Tfgray’s Weblog

1. Sarah Palin will give an interview at the Republican National Convention in which she hints that she may well run for Senator in 2014 or President in 2016. There will be a flurry of press interest and her true believers will swoon and throw money at her PAC’s website.

2. Herman Cain will not win the Republican nomination, although he may actually win a primary or two…well, I’m not even sure about the primary part. Now that people are hearing more about the 999 Plan than its title, he may be back in the single digits by this time next week. But there are two other reasons that he won’t make it to The Show:

• Obama v Cain = Michael Jordan v Sherman Jefferson. You tell me who wins that match-up.
• Those Who Count within the Republican Establishment know that enough potential voters, when confronted with the choice between a black man and a black man, will vote for  None of the Above. They know that most of that group of voters generally vote Republican. There’s a whole political strategy (called “the Southern Strategy”) built around it.

3. The Republicans in Congress will continue their strategy of blocking all legislation relating to jobs and wasting time voting on Social Conservatives’ pet peeves over and over. Reason?

• When your popular base only has one issue, you have no other way to win their favor. It’s also a good way to conceal the fact that the base their real agenda supports consists of less than 1% of the population.
•  Ir’s the Economy, Stupid. By refusing to vote on jobs, or voting only on jobs bills consisting solely of tax giveaways to the wealthy, they intend to prolong the economic doldrums and increase economic dissatisfaction, in the hope that they will push Obama out of office and retake the Senate.

4. It won’t work. I know that there are plenty of AM radio listeners who bobblehead along with the notion that Republican obstructionism is all masterminded by Obama, somehow, and that voters will turn to Republicans as the party that gets things done. The basic idea is that if we vote for the people the plutocrats want to see in office, the corporate coffers will open, and prosperity return to the land in a wave of business investment. On the small scale, that would be called blackmail. On a large enough scale, it’s called Business as Usual.

It’ll be a tough sell. Enough of us remember the Bush years when Republican legislators voted themselves a three-day work week, without a corresponding pay cut. We have noticed that they have filibustered nearly every bill proposed in the Senate. And we have noticed the sort of legislation they do pass when elected: Strip workers of their rights, lower taxes for the wealthy, eliminate local government, and selectively restrict voting rights. Americans are showing signs of waking up.

5. It will be a bloody, bruising campaign, and an apparent horse race to the end. But when all the votes are counted, it will be a reprisal of Johnson v Goldwater.

6. If I miss my bet on Prediction #5, the remainder of the American Public sector will be dismantled and sold off to profit-making enterprises. Think 44 cents is too much to mail a letter? Compare it to FedEx. Think your school tax is too high? Try sending your kids to private school. Roads? Tolls. The rationale will be trotted out, once again, that private industry, by adding a layer of profit to the cost of providing a service, will be able to do the job cheaper. Sure, but only if they cut wages and increase workloads. Buyer beware.