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Claire Conner, Kansas City, missouri, National Federation of Democratic Women, Wrapped in the Flag
“…The middle class and the working class in America without government protection, support and investment will be controlled by radical right wingers, religious fanatics, old John Birchers and people like Paul Ryan.”
Previously:
National Federation of Democratic Women in Kansas City – June 12, 2014 (June 13, 2014)
NFDW in Kansas City – Claire Connor – “Wrapped in the Flag” – part 1 (June 13, 2014)
Claire Conner: ….Now, we stand back now as liberals and we say, the press, yeah, the press stinks. It does. Even Chris Matthews is terrible. I mean, let’s face it, hardly anybody has the nerve to say to someone, hey, those facts are wrong or they aren’t facts at all. Yet, our leaders don’t do it either. we let [Representative] Paul Ryan stand on the American stage as if he were some kind of a bright economist who actually could add and subtract and that he had really valid ideas. Really? Here’s a guy who doesn’t have, cannot find a government program he doesn’t want to end and he’s never worked for anyone but the government. [laughter] He never has. Oh, I think, wait, I take that back. I think one summer he drove that, uh, hot dog machine, one summer. [laughter] This is a kid who went to college on his father’s Social Security.
Now, they want to tell you that poor people, poor people keep sucking at the government and draining all of our money. Really? If there’s someone sucking up our money it’s people like Paul Ryan. And yet every single two years the people of Wisconsin reelect him. Why? Why? Because the people who don’t agree with him forget to vote.
I live in Florida. Now Florida, I want to remind all of my friends who do not live in Florida, if you would like to know what’s coming down the road for you, you take a look at Florida. Nineteen years the GOP has run Florida and it is a mess. It’s sad, it’s pathetic and it’s not getting any better. We have teachers paid forty-seventh in the nation, we have kids crammed into schools because they closed all these schools and jammed all of our children into these big conglomerate messes We test kids and test kids and test kids and have nothing. We have drained out of our children any love of learning. We have a legislature that gives themselves this thing called a leadership days which means basically you sit in your office in Tallahassee and collect checks from anybody who wants your vote. Florida is probably as corrupt as any place in, on the planet. It’s unbelievable. And everyone knows it. Nineteen years they’ve been in charge. We have no clean water, we have wrecked the Everglades, it’s pathetic.
Now, here’s the really pathetic thing, there are more registered Democrats than Republicans in the state of Florida. That’s right. I wish it weren’t right. It makes me crazy. Do you, I, I lived in Florida about four months and people who I’d met, Democrats, would call me and ask me to to vote for. I said, are you crazy? You’re calling me? I just got here, but let me tell you who to vote for. In the case of Florida if you have a breathing human being with a D after their name, that’s who you vote for. [laughter, applause] That’s it and it’s easy. You don’t even have to know anything because in Florida, until you get rid of some of the Republicans, we’re not going to discuss government at all. So, this is what’s happened to the great State of Florida. It’s awful.
And if you look at the South today you’ll see the old Confederacy is exactly like Florida. We literally have a bright red Confederacy. And they are armed to the teeth and itching, itching to take out the feds along with all the minorities and most of the women. Yeah, yeah.
I have friends, African American friends, women in particular, who say that they are suffering the most awful indignities again coming out of the mouths of these brats. Men and women who’s hatred has been unleashed in the last six years in ways that I find to be utterly horrifying – and I am a white woman. I’m angry that we’ve unleashed and allowed to happen this hatred in this country. This rage and this anger. And why? Because we never believe these people. We always think, oh, you know what, that’s as bad as it’ll get. That’s as bad as it’ll get.
When Benghazi happened we thought, oh, they’ll never impeach him, they can’t. They can and they will. Look at what happened to [Sgt. Bowe] Bergdahl. Look at what happened to the President of the United States. And to that young man, who knows what happened to him? But worse than that, where were the people who stood up and said to [Senator] John McCain, listen mister, we traded for you. [applause] We traded for you with North Viet Nam. And in your own book, John, you said you gave up everything you knew to the Vietnamese. We should have let you rot. [laughter] But seriously, who has the nerve to say that to John McCain? It’s terrible. We tried this guy on Fox News last Sunday or the Sunday before. They were saying that the death penalty should be on the table. For what? We haven’t tried him, we haven’t charged him, we haven’t investigated anything. And in the next breath they say, and the President should be impeached.
The problem is they’re not crazy. They’re working their plan. I wish they were crazy. Crazy people are one thing. Crazy people, honestly, you can defeat crazy people fairly easily. These people aren’t crazy, they have a plan. I think their plan is really evident right now. They’re going to impeach President Obama. They won’t remove him from office. They don’t have the votes in the Senate and they won’t have them. But they don’t need that. They will have two more years of a government that does nothing. And what happens in America when the government doesn’t do anything? Americans know one thing. They know what party controls the White House, and that’s all they know. And that is our fault. That is our fault.
I talk to Democrats who still don’t understand that the President can’t pass a bill. They don’t know. We haven’t taught anybody. We haven’t taught anybody how the government works. So when the government doesn’t work who do we blame? The President. Democrats forgot the most important thing in American politics, the guy in the White House doesn’t matter. The guy in the White House doesn’t matter. What matters? The state legislatures, the school boards, um hmm, the county board, your congressman, and your senator. You take care of that and the White House will take care of itself. [applause] Yes indeed.
So, I’m gonna get pulled off this stage because I really do want to talk to you and let you talk to me. I want to tell you this, I know about the radical right because I lived with them. I know what their goal is. They don’t believe in any safety net programs. We’re gonna talk a lot more about this tomorrow. They believe in no safety net programs. They believe, the pure right wingers, and there are lots of them, including this guy who just beat [Representative] Eric Cantor, by the way, David Brat, they believe that the Federal Government has four jobs. Now, you need to memorize this. The radical right and most of the GOP believes that there are four things that the government does. One, coin money. Two, run the Post Office. And you’ll notice they don’t really believe in that much anymore. Three, run foreign policy. And four, run the War Department. Now that is it. Those are the four specifically enumerated powers reserved the Federal Government in the Constitution according to these people. they do not believe in the common welfare, general good concept at all. Not a bit. They believe in those four things and they’re not too sure about the Post Office, so they believe in three.
Now you have to start thinking how that translates into real policy. That’s why food stamps are a no. That’s why the farm bill was a mess. That’s why they will not fund the highway department. My father and the right wing don’t believe in it. And nor do most of them up there. That’s why they absolutely oppose all civil rights legislation and did from the get go. Because in their minds the Federal Government has no jurisdiction, no authority, and no right. Now, if you get your arms around that you’ll begin to understand that libertarians and radical right people are essentially anarchists. They are. They’re essentially anarchists.
Now Kansas, your neighbor here, is getting a good dose of this right now. It is. And tomorrow we’re going to talk a little bit about the Kochs, so I hope you all come to breakfast at seven thirty. And you’ll miss a great opportunity to listen to me talk about the Kochs, you know, who are Birch kids, they’re Birch kids.
So, the, anarchy is simple when you’re worth a hundred billion dollars, isn’t it? Yeah. rich folks always think they don’t need the government because essentially they don’t. Essentially they don’t. Unfortunately not only do they not need it, but they want to wreck it and that’s a problem.
But I think we need to start as Democrats talking to ourselves, talking to our friends, talking to our voters about this reality. The middle class and the working class in America without government protection, support and investment will be controlled by radical right wingers, religious fanatics, old John Birchers and people like Paul Ryan.
