Walter Rhett: Reduction Is the GOP Swiss Knife

This week’s advice: avoid reduction. Keep every sense alert. As much as Republicans are after making tangible things smaller, they are also in full pursuit of three other defined forms of reduction.

Among the Party’s goals is reduction as concentration (commonly seen on cooking shows), to concentrate its power through elections and law-making, placing them in control of the world’s largest political economy—an economy they full well know has economic interests directed and advanced by government to benefit private companies and persons.

A second form, reduction as conversion (found in mathematics, especially in the least common denominators of fractions), seeks to make destructive equivalencies, such as Paul Ryan’s Medicaid voucher system to replace full payment Medicaid.

A third form, reduction by simplification (frequently used by a wide spectrum of talkers and citizens as formulas of blame, purpose and intent), keeps the political conversation from moving forward and stalls progress on government’s routine, and on jobs, prosperity and safety nets...