WHY AREN'T REPUBLICANS HAPPIER?

I am not a political pundit for one party or the other nor am I, for that matter, one who even favors one political party over the other.  I find honorable people in both parties; I also find mean-spirited, thieving scoundrels with the morals of a dog holding positions of high esteem in both parties.  I can't figure that out but I guess that's politics.

That said, I do listen to the various news programs and recently while without television I have had to lean more and more on talk radio for entertainment.  Notice that I did not say I listened for enlightenment or for the news.  There is no news on talk radio.  There is entertainment ... if you don't take what they say too much to heart and can laugh at the absurdity of some comments.

Talk radio hosts spend most of their time picking to pieces some tiny bit of news with which, they hope, they can provoke people to call in and help them fill a half hour of broadcast time.  After exhausting their listeners' patience with that non-topic-of-interest they will move on to another bit of trivia taken out of context and manage to worry it to death with the same enthusiasm of a dog with a terry cloth doll.

When they (both liberal and conservative talk show hosts) can find nothing about the opposition to pick to death, they turn to attack the comments of fellow radio talk show personalities.  It is a demanding job: filling three hours of talk every day. So demanding, in fact, that listeners quickly learn that it cannot be done without resorting to a lot of double talk, a lot of self promotion and a great deal of the nonsense mentioned above.

So, any intelligent listener realizes after a day or two that the hosts are not commenting on or providing any insight into the workings of Washington or any level of government, nor on any of the political figures of importance there.  They are simply arguing among themselves -- to fill their allotted daily three hour time slot or whatever time slot they have.  All but the brain dead (or truly indoctrinated ditto heads) tune them out after awhile, maybe to tune in later to see what they are ranting about today. 

The time it takes to realize that these conservative and progressive talk show hosts offer only entertainment (and precious little of that after a while) and no real information or insight depends directly on the intelligence of the listener.

I notice that several of the conservative talk show hosts seem to spend much of their time getting angry, even shouting as if the person of their discontent was in the broadcast booth but not paying attention.  One of the things they have been shouting about lately, as you might expect, is the president's health care reform proposal.  And, interestingly, they seem to be in agreement that (1) it will destroy the nation, (2) it will ruin Obama's political future, and (3) the Democratic Party will shrink into oblivion after the mid-term elections.

Well, if you were a hard-core Republican that would make me happy, wouldn't you think?  Of the three predictions only the dire prediction about about destroying the country would be cause for concern.  I suspect that many people do not believe that, regardless of their party affiliation, because they hear the same song every four years from the party currently out of power.  But the other two predictions it would seem should make any Republican or conservative very, very happy.  Obama is destroying himself and the Democratic party.  What more could you ask for?

You didn't want Obama in the White House in the first place.  You are convinced he is leading the country down the wrong path (the assumption being, always, that there is another path and you know where it is).  So why not rejoice?  He is going to self-destruct according to the Republican party Minister of Propaganda.

Still, so many of the Republican and conservative talk show hosts seem angry and unhappy about the way things are going.  I don't understand why.

Cheer up Republicans.  President Obama is going to lead you back into control of the country and you can straighten out the mess created by him during the last eight months.