Posted on 04/27/2012 6:57:39 AM PDT by EternalVigilance
April 27, 2012
I deal on a regular daily basis with self-identified conservatives all across America who are addicted to the Republican Party. And when it comes to the impending nomination by their party of the most liberal governor in U.S. history, Mitt Romney, their reactions are overwhelmingly in line with the classic symptoms described below. We can't make them face reality, of course. All we can do is to keep pointing it out to them, in the sincere hope that they will recover in time to help save the country.
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From Wikipedia :
Denial (also called abnegation) is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence. The subject may use:
The concept of denial is particularly important to the study of addiction. The theory of denial was first researched seriously by Anna Freud. She classified denial as a mechanism of the immature mind, because it conflicts with the ability to learn from and cope with reality. Where denial occurs in mature minds, it is most often associated with death, dying and rape.
In this form of denial, someone avoids a fact by lying. This lying can take the form of an outright falsehood (commission), leaving out certain details to tailor a story (omission), or by falsely agreeing to something (assent, also referred to as "yessing" behavior). Someone who is in denial of fact is typically using lies to avoid facts they think may be painful to themselves or others.
This form of denial involves avoiding personal responsibility by:
Someone using denial of responsibility is usually attempting to avoid potential harm or pain by shifting attention away from themselves.
For example: Troy breaks up with his girlfriend because he is unable to control his anger, and then blames her for everything that ever happened.
Denial of impact involves a person's avoiding thinking about or understanding the harms of his or her behavior has caused to self or others, i.e. denial of the consequences. Doing this enables that person to avoid feeling a sense of guilt and it can prevent him or her from developing remorse or empathy for others. Denial of impact reduces or eliminates a sense of pain or harm from poor decisions.
This type of denial is best discussed by looking at the concept of state dependent learning. People using this type of denial will avoid pain and harm by stating they were in a different state of awareness (such as alcohol or drug intoxication or on occasion mental health related). This type of denial often overlaps with denial of responsibility.
Many who use this type of denial will say things such as, "it just happened". Denial of cycle is where a person avoids looking at their decisions leading up to an event or does not consider their pattern of decision making and how harmful behavior is repeated. The pain and harm being avoided by this type of denial is more of the effort needed to change the focus from a singular event to looking at preceding events. It can also serve as a way to blame or justify behavior (see above).
This can be a difficult concept for many people to identify with in themselves, but is a major barrier to changing hurtful behaviors. Denial of denial involves thoughts, actions and behaviors which bolster confidence that nothing needs to be changed in one's personal behavior. This form of denial typically overlaps with all of the other forms of denial, but involves more self-delusion. Denial at this level can have significant consequences both personally and at a societal level.
Harassment covers a wide range of offensive behaviour. It is commonly understood as behaviour intended to disturb or upset. In the legal sense, it is behaviour which is found threatening or disturbing.
DARVO is an acronym to describe a common strategy of abusers: Deny the abuse, then Attack the victim for attempting to make them accountable for their offense, thereby Reversing Victim and Offender.
Psychologist Jennifer Freyd writes:
...I have observed that actual abusers threaten, bully and make a nightmare for anyone who holds them accountable or asks them to change their abusive behavior. This attack, intended to chill and terrify, typically includes threats of law suits, overt and covert attacks on the whistle-blower's credibility, and so on. The attack will often take the form of focusing on ridiculing the person who attempts to hold the offender accountable. [...] [T]he offender rapidly creates the impression that the abuser is the wronged one, while the victim or concerned observer is the offender. Figure and ground are completely reversed. [...] The offender is on the offense and the person attempting to hold the offender accountable is put on the defense.
Well, Romney is a pro-choice democrat. He thinks God-given rights can be decided by a majority vote.
He thinks courts make our laws, and that only they get to decide what is constitutional. In other words, he supports the abortion on demand status quo, the destruction of the checks and balances that make our form of government possible, and the erasure of the legitimate lines of authority granted to the various branches and departments of our government.
He thinks states can alienate unalienable rights if they want. A Stephen A. Douglas Democrat position if there ever was one.
In other words, even in this shape-shifter’s current incarnation, his views are anti-republican.
Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
I see so much stuff that goes both ways, I am always looking for answers. It could be that he has flopped. It could be that he has learned or, been influenced. But, like I said with my choice gone by the wayside I need to see something very, very solid to convince me the Obama is a better choice than Romney.
Your example is what I'm talking about and trying to "learn through". The Pro-Choice folks are down on Romney and call him a pro-life candidate.
I see so much stuff that goes both ways, I am always looking for answers. It could be that he has flopped. It could be that he has learned or, been influenced. But, like I said with my choice gone by the wayside I need to see something very, very solid to convince me the Obama is a better choice than Romney.
convince me the Obama is a better choice than Romney.
And a few posts prior:
I am looking to understand why four more years of Barack Obama...is preferable to Mitt Romney
Since I prefer neither socialist, your question is moot.
To those who promote the butchering of little babies under the color of "law" lying is such a little thing.
“I think the old standby definitions of who votes for which party have been blown away in this campaign. I think people recognize that I’m not a partisan Republican—that I’m someone who is moderate, and that my views are progressive.”
-Mitt Romney (2002)
Video of the quote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMcjJEXt9To
Obama continued: “I am somebody who is no doubt progressive. I believe in a tax code that we need to make more fair. I believe in universal health care. I believe in making college affordable. I believe in paying our teachers more money. I believe in early childhood education. I believe in a whole lot of things that make me progressive.”
-Barack Obama
http://www.progressive.org/mag/nichols0109.html
Not if Romney is the nominee.
He will be the nominee of your party, not ours.
He doesn't even have the qualifications to be affiliated with our party, much less to garner our support for any public office.
OK, I think I get it. So, what is the plan?
That is the reality. Wallow in reality for a while instead of taking the automatic hangdog defeatist attitude that is the hallmark of RINOs everywhere. When they send their little Muffies and Skippers off to finishing school before letting them enjoy their trust funds down at the polo club, yacht club or Junior League or Planned Barrenhood meetings, they see to it that Muffy and Skipper are well-trained as junior social revolutionaries to understand that Muffy's abortions and Skipper's desire to "marry" Lance are no one's business but their own.
In the late 1960's, the Connecticut GOP State Chairman was a Danbury-area airhead by the name of A. Searle Pinney (no one in my gritty blue collar New Haven neighborhood ever grew up with a name like "A. Searle Pinney." This ridiculous windtunnel of inherited wealth refused to place advertisements in Clayt Gengras's gubernatorial campaign in 1966 on Sunday NFL broadcasts because "No one would see them since everyone plays polo on Sundays." He actually SAID that in public. He actually believed it. No one is imaginative enough to invent the sort of idiots who have infested GOP politics in Connecticut as a television satire. The real imbeciles exceed even the wildest imaginations of the most talented and creative cynics.
In 1971, the otherwise superb GOP Governor Tom Meskill who had been Mayor of decidedly blue collar New Britain, had been elected governor. The working class private sector labor union Democrats were reeling from the Obama-class spending habits of genial John Dempsey, an early version of Dannell Malloy except that Dempsey had a son who was a priest which I feel sure Dannell does not and John's parents could also spell as Dannell's could not and John would execute murderers like Joseph Taborsky as Dannell will not-just wait and see on Komisarjevsky and Hayes, can you spell commutation? Those Democrat voters were also horrified to learn of the evils associated with the Demonrat candidate of 1970, Hartford Congressman Emilio Q. "Mim" Daddario. Mr. Daddario, it seems, had worked for the OSS in Italy during World War II and, in that capacity had turned over non-Marxist public officials to indigenous Italian communist firing squads for summary executions. There was also the little policy indiscretion by Comrade Daddario that he openly campaigned in favor of enacting a state personal income tax on wages and salaries, a long time Connecticut taboo. Daddario sank beneath the waves on the income tax issue. What the public did not know was that Meskill intended to enact such a state income tax as well to give him scads of money to hire loads of Republicans onto the public payroll and cement a Republican dynasty machine while otherwise being sufficiently conservative to earn the nickname "Reagan East."
I was a graduate student at the time and a group of us who were Young Republicans, College Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom approached Meskill's boyhood friend and campaign manager to inquire as to his positions on abortion and state income tax. We were told that half of his children were adopted and we would never have to worry on the abortion issue BUT, on that state income tax, they would be enacting one to hire their friends. Would we like to be their friends? The answer was: No, we would not. We will support him when he is right and oppose him when he is wrong. On everything but income tax we supported him.
When the state income tax was illegally passed at 3 AM on the day AFTER the General Assembly was constitutionally REQUIRED to adjourn, we fought Meskill and the GOP and their left-wing (on this question) Democrat allies, caused a small rally at the State Capitol lawn of 5,000 people, mostly enraged Democrat blue collar factory workers, enjoyed the support of the New Haven Register and Waterbury Republican-American, intimidated the hell out of the politicians responsible, were cursed in the governor's office (according to friends on his staff), burned some legislators in effigy on their front lawns and forced the repeal of the tax. The 1971 state income tax was repealed in July long before it was to take effect on October 1, 1971. If you earned a living in Connecticut between October, 1971, and October 1, 1991, you did not have to pay a state income tax on your wages or salary because of that colorful and successful rebellion.
In 1991, after we took Weicker's Senate seat away for his accumulated record of perfidy, he came back as an Independent and sought and won the governorship, knowing he was utterly finished in the GOP (most of which had been successfully urged to vote for Joe Lieberman including my old 1971 friends and associates and a newer generation of conservatives), promised NEVER to enact a state income tax, got elected and immediately proceeded to buy and bribe his way (the habits of privilieged lifetimes are soooo hard to break) to enactment of your current state income tax. LoLo dished out so many bribes that even the Tom Scott led rally of 60,000 on the State Capitol Lawn did not succeed at gaining repeal. That rally was fully supported by the Teamsters Union with its Bridgeport Local's "War Wagon," funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers' Union, and heavily supported by the members of the Electrical Workers' Union, the Postal Workers' Unions (Carriers and Clerks), the State Police Union, International Association of Machinists, defense workers and many, many others. In short, the people that the GOP snobbycrats despise and socially snub and are just yearning for the GOP to show real leadership for a change instead of its usual Muffy and Skipper face.
Another example of the desire of many Democrats to defect if the GOP would just earn the defection was a man named Tom Gillin, who was the Democrat Majority Leader of the New Haven Board of Aldermen (then heavily ethnic and Catholic). He had succeeded New Haven Mayor Richard Lee on the Board of Alderman and ben Dick Lee's campaign manager on several occasions. In 1964, he resigned as Majority Leader, as an Alderman, from the Democratic Party and became a Republican, announcing all that at a Board of Aldermen meeting and explaining that Goldwater was making too much sense for Tom to remain as a Democrat. To this day, the Connecticut GOP has NEVER made an effort to seek the very substantial and conservative Knights of Columbus vote in Connecticut.
In 1994, former five-term State Senator Tom Scott (from what had been the swing district, the 14th in Milford, Orange, Derby and West Haven which is now held by leftist Gayle Schlossberg long after Tom's retirement to run a close race in 1990 for Congress in New Haven's heavily Demonrat Third District) ran as an Independent for governor with the usual lack of funding that conservatives suffer since they will not stroke the corrupt major money interests by dialing for dollars. Again, Tom, who had been the single most conservative State Senator in CT's recent history (elected at 21 years old in 1980 to the State Senate, pro-lifer, anti-sexual perversion, anti-income tax leader, restored the death penalty, killed the highway tolls over Billy O'Neill's nearly dead body, waged war for English as the official state language and gaining wide Hispanic support for that effort against LULAC, turned his swing district into a reliably Republican one even for a while after he retired, etc., etc.) ran for governor as a petitioning candidate (it took four days to circulate the necessary petitions and get a multiple of the required signatures). He got something like 15% of the vote which, without much money, is not bad in Connecticut. Instead, Jailbird John Rowland was elected, promising to repeal the state income tax (he never tried because he was too busy lining his pockets with taxpayers' money while selling out the pro-life vote that had supported him in every Congressional and state legislative election. When jailed, he was replaced by pro-abort Jodi Rell of the, ummm, upper Fairfield County Rells. So much for any likelihood of EVER getting labor votes or Catholic voters like the very sizable Knights of Columbus constituency. The Connecticut GOP gives such groups absolutely NO reason to consider voting Republican on a state or local level.
The only bright spots in Connecticut are the return of veteran State Senator Joe Markley to his old seat in the Southington/Waterbury District after he had spent some time out of state, and the incredible upset victory of State Senator Len Suzio in a by-election in the verrrry Demonratic Meriden/Middletown/Middlebury/Cheshire Senate District (engineered by Tom Scott as Len's campaign manager) where the Democrats tend not to munch brie or guzzle chablis in their Meriden and Middletown strongholds.
For CT Republicans, outside Markley's and Suzio's districts, cynicism IS sophistication. Anything less than cynicism is Pollyannaism. Do you really, really, really want to be principled and sophisticated as a Connecticut Republican???? Then I challenge you to find out what REALLY happened in Connecticut while the GOP slept and ignored Connecticut's socially conservative and anti-income tax blue collar workers, yearning to breathe free, as it were. See what you can find out from people who actually know what they are talking about as to a charming little group named LEAP. That's short for the Legislative Electoral Action Project. An ultra-wealthy young ultra-leftist couple who were Minnesotans and cereal fortune heirs, came to Connecticut with their fat checkbooks some time in the 1970s determined to politically destroy the influence of socially conservative and mainly Catholic mill workers in the state's Demonratic Party, a very successful sort of McGovernization project (with gobs of money, money, money as is traditional). Six years after arriving, they left Connecticut having turned the socially conservative Democrat faction into a smoking and rejected ruin in favor of the Muffies and the Skippers and the Blumenthals and the Lawlors and the DeLauros and the Bysewiczes and the Donovans and others of their ilk. If a book is ever written, I will read it avidly and recommend it to others regardless of state of residence. LEAP (not to be confused with some more recent public school propaganda group) was a nuclear success of Biblical proportions.
Until you understand what LEAP accomplished against what odds and by what methods, you will NEVER be able to actually act effectively no matter how hard you work to convince yourself that you are a good fellow "doing SOMETHING." If you do not understand where you have been and where you are and where you intend to go, how and why, you are not doing anything. Voting Romney is rewarding the enemy as Connecticut and Massachusetts and Vermont and Maine and Rhode Island Republicans have more reason to know than those in many other states.
You are in Connecticut? I was born there, grew up there, got every bit of my formal education there, worked there, raised hell there, ran for office there, was an activist there, was a party official there and got thoroughly fed up with what passed for a Republican Party there. A bit more than ten years ago, I retired, sold my house and fled Connecticut (for Illannoy: go ahead call me a masochist, I confess!) and joined my wife and kids in going to America.
Do not pretend that I do not know what I am talking about or that I do not understand Connecticut's political history of the last 50 years, or the utter perfidy of what passes for its GOP nowadays.
You may well be a decent, hard-working GOP and even conservative activist but, unless you understand the history, analyze the status quo, and understand and apply necessary tactics, you cannot succeed. Electing Romney is not one of those tactics. He is a nuclear disaster for the GOP and for America working as hard as he knows how to happen. Don't let him. That is not cynicism. That is reality.
As to holding GOP legislators (and Democrats too) accountable, I have done that on numerous occasions and I'll wager you have not on a state or federal level. In DC, if, God forbid, Mittwit becomes POTUS, the GOP legislators will mostly "assume the position" and be brain-dead monarchist lapdogs for Robamney and his leftist agenda, just as they might actually filibuster and resist Obozo as an exercise in Party uber alles. If Robamney becomes POTUS, there will be no good results only the death of the GOP as an effective resistance. If and when that happens, to which country do you plan to flee?
Wait a sec... how do you block people ?
Except there’s a big problem with that. Perot didn’t give us the Clintons... George H.W. Bush did. All he had to do was continue Reagan’s legacy and KEEP HIS WORD on taxes. Instead, he went along to get along with the scumbag Democrats and his approvals went from sky-high to sewer-low in short order. If Perot had never entered the race and it was one-on-one, Bubba still would’ve won.
That’s gonna leave a mark.
Disagree.
You may disagree but that is what the polls stated at the time. I have never seen an actual refutation just childlike, naive faith that RINOs are just, well, more popular than those awful reactionaries and baby-lovers and bitter clingers and gun nuts with the general electorate. All the Lamestreamers tell us so a thousand times a day so it just must be true, right??? Well, no it is not.
Bush the Elder pissed away Reagan's legacy in no time. His height of popularity was achieved by Stormin' Norman Schwartzkopf and had little to do with the POTUS called, even by George Will, a lapdog with a thin tinny arf. With or without Perot, the paranoid nutcase with nonetheless a great grasp of the problems of globalization and a real dedication to American jobs, Bush was bound to get his ass kicked by Bubba who was a substantially more talented candidate despite his wife, his draft-dodging, his anti-Americanism, his personal radicalism and his unimaginably poor taste in Oval Office bimbos. As Poppy and Planned Barrenmhood Barbara would gladly tell you, gentlemen simply do not take advantage of the personal peccadilloes of others. Of course, Carville the Serpent is and was no gentlemen and never played by the rules. Also, Poppy is, of course, a devotee of the "New World Order," the one where the whole world is run by those who own it, sort of similar to the views of the Massachusetts mushball and well-funded serial liar.
I've lived in Connecticut since 1969, married a local girl, fathered a child and had a career in the state. I'm a homeowner and certainly a taxpayer. To be candid, I gave up on Connecticut some time ago. I may not have had your hands-on experience in Connecticut politics but I have eyes and ears and can see that the political spoils system is alive and well in Connecticut and that the GOP is deeply involved in it, rendering it useless.
Frankly, I blame the citizens of the state for their apathy that allows the state to drift into bankruptcy and chaos while they dutifully vote 'Democrat' election after election and elect RINO governors that are almost identical to Democrat governors in policy but sometimes veto the more egregious Democrat bills, knowing that the veto will likely be overturned by the Democrat legislative majority. Roland and Rell were big disappointments and soured many conservatives on the Connecticut GOP, even without having your 'inside' political experience.
As former and present Connecticut residents we both know that a true conservative politician has zero chance in Connecticut politics and with the state electorate apparently uninterested in making any changes or demanding that accountability I referenced, nothing will change until everything collapses; the state workers fat salaries can no longer be paid and their coveted gold-plated retirement benefits disappear, the welfare checks stop coming and the many 'programs' supposedly to 'help the poor' are closed down for lack of funds as taxes rise exponentially. Then, perhaps, a conservative may have a chance at being nominated and elected. By then, who would want to even try?
However, I doubt even this dystopian future will be enough to shake Connecticut politicians and voters out of their conditioned lethargy. I consider Connecticut to be a (political) lost cause for conservatives. That noted, I still have only two real choices on the November ballot; Obama or Romney. Not voting is never an option for me. Voting 'third party' isn't an option I chose because it doesn't accomplish anything. Yes, Romney is a quasi-liberal that will very likely govern 'to the left'. However, Obama is dangerous and must be replaced. That the Electoral College system will render my Republican vote moot is something I cannot use as an excuse to shirk my voting privilege. For the sake of my conscience I must vote.
I disagree that electing a politically conservative congress is not realistic but I acknowledge that it would take years to get rid of the corrupt, entrenched GOP 'leadership' in Washington. That can only happen if Americans vote for conservatives on a consistent basis. Will that happen? Probably not but it doesn't mean that I simply throw up my hands and refuse to vote until the 'right' Republican candidate comes along. Frankly, I haven't got that much time and I concede the fact that some things may never change in my lifetime, no matter how I vote. So be it. I have to do what I can, while I can.
Like you, I'm looking to move out of Connecticut as soon as its feasible. North Carolina is looking good right now but wherever I end up, it will be an improvement, both politically and financially.
They got an app for everything, don’t they ? :-P
I hope so!
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