That’s pretty much the new rebranding of the Republican Party: “GOP = Pushing for Failure.” Their unofficial but clearly dominant alpha-male leader, Rush Limbaugh, made that clear: “I hope Obama fails.” Recently, he reiterated that desire even more clearly, stating a positive desire for not only Obama but his attempts to help the economy to fail as well.

And that’s what Republicans are working to get: failure, disaster, bad news. They put their full weight into denying Obama as many votes as possible, after doing all they could to de-stimulus the stimulus bill. They know that infrastructure spending is the most effective form of stimulus, along with food stamps and other ways of conveying money to the lower and middle class, who are most likely to spend and spend domestically. They know infrastructure will create jobs. They know that tax breaks do a poor job–they’ve tried it, after all–and they must be aware that stuff like cutting the estate tax and giving tax cuts to the oil companies will have a negative effect, not a positive one.

It’s almost as if they’re not even trying very hard to disguise it. I mean, really, GOP chairman Steele tried to claim that if taxpayer dollars fund jobs, then they’re not “jobs,” they are “work,” which is worse because “work” ends after a while, whereas “jobs” are, uh, well, they’re ending by the millions too but that’s beside the point, right? Meanwhile, Boehner stands up before the press and tries to claim that infrastructure spending is not “really” stimulus–instead, let’s cut all kinds of taxes for rich people, that’ll work!

The GOP might as well just give up the pretense and sell it straight: we will obstruct and sabotage the nation’s business as much as possible so Obama and the Democrats look bad and so more of us get elected in the future.

Because if they can recapture power in Washington, then we’ll get back to the glory years of the Bush administration, and wasn’t that a time of prosperity? Well, if you were a banker or oilman, maybe. Some kind of rich person. That’s the GOP constituency–the wealthy. Not enough to get many votes, but they can fool enough of the rest of the country who have dreams of wealth, those who are willing to sacrifice what they have for the vain hope of someday getting that winning lottery ticket so they can leave behind the desolation the Republicans have created.