Someone asked me long ago why the American people would continue to vote for candidates like then Pres. George W. Bush. My only guess is that it must be the beaten wife syndrome. That no matter how bad things are going – and for the middle class the Bush Administration was bad all the way – the battered wife has a fear that no matter what you do things will be worse if you choose to leave.

Conversely, if the battered wife has left the abusive husband, he had so ingrained in his battered wife that she could not function on her own. And thus even though things are truly better, she can’t see it or feel it. And he will lie about anything and everything to get her back. He will lie about how he will change, how things will be so much better and also how rotten her current life is, even though it is in reality much better.

And so some people make the choice, the very bad choice, to stay with or return to the abuser. Others are finally able to put their lives together and find enough self-confidence to walk away from the abuser and build themselves a much better life.

I really hit home with that analogy, because the woman who asked me started crying buckets. I had no idea that she had been in a quite abusive marriage and had finally left and built a life of her own. When she was able to stop crying, she said I had hit the nail on the head.

So here we go into another round of state and national elections. The abusive husband is still in power in some places, out of power in others. We can see the pattern of abuse where ever they have power. Take states such as Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio or Michigan. Ain’t much in those states for the poor of middle class but piles of horse manure that the Republicans in power are telling their people is fine steak. Iowa is one of those states that is split. But a few votes for Republicans and we will be getting some of that fine horse manure in the form of voter ID laws, union busting laws, huge give-aways to corporations (note – not small businesses, they get screwed also) and of course cutting way back on health care for women and the poor.

At the national level how could one ever forget the absolute disaster the last Republican administration left? Yet many have forgotten and are more than ready to listen to the lies that the current crop of wannabe Republican abusers want to tell. And they are more than aided by their 90% control of the media in this country. That media has a patina of telling the truth, so it uses its goodwill to spread lies for for the Republicans. Fox News is especially guilty of this.

On the local level, Democrats still control one house of the legislature while Republicans control the House, the governorship and thanks to an unnecessary recall of judges, the Iowa Supreme Court which is now politicized as it has never been before. Democrats’ hold on the Senate is quite slim, so we are but a couple votes from having legislation such as the voter ID bill, trans-vaginal probes on women, stand your ground laws and for profit prison systems. Most of these are bills created by ALEC (refer back to last week’s article) and Republican legislators are voting for them in solidatrity across the nation.

At the congressional level who can forget 2010? After a Democratic congress put in some much needed reforms, Republicans, through their ownership of the media, were able to get re-elected and take over the House on a promise of jobs. Well for two years they have been in charge and done absolutely nothing, not one iota, to create jobs. In other words, they returned to their pattern of abuse that got them thrown out in the first place. As bad as Bush was, he needed the help of a do-nothing (abusive) Congress to put the country in the jeopardy he did.

Once more we can expect a ton of lies about how bad the economy is (it isn’t) and how Dems take away your freedom, which is total manure.

And at the Presidential level we have no doubt one of the greatest liars ever to run for office in the constantly changing with the wind Mitt Romney. Despite an incredible amount of written and taped history, Romney and his party seem to believe that near disastrous Depression was started by Obama. And they also believe that despite records to the contrary, the Obama administration has done nothing to ameliorate the situation. Stated in terms of what an abusive husband would say, Romney claims that things were great when his party was in charge, could not have been better. We didn’t run into trouble until we looked elsewhere for help. And that guy we are living with now? He’s going to start beating us real soon! So we better come back to the safety of his (the Republicans) protection.

So who are you going to believe – your eyes and experience, or the lies of the abuser?