THE ENEMY WITHIN

SVENGALI'S BUSY

One of the cushiest jobs in politics is getting to be Svengali, or svengali as it's now okay to write, sort of like Google becoming google. The character from George de Maurier's 1894 novel gets to screw up everybody's best laid plans by worming his way into their confidence, and it's plain as the nose on Romney's face that there's one working his, or her, butt off amidst the GOP, most likely his. One of the sneakiest things he did was talk the Republicans into tacking a provision on to the unemployment extension bill that would deny anybody who doesn't have a high school diploma, or GED, from collecting unemployment insurance. Cleaver, bastard, right? (Hats off to Economist View blog for bringing the plot to screw workers to my attention.)

He figured out that if the GOP did that it would destroy their chances of picking up blue collar “Reagan Democrats,” piss off Hispanics, and make it look like Republicans favored “intellectuals.” All that in a couple of sentences added to the bill! Boy he's good. .I mean, he figured out that people who had to drop out of school and go to work to help support their folks, who were not allowed to go to school because they were third generation “wetbacks,” or who had dyslexia and flunked out but who paid into the government's insurance program for decades will all be screwed, and they will make the GOP pay on election day.

There is, however, the possibility that it wasn't a svengali spy planted by the Democrats but just another example of the how much they really do dislike the ever shrinking working class and the part of America's needy they used to all “welfare queens;” poor women trying to raise kids as single mothers.

The persistent attack on those who are struggling and their unbridled support of those who are gurgling Champagne will not work in 2012. It doesn't take an undercover svengali to figure that out. And now Romney's attacking Obama for not having Wall Street smarts. Gee, maybe Mitt is the Republican's svengali!