I have an important bit of information to get to you now, so I'll be putting up more about Buy Strikes and actions that we can take without waiting for 2012 in the next post.  

The Republicans may not realize it, but they just tipped their hand and let us have a look at their 2012 Presidential campaign strategy!  During the last Republican debate, amid all their usual nonsense and stupidity, several Republican Presidential "hopefuls" debated the issue of U.S.  trade imbalances with China.  What became clear is that believe it or not, the Republicans are going to use China and "free" trade as the magic carpet that they hope will give them a repeat of 2010 and possibly put a Republican in the White House.

If my instincts are right about what I saw in that debate, the Republican candidate for President and, for that matter, the Republican party will conveniently forget about their history of supporting "free" trade and  sacrificing America's manufacturing infrastructure and American jobs on the altar of Globalization.  They will start to endorse slapping trade tariffs on Chinese imports, forgetting that their idol, Ronald Reagan reduced and eliminated a number of those tariffs.  They will finally admit that America's vast trade imbalance with China is one of the main causes of our current high level of unemployment.  

Now hear me out because the best is yet to come.  They will position themselves as the patriots who will bring manufacturing back to the USA by doing what, in reality they hate the most, passing regulations and trade tariffs that will force corporations to manufacture here.  Middle America, with the aid of some brainwashing campaign ads could fall for the conjured up image of Republicans as defenders of working people.  If you think that the above scenario is far-fetched, think about how teabagers were stirred up by corporate interests and pushed the Republican agenda over to the far right in 2010 or how their propaganda got many people so stirred up that the President caved under its pressure and watered down the healthcare bill to something that still leaves 50 million people without healthcare.

The main reason that the Republicans could get away with billing themselves as populist fighters for the bottom 99 %, protecting American jobs from offshoring to China is because President Obama, who just signed three job killing "free" trade agreements, followed in the tradition of Bill Clinton who violated a campaign pledge and gave China Most Favored Nation trading status .  Who knew that supposedly pro-union Democrats could betray working people like that?  The Republicans, that's who!

Apologists for Obama and the Democrats like to blame the 2010 loss of Congressional seats on a low Progressive turnout at the polls because the Opologists are in blissful state of denial!  They couldn't understand that every time Obama and the Democrats compromised (caved) on issues that were essential to the bottom 99%, they were blurring the line that differentiated them from the Republicans!  THAT'S the reason for 2010 and THAT'S why they could be vulnerable to a Republican faux populist anti job offshoring propaganda campaign in 2012.  

Obama apologists are fond of saying that anyone who votes in 2012 for a progressive third party Presidential candidate instead of Obama is helping to put a Republican in the White House.
If the Republicans use the aforementioned faux anti job offshoring strategy, our support of a third party progressive candidate might be the only way to keep a Republican out of the White House, not the other way around as the Obama apologists would have you believe!