) to have undermined our sense of allegiance to our country 'tis of thee. Grieving as some US citizens were during this time, we still found a way to use our democratic process to restore our ideals, to make change, but to do so within the context and confines of our constitutional system.

For those of us who opposed the war in Iraq; who grew disgusted with the cronyism and incompetence of the Bush administration (Hurricane Katrina response; Wall Street's implosion; the bank bailout), we waited out the policymakers who we thought were steering us in the wrong direction. We amassed the votes necessary to make a change.

Maybe those of us who were sickened over the Iraq war and the bleeding of money to Halliburton and the faux conservatism of the Bush/Cheney administration should have been more unruly. Now a US law rightfully enacted and justly upheld by the Supreme Court is being held hostage for renegotiation by obstructionists as if the Affordable Care Act was just an idea, a bill, and not a law.

In this instance, we are sure that something has gone very wrong inside our own elected government. Some of us are very alarmed, although maybe not surprised. This is what you get in an America where congressional districts are drawn in configurations meant largely to protect Republicans. This is what you get when the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling allows unlimited mystery money to flow into political action committees to elect candidates who are unanswerable to constituents but owned by corporations.

But there's a major difference between those who voted for Obama and "Obamacare" and those who have shutdown the federal government: while we licked our wounds, and watched as Supreme-Court-ordered loser Al Gore grew that beard and gut, we may have despaired, but we also figured that our way out of the mess was to work the system we have.

We waited and organized and were ready to show that the country was comprised of a more diverse population; that we did not want wars of choice; that we needed to get back to the business of reinventing our economy, including the biggest drain on our fiscal well-being: sky-rocketing healthcare costs.

We got change by using the system as it was intended. We waited and amassed the votes for change, which wound up being in the form of Barack Obama. Like a mirror, it is said, Obama reflects whatever anyone who's looking at him wants to see. For us, he was change. For the government shutdowners who have sprayed the stink of anarchy on us all, Obama is the illegitimate son of big government and a panderer to all the takers and all the food stamp users and all the uninsured who put him in the White House. Twice.