Wake Up And Smell The Bracing Odor Of “We Don’t Care About The Little Guy.”

This weekend I got the chance to watch Battleground. A nominee for best picture, among other awards, in 1950, Battleground lacks the blood, guts and explosions of modern war films, but it is big on heart. It is one of those war films that centers on the lives of a group of enlisted men and noncoms coping with the demands of war—the little men who in every war fight and die to get the job done. These are the kinds of people I try to root for in my political writing.

For fairness sake, I would love to write about how Republican politicians also are out their working for the little guy, the everyman/woman, and I promise I will, if I ever see Republicans giving more than lip service to the working and middle class.

All too often, however, the major thrust of Republican politics is similar to that of Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY), who, by objecting to a unanimous consent decree for an emergency one month funding extension, has cut off unemployment benefits to approximately a million people and caused 2000 department of transportation workers to be furloughed without pay. Other workers will be sent home from transportation construction projects because the federal inspectors have been furloughed.

In response to both Republican and Democratic senators imploring Bunning to change his position, Bunning did show some emotion. He was obviously upset that by staying in the senate to object to this measure he was forced to miss “Kentucky-South Carolina game that started at 9 o’clock.” Such a sacrifice!

To be fair, Bunning is alone in objecting to this legislation. All other Republican senators are willing to pass it with a unanimous consent decree (which bypasses a week or more of procedural hurdles. However, little outrage has been directed toward Bunning by the Republican leadership.

More typical of the Republican response is that from Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) who said that, “If anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” In other words, as far as Kyl is concerned the reason we have about 9.5% unemployment (higher in many areas) is because people are too lazy to go to work. If you are willing to accept this, then you don’t know enough people.

Go grab a copy of your local paper and look at the help wanted ads. How many of those jobs are you qualified for? How many would support your family? I have both friends and relatives who are unemployed. These are people with good degrees and work histories, who are willing to take any reasonable job, because unemployment pay barely lets them scrape by.

I imagine the guys in the squad featured in Battleground (in many ways they remind me of the guys I went through army basic training with), and I imagine Kyl and his ilk telling them the reason they are unemployed is because they are lazy, and I want to cry.

I watch the “Taxed Enough Already” crowd villainizing Obama (who cut their taxes), protesting Health Reform (which will save them money, and prevent them from being abused by the health insurance industry), and protesting the bank bailout and stimulus programs (which kept us from sliding into a soup-line great depression economy, and if nothing else kept teachers and cops on the job), and I want to scream. How did you get so twisted that you are attacking the people who are on your side? Wake up the Republicans are wearing a cologne marketed by big business called Fuck The Little Guy.