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The Triumph of the Republican Will
By David Glenn Cox
First let us be clear, “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” Such is the case with the Republican Party as it loses ground in the last two elections cycles. Losing the House, the Senate, and the White House, yet in all honesty what do they need with an army if the battles are already won?
Everything they’ve ever dreamed of is wrapped up in ribbons and fine papers. Wages are falling at the fastest rate in the forty years that records have been kept. Unions are hamstrung and castrated to the point of being ignored. In California 90,000 state workers have been working without a contract for over a year. They were forced to take a one-time wage concession two years in a row, but the governor can’t seem to find the time to settle on a new contract. When union members begin to grumble they are warned by both the union and the state that strikes are illegal.
Instead, the governor forces even more concessions by arbitrarily forcing unpaid furlough days on the worker and wants a 5% pay cut on top of that. If that wouldn’t give a Republican a hard on I don’t know what would. Private employment is even worse; while looking for work myself I came across an ad for a rental storage facility. The job paid $10.00 per hour and all you had to do to earn that princely sum was to be the bookkeeper, the auditor, the salesman, the maintenance man and the janitor. The job was listed as part time, 25 to 29 hours a week, but it gets even better. You were to be available for work at various times of day and at different locations around the metro Atlanta area.
No benefits, not even gas money was offered because what they want is someone to be available full time but to pay them for part time. A maximum of $290 gross in a town where the least expensive rent is $600 to $700 per month, but as they say on the infomercials: Wait, there’s still more! They require dependable transportation and a cell phone.
Just as the smiling children surrounded the Fuehrer’s staff car as it traveled the streets of Nuremberg, a new generation of Leni Riefenstahls educates the party faithful, so cowed and so indoctrinated that they don’t even know their left from their right. Most don’t know the difference between fascism and communism so they take turns comparing Obama to Hitler and then Stalin. But which is it? Because he can’t be both. Obama’s not capable of being a leftist totalitarian dictator and a right wing fascist dictator!
However, those on the left aren’t much better. They praise Sonya Sotomayor as an excellent choice for Supreme Court Justice. First appointed to the bench by George Bush the literate, she has voted with the conservative judges 97% of the time. She began her career as a corporate attorney, and the head of the US Chamber of Commerce recently praised her career in the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal. Why do Republican Senators look like buffoons questioning her? Because they’re laughing themselves silly with trivial “Wise Latina” remarks when the truth is that had John McCain won the election she might have still have been nominated because most people just don’t know the difference.
When Barack Obama ran for the White House, the Republicans declared him the most liberal senator in Washington. Four years before those same Republicans declared that John Kerry was the most liberal member of the Senate. Did you hear anyone in the media ever question or investigate those claims? George Bush was called a compassionate conservative despite his record, but that was explained away as being tough on crime. Kerry’s medals for valor were discounted while investigations into Bush’s shady military record were stifled.
Obama’s record in the Senate is one of a moderate; yet he campaigned for office as a progressive. He made promises to various liberal constituencies and has reneged on them all.
Liberals are for a strong national defense and building alliances through diplomacy. Liberals gave you Social Security and Medicare and guess how this generation's so-called liberals want to pay for health care reform. By gutting Medicare and adding a surtax on the rich. I’m all for taxing the rich, but this plan is a recipe for disaster, pitting payer against payee. What is the liberal alternative? A single payer expansion of Medicare; the first and last single payer plan was introduced in Congress by Harry Truman in 1948.
The liberals in Congress today could carpool together and just for historical reference Harry Truman was considered more conservative than FDR. Eisenhower was a political moderate who was courted by both parties as a presidential candidate. Kennedy was a conservative Democrat and considered far more conservative than Truman. Johnson was a liberal on domestic issues, but on foreign policy he agreed with the Republicans for many different reasons. Nixon created the EPA, supported expanding Medicare, his task force on illegal drugs advocated for lighter sentencing and more treatment options and Nixon voiced no complaints about Roe v Wade.
Carter ran against Ford who was a moderate Republican while Carter was a conservative Democrat. We know now that Carter was by far the greater humanitarian, but we didn’t know that at the time. It was Reagan who turned the political world upside down. Reagan, who ran as a moderate but was actually a fascist, subverting the law with secret and illegal deals and wars, busting unions, cutting school lunch programs even going so far as to tell unemployed workers if there are no jobs where you live, move away! Sort of an early Katrina policy.
But Reagan was successful as the great (con man) communicator. He played the role of the tough guy defending the working man when in fact he was the one attacking the working man. He created the great political theater of big, fat, Cadillac-driving welfare queens sitting on the sofa eating bon bons while you work all day in the hot sun, and the American people fell for it. Democrats, in order to get elected, began to emulate the conservative Republicans and true liberalism all but disappeared.
Bill Clinton ran for the Presidency as a new Democrat. His plans for healthcare reform were in many cases just common sense, such as requiring insurance companies to all use the same claim forms. He and his administration were tarred and feathered as big spending liberals and almost run out of town. Clinton’s health care reforms were to the right of Richard Nixon's. Clinton’s welfare reforms were to the right of Ronald Reagan's. Clinton’s support of NAFTA and free trade marked a radical departure for the Democratic Party from liberalism.
It is all about moving the goal posts; what were once radical conservative positions are now considered mainstream. What were once considered mainstream Democratic politics are now considered liberal Democratic politics.
The goals of the Republican Project for a New American Century were as follows,
• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global
responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;
• we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.
Defense spending under Obama is up even over Bush levels; we are still challenging regimes hostile to us for no other reason than their hostility. Promoting the cause of economic freedom abroad is nonspeak for economic exploitation. The tepid condemnation of the coup in Honduras and the failure to cut off all financial aid to the coup plotters is a “Mission Accomplished” banner over the Obama White House.
The expansion of the war in Afghanistan and his new war in Pakistan are proof positive that Obama has accepted responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles. When the crisis in automobile manufacturing began, Democrats were against bankruptcy and Republicans were in favor. As the weeks went by, what solution did Obama’s car Czars hammer out? Bankruptcy!
Obama has continued the Bush policies of direct support of industry and financial interests while taking a hands-off approach to the struggling populace. It is as if he is waiting for the market place to save us when it’s his job to do so. That would be the liberal opinion of what he should do.
“It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.”
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