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<div class=Section1>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>“It's something we must address as a nation or we may just lose
it all.” – Sarah G. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 color=black face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black;font-weight:
bold'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 color=black face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black;font-weight:
bold'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 color=black face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black;font-weight:
bold'>How do you propose that we, as a nation, address the issues that Lofgren
addresses in the article, Sarah? I ask this question respectfully. <o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 color=black face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black;font-weight:
bold'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 color=black face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black;font-weight:
bold'>For myself, I do not intend to ever vote again. The whole system is
corrupt and voting is a waste of time. I do not believe that people need a government
or a governing body to act as a father figure or an authority figure or as an
entity created to address large problems. I think human beings have the ability
to figure out solutions to problems large and small. Government has and always
will be corrupt and self serving. No government in a system of capitalism or
communism has ever truly served the people – the average working man and
woman. So, it doesn’t matter if the system is capitalist or communist.
They all stink. They are all corrupt. They have all been taken over by
sociopaths and greedy, ruthless, criminally insane bastards and a few bitches.
People need to realize this plain fact and reclaim the power that WAS ALWAYS
THEIRS. We have allowed the above assholes to take over the country, and we
need to take the country back and deal with the assholes harshly.<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 color=black face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black;font-weight:
bold'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 color=black face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black;font-weight:
bold'>My 2 cents.<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 color=black face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black;font-weight:
bold'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 color=black face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black;font-weight:
bold'>Kris<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 color=black face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:black;font-weight:
bold'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></b></p>
<div>
<div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>
<hr size=2 width="100%" align=center tabindex=-1>
</span></font></div>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:bold'>From:</span></font></b><font size=2
face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma'> <st1:PersonName
w:st="on">Sarah Gonzales</st1:PersonName>
[mailto:slindahl@rounder-graphics.com] <br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Sent:</span></b> Sunday, September 04, 2011
9:59 AM<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>To:</span></b> Paa Tx.Org<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Subject:</span></b> [PAA-Discuss] Goodbye to
All That: Reflections of a GOP OperativeWho Left the Cult</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>This is a must read, albeit a long article written by MIke Lofgren,
Republican Congressional staffer for the past 30 years. He recently retired
this summer. He held a few positions during his tenure, the most recent as a
staffer for the Senate Budget Committee office. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Don't let the title fool you, no ideologies or political parties are
spared in this article. It sums up quite well my views on the current state of
our government and our Republic. It's quite sobering. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>It's something we must address as a nation or we may just lose it
all. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-weight:bold'>Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a
GOP Operative Who Left the Cult </span></font></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Saturday 3 September 2011 <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>by: Mike Lofgren, Truthout | News Analysis<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Barbara
Stanwyck: "We're both rotten!"<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Fred
MacMurray: "Yeah - only you're a little more rotten." -"Double
Indemnity" (1944) <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Those
lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two
political parties in contemporary <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Both parties are rotten -
how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system
by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to
raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election?
Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats'
health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the
Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system,
in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven
surrender to Big Pharma.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>But both
parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of
machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks.
Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>To those
millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and
watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may
have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be
sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of
crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot
outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King,
Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun,
Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional
directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It was
this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled
me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol
Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last
November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise
routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of
World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then,
they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding
the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region>
and global economies as hostages.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The debt
ceiling extension is not the only example of this sort of political terrorism.
Republicans were willing to lay off 4,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
employees, 70,000 private construction workers and let FAA safety inspectors
work without pay, in fact, forcing them to pay for their own work-related
travel - how prudent is that? - in order to strong arm some union-busting
provisions into the FAA reauthorization.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Everyone
knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the
negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the
latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former
does not care. This fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless caused
confusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck in
the Bob Dole era in terms of its orientation. For instance, Ezra Klein wrote of
his puzzlement over the fact that while House Republicans essentially won the
debt ceiling fight, enough of them were sufficiently dissatisfied that they might
still scuttle the deal. Of course they might - the attitude of many freshman
Republicans to national default was "bring it on!"<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It should
have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming
less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy
and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological
authoritarian parties of 20th century <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>.
This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>In his
"Manual of Parliamentary Practice," Thomas Jefferson wrote that it is
less important that every rule and custom of a legislature be absolutely
justifiable in a theoretical sense, than that they should be generally
acknowledged and honored by all parties. These include unwritten rules, customs
and courtesies that lubricate the legislative machinery and keep governance a
relatively civilized procedure. The US Senate has more complex procedural rules
than any other legislative body in the world; many of these rules are contradictory,
and on any given day, the Senate parliamentarian may issue a ruling that
contradicts earlier rulings on analogous cases.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The only
thing that can keep the Senate functioning is collegiality and good faith.
During periods of political consensus, for instance, the World War II and early
post-war eras, the Senate was a "high functioning" institution:
filibusters were rare and the body was legislatively productive. Now, one can
no more picture the current Senate producing the original Medicare Act than the
old Supreme Soviet having legislated the Bill of Rights.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Far from
being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senate confirmation and
every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican filibuster.
Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that <st1:State w:st="on">Washington</st1:State>
is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one
could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">Weimar</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Republic</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>.
As Hannah Arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments
of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>John P.
Judis sums up the modern GOP this way:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"Over
the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal
opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the
majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of
Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the
impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for
today's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John
Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they
objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over
slavery."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>A couple
of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and
proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should
Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would
further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people.
By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is
programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>A deeply
cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on
the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of
millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which
branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular
legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to
form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that
"government is no good," further leading them to think, "a
plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a
school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further
intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been
taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by
Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem,"
declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The media
are also complicit in this phenomenon. Ever since the bifurcation of electronic
media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a
rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the
"respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for
perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. Paul
Krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out."
"I joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that
the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of
Planet.'"<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Inside-the-Beltway
wise guy Chris Cillizza merely proves Krugman right in his Washington Post
analysis of "winners and losers" in the debt ceiling impasse. He
wrote that the institution of Congress was a big loser in the fracas, which is,
of course, correct, but then he opined: "Lawmakers - bless their hearts -
seem entirely unaware of just how bad they looked during this fight and will
almost certainly spend the next few weeks (or months) congratulating themselves
on their tremendous magnanimity." Note how the pundit's ironic deprecation
falls like the rain on the just and unjust alike, on those who precipitated the
needless crisis and those who despaired of it. He seems oblivious that one side
- or a sizable faction of one side - has deliberately attempted to damage the
reputation of Congress to achieve its political objectives.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>This
constant drizzle of "there the two parties go again!" stories out of
the news bureaus, combined with the hazy confusion of low-information voters,
means that the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our
democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends. The <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>
has nearly the lowest voter participation among Western democracies; this,
again, is a consequence of the decline of trust in government institutions - if
government is a racket and both parties are the same, why vote? And if the
uninvolved middle declines to vote, it increases the electoral clout of a
minority that is constantly being whipped into a lather by three hours daily of
Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. There were only 44 million Republican voters in the
2010 mid-term elections, but they effectively canceled the political results of
the election of President Obama by 69 million voters.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>This
tactic of inducing public distrust of government is not only cynical, it is
schizophrenic. For people who profess to revere the Constitution, it is strange
that they so caustically denigrate the very federal government that is the
material expression of the principles embodied in that document. This is not to
say that there is not some theoretical limit to the size or intrusiveness of
government; I would be the first to say there are such limits, both fiscal and
Constitutional. But most Republican officeholders seem strangely uninterested
in the effective repeal of Fourth Amendment protections by the Patriot Act, the
weakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the public
hysteria following 9/11 or the unpalatable fact that the <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>
has the largest incarcerated population of any country on earth. If anything,
they would probably opt for more incarcerated persons, as imprisonment is a
profit center for the prison privatization industry, which is itself a growth
center for political contributions to these same politicians.[1] Instead, they
prefer to rail against those government programs that actually help people. And
when a program is too popular to attack directly, like Medicare or Social
Security, they prefer to undermine it by feigning an agonized concern about the
deficit. That concern, as we shall see, is largely fictitious.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Undermining
Americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime
GOP electoral strategy. But if this technique falls short of producing Karl
Rove's dream of 30 years of unchallengeable one-party rule (as all such
techniques always fall short of achieving the angry and embittered true
believer's New Jerusalem), there are other even less savory techniques upon
which to fall back. Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of
state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it
more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin,
Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department
of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same
time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies);
by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may
disenfranchise university students.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>This
legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years
of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political
participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in
self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy;
exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the <st1:place w:st="on">Middle
East</st1:place> was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But
domestically, they don't want those people voting.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>You can
probably guess who those people are. Above all, anyone not likely to vote
Republican. As Sarah Palin would imply, the people who are not Real Americans.
Racial minorities. Immigrants. Muslims. Gays. Intellectuals. Basically, anyone
who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base. This must account, at least
to some degree, for their extraordinarily vitriolic hatred of President Obama.
I have joked in the past that the main administration policy that Republicans
object to is Obama's policy of being black.[2] Among the GOP base, there is
constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is
deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the Good, the
True and the Beautiful: Subversives. Commies. Socialists. Ragheads. Secular
humanists. Blacks. Fags. Feminazis. The list may change with the political
needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It is not
clear to me how many GOP officeholders believe this reactionary and paranoid
claptrap. I would bet that most do not. But they cynically feed the worst
instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base with a nod
and a wink. During the disgraceful circus of the "birther" issue,
Republican politicians subtly stoked the fires of paranoia by being
suggestively equivocal - "I take the president at his word" - while
never unambiguously slapping down the myth. John Huntsman was the first major
GOP figure forthrightly to refute the birther calumny - albeit after release of
the birth certificate.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>I do not
mean to place too much emphasis on racial animus in the GOP. While it surely
exists, it is also a fact that Republicans think that no Democratic president
could conceivably be legitimate. Republicans also regarded Bill Clinton as
somehow, in some manner, twice fraudulently elected (well do I remember the
elaborate conspiracy theories that Republicans traded among themselves). Had it
been Hillary Clinton, rather than Barack Obama, who had been elected in 2008, I
am certain we would now be hearing, in lieu of the birther myths, conspiracy
theories about Vince Foster's alleged murder.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
reader may think that I am attributing Svengali-like powers to GOP operatives
able to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. It is more complicated
than that. Historical circumstances produced the raw material: the
deindustrialization and financialization of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> since about 1970 has
spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class - without job security (or
even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with
their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. Their
fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>What do
the Democrats offer these people? Essentially nothing. Democratic Leadership
Council-style "centrist" Democrats were among the biggest promoters
of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA,
World Trade Organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>. At the
same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the Democratic Party was
seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced
whites.[3]<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>While
Democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as
racist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing of
the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters
and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the
globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental
compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the
fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that
do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum
wage, let's build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor
to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it's evil Muslims.
Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>How do
they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they do
not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable
policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what? - can
anyone even remember it? No wonder the pejorative "Obamacare" won
out. Contrast that with the Republicans' Patriot Act. You're a patriot, aren't
you? Does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a Stimulus Bill is supposed
to be? Why didn't the White House call it the Jobs Bill and keep pounding on
that theme?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>You know
that Social Security and Medicare are in jeopardy when even Democrats refer to
them as entitlements. "Entitlement" has a negative sound in
colloquial English: somebody who is "entitled" selfishly claims
something he doesn't really deserve. Why not call them "earned
benefits," which is what they are because we all contribute payroll taxes
to fund them? That would never occur to the Democrats. Republicans don't make
that mistake; they are relentlessly on message: it is never the "estate
tax," it is the "death tax." Heaven forbid that the Walton
family should give up one penny of its $86-billion fortune. All of that lucre
is necessary to ensure that unions be kept out of Wal-Mart, that women
employees not be promoted and that politicians be kept on a short leash.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It was
not always thus. It would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer during
the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about exactly
which economic interests were shafting him. An unemployed worker in a breadline
in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the Rockefellers or the Mellons.
But that is not the case in the present economic crisis. After a riot of
unbridled greed such as the world has not seen since the conquistadors' looting
expeditions and after an unprecedented broad and rapid transfer of wealth
upward by Wall Street and its corporate satellites, where is the popular anger
directed, at least as depicted in the media? At "<st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:State> spending" - which has
increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, food stamps and
Medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade's corporate
saturnalia. Or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted against pseudo-issues: death
panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on, none of which stands to
dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Thus far,
I have concentrated on Republican tactics, rather than Republican beliefs, but
the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist, authoritarian
mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values of reason,
compromise and conciliation. Rather, this mindset seeks polarizing division
(Karl Rove has been very explicit that this is his principal campaign
strategy), conflict and the crushing of opposition.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>As for
what they really believe, the Republican Party of 2011 believes in three
principal tenets I have laid out below. The rest of their platform one may
safely dismiss as window dressing:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-weight:bold'>1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich
contributors.</span></font></b> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'> The
party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con
the public. Whatever else President Obama has accomplished (and many of his
purported accomplishments are highly suspect), his $4-trillion deficit
reduction package did perform the useful service of smoking out Republican
hypocrisy. The GOP refused, because it could not abide so much as a one-tenth
of one percent increase on the tax rates of the Walton family or the Koch
brothers, much less a repeal of the carried interest rule that permits
billionaire hedge fund managers to pay income tax at a lower effective rate
than cops or nurses. Republicans finally settled on a deal that had far less
deficit reduction - and even less spending reduction! - than Obama's offer,
because of their iron resolution to protect at all costs our society's
overclass.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Republicans
have attempted to camouflage their amorous solicitude for billionaires with a
fog of misleading rhetoric. John Boehner is fond of saying, "we won't
raise anyone's taxes," as if the take-home pay of an Olive Garden waitress
were inextricably bound up with whether Warren Buffett pays his capital gains
as ordinary income or at a lower rate. Another chestnut is that millionaires
and billionaires are "job creators." <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> corporations have just had their
most profitable quarters in history; Apple, for one, is sitting on $76 billion
in cash, more than the GDP of most countries. So, where are the jobs?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Another
smokescreen is the "small business" meme, since standing up for Mom's
and Pop's corner store is politically more attractive than to be seen shilling
for a megacorporation. Raising taxes on the wealthy will kill small business'
ability to hire; that is the GOP dirge every time Bernie Sanders or some
Democrat offers an amendment to increase taxes on incomes above $1 million. But
the number of small businesses that have a net annual income over a million
dollars is de minimis, if not by definition impossible (as they would no longer
be small businesses). And as data from the Center for Economic and Policy
Research have shown, small businesses account for only 7.2 percent of total <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> employment,
a significantly smaller share of total employment than in most Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Likewise,
Republicans have assiduously spread the myth that Americans are conspicuously
overtaxed. But compared to other OECD countries, the effective rates of <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> taxation are
among the lowest. In particular, they point to the top corporate income rate of
35 percent as being confiscatory Bolshevism. But again, the effective rate is
much lower. Did GE pay 35 percent on 2010 profits of $14 billion? No, it paid
zero.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>When
pressed, Republicans make up misleading statistics to "prove" that
the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
fiscal burden is being borne by the rich and the rest of us are just
freeloaders who don't appreciate that fact. "Half of Americans don't pay
taxes" is a perennial meme. But what they leave out is that that statement
refers to federal income taxes. There are millions of people who don't pay
income taxes, but do contribute payroll taxes - among the most regressive forms
of taxation. But according to GOP fiscal theology, payroll taxes don't count.
Somehow, they have convinced themselves that since payroll taxes go into trust
funds, they're not real taxes. Likewise, state and local sales taxes apparently
don't count, although their effect on a poor person buying necessities like
foodstuffs is far more regressive than on a millionaire.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>All of
these half truths and outright lies have seeped into popular culture via the
corporate-owned business press. Just listen to CNBC for a few hours and you
will hear most of them in one form or another. More important politically,
Republicans' myths about taxation have been internalized by millions of
economically downscale "values voters," who may have been attracted
to the GOP for other reasons (which I will explain later), but who now accept
this misinformation as dogma.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>And when
misinformation isn't enough to sustain popular support for the GOP's agenda,
concealment is needed. One fairly innocuous provision in the Dodd-Frank
financial reform bill requires public companies to make a more transparent
disclosure of CEO compensation, including bonuses. Note that it would not limit
the compensation, only require full disclosure. Republicans are hell-bent on
repealing this provision. Of course; it would not serve Wall Street interests
if the public took an unhealthy interest in the disparity of their own incomes
as against that of a bank CEO. As Spencer Bachus, the Republican chairman of
the House Financial Services Committee, says, "In Washington, the view is
that the banks are to be regulated and my view is that Washington and the
regulators are there to serve the banks."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-weight:bold'>2. They worship at the altar of Mars. </span></font></b> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'> While
the me-too Democrats have set a horrible example of keeping up with the Joneses
with respect to waging wars, they can never match GOP stalwarts such as John
McCain or Lindsey Graham in their sheer, libidinous enthusiasm for invading
other countries. McCain wanted to mix it up with <st1:country-region w:st="on">Russia</st1:country-region>
- a nuclear-armed state - during the latter's conflict with <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Georgia</st1:place></st1:country-region> in 2008
(remember? - "we are all Georgians now," a slogan that did not,
fortunately, catch on), while Graham has been persistently agitating for
attacks on <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iran</st1:country-region> and
intervention in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
And these are not fringe elements of the party; they are the leading
"defense experts," who always get tapped for the Sunday talk shows.
About a month before Republicans began holding a gun to the head of the credit
markets to get trillions of dollars of cuts, these same Republicans passed a
defense appropriations bill that increased spending by $17 billion over the
prior year's defense appropriation. To borrow Chris Hedges' formulation, war is
the force that gives meaning to their lives.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>A cynic
might conclude that this militaristic enthusiasm is no more complicated than
the fact that Pentagon contractors spread a lot of bribery money around Capitol
Hill. That is true, but there is more to it than that. It is not necessarily
even the fact that members of Congress feel they are protecting constituents' jobs.
The wildly uneven concentration of defense contracts and military bases
nationally means that some areas, like <st1:City w:st="on">Washington</st1:City>,
<st1:State w:st="on">DC</st1:State>, and <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">San
Diego</st1:place></st1:City>, are heavily dependent on Department of Defense
(DOD) spending. But there are many more areas of the country whose net balance
is negative: the citizenry pays more in taxes to support the Pentagon than it
receives back in local contracts.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>And the
economic justification for Pentagon spending is even more fallacious when one
considers that the $700 billion annual DOD budget creates comparatively few
jobs. The days of Rosie the Riveter are long gone; most weapons projects now
require very little touch labor. Instead, a disproportionate share is siphoned
off into high-cost research and development (from which the civilian economy
benefits little); exorbitant management expenditures, overhead and out-and-out
padding; and, of course, the money that flows back into the coffers of
political campaigns. A million dollars appropriated for highway construction
would create two to three times as many jobs as a million dollars appropriated
for Pentagon weapons procurement, so the jobs argument is ultimately specious.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Take away
the cash nexus and there still remains a psychological predisposition toward
war and militarism on the part of the GOP. This undoubtedly arises from a
neurotic need to demonstrate toughness and dovetails perfectly with the
belligerent tough-guy pose one constantly hears on right-wing talk radio.
Militarism springs from the same psychological deficit that requires an endless
series of enemies, both foreign and domestic.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
results of the last decade of unbridled militarism and the Democrats' cowardly
refusal to reverse it[4], have been disastrous both strategically and fiscally.
It has made the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United
States</st1:place></st1:country-region> less prosperous, less secure and less
free. Unfortunately, the militarism and the promiscuous intervention it gives
rise to are only likely to abate when the Treasury is exhausted, just as it
happened to the <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Dutch</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">Republic</st1:PlaceType> and the <st1:place w:st="on">British Empire</st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-weight:bold'>3. Give me that old time religion. </span></font></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Pandering
to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP. Beginning in the 1970s,
religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country
and grew into the major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat
Robertson's strong showing in the 1988 Iowa Caucus signaled the gradual merger
of politics and religion in the party. The results are all around us: if the
American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or
Canadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy,
the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to the
rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the
Republican Party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary or
quaint beliefs. Also around us is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and
hostility to science; it is this group that defines "low-information
voter" - or, perhaps, "misinformation voter."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding, there is now a de facto religious
test for the presidency: major candidates are encouraged (or coerced) to
"share their feelings" about their "faith" in a revelatory
speech; or, some televangelist like Rick Warren dragoons the candidates (as he
did with Obama and McCain in 2008) to debate the finer points of Christology,
with Warren himself, of course, as the arbiter. Politicized religion is also
the sheet anchor of the culture wars. But how did the whole toxic stew of GOP
beliefs - economic royalism, militarism and culture wars cum fundamentalism -
come completely to displace an erstwhile civilized Eisenhower Republicanism?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It is my
view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset
of the decline of rational problem solving in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>) may have been the key
ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party. For politicized religion
provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes - at least in the minds of
followers - all three of the GOP's main tenets.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Televangelists
have long espoused the health-and-wealth/name-it-and-claim it gospel. If you
are wealthy, it is a sign of God's favor. If not, too bad! But don't forget to
tithe in any case. This rationale may explain why some economically downscale
whites defend the prerogatives of billionaires.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The GOP's
fascination with war is also connected with the fundamentalist mindset. The Old
Testament abounds in tales of slaughter - God ordering the killing of the
Midianite male infants and enslavement of the balance of the population, the
divinely-inspired genocide of the Canaanites, the slaying of various miscreants
with the jawbone of an ass - and since American religious fundamentalist seem
to prefer the Old Testament to the New (particularly that portion of the New
Testament known as the Sermon on the Mount), it is but a short step to
approving war as a divinely inspired mission. This sort of thinking has led,
inexorably, to such phenomena as Jerry Falwell once writing that God is
Pro-War.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It is the
apocalyptic frame of reference of fundamentalists, their belief in an imminent
Armageddon, that psychologically conditions them to steer this country into
conflict, not only on foreign fields (some evangelicals thought Saddam was the
Antichrist and therefore a suitable target for cruise missiles), but also in
the realm of domestic political controversy. It is hardly surprising that the
most adamant proponent of the view that there was no debt ceiling problem was
Michele Bachmann, the darling of the fundamentalist right. What does it matter,
anyway, if the country defaults? - we shall presently abide in the bosom of the
Lord.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Some
liberal writers have opined that the different socio-economic perspectives
separating the "business" wing of the GOP and the religious right
make it an unstable coalition that could crack. I am not so sure. There is no
fundamental disagreement on which direction the two factions want to take the
country, merely how far in that direction they want to take it. The plutocrats
would drag us back to the Gilded Age, the theocrats to the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Salem</st1:place></st1:City> witch trials. In any case, those
consummate plutocrats, the Koch brothers, are pumping large sums of money into
Michele Bachman's presidential campaign, so one ought not make too much of a
potential plutocrat-theocrat split.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Thus, the
modern GOP; it hardly seems conceivable that a Republican could have written
the following:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"Should
any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance
and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party
again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that
believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know
his background), a few other <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Texas</st1:place></st1:State>
oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas.
Their number is negligible and they are stupid." (That was President
Eisenhower, writing to his brother Edgar in 1954.)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>It is
this broad and ever-widening gulf between the traditional Republicanism of an
Eisenhower and the quasi-totalitarian cult of a Michele Bachmann that impelled
my departure from Capitol Hill. It is not in my pragmatic nature to make a
heroic gesture of self-immolation, or to make lurid revelations of personal
martyrdom in the manner of David Brock. And I will leave a more detailed
dissection of failed Republican economic policies to my fellow apostate Bruce
Bartlett.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>I left
because I was appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans, like Gadarene
swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country's future;
and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats in their
half-hearted attempts to stop them. And, in truth, I left as an act of rational
self-interest. Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result
of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and "shareholder
value," the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give
up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP's
decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the
circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a
prospective one.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>If you
think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your
Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté.[5]
They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve
the government of revenue that they will be "forced" to make
"hard choices" - and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax
cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>During
the week that this piece was written, the debt ceiling fiasco reached its
conclusion. The economy was already weak, but the GOP's disgraceful game of
chicken roiled the markets even further. Foreigners could hardly believe it:
Americans' own crazy political actions were destabilizing the safe-haven status
of the dollar. Accordingly, during that same week, over one trillion dollars
worth of assets evaporated on financial markets. <st1:country-region w:st="on">Russia</st1:country-region>
and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>
have stepped up their advocating that the dollar be replaced as the global
reserve currency - a move as consequential and disastrous for US interests as
any that can be imagined.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 color="#bc092f" face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt;color:#BC092F'>If Republicans have perfected a new form of politics that
is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy
disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
status as the world's leading power.</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-weight:bold'>Footnotes:</span></font></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>[1] I am
not exaggerating for effect. A law passed in 2010 by the <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Arizona</st1:place></st1:State> legislature mandating arrest and
incarceration of suspected illegal aliens was actually drafted by the American
Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative business front group that drafts
"model" legislation on behalf of its corporate sponsors. The draft
legislation in question was written for the private prison lobby, which sensed
a growth opportunity in imprisoning more people.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>[2] I am
not a supporter of Obama and object to a number of his foreign and domestic
policies. But when he took office amid the greatest financial collapse in 80
years, I wanted him to succeed, so that the country I served did not fail. But
already in 2009, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, declared that
his greatest legislative priority was - jobs for Americans? Rescuing the
financial system? Solving the housing collapse? - no, none of those things. His
top priority was to ensure that Obama should be a one-term president. Evidently
Senator McConnell hates Obama more than he loves his country. Note that the
mainstream media have lately been hailing McConnell as "the adult in the
room," presumably because he is less visibly unstable than the Tea Party
freshmen<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>[3] This
is not a venue for immigrant bashing. It remains a fact that outsourcing jobs
overseas, while insourcing sub-minimum wage immigrant labor, will exert
downward pressure on <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region>
wages. The consequence will be popular anger, and failure to address that anger
will result in a downward wage spiral and a breech of the social compact, not
to mention a rise in nativism and other reactionary impulses. It does no good
to claim that these economic consequences are an inevitable result of
globalization; <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Germany</st1:place></st1:country-region>
has somehow managed to maintain a high-wage economy and a vigorous industrial
base.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>[4] The
cowardice is not merely political. During the past ten years, I have observed
that Democrats are actually growing afraid of Republicans. In a quirky and
flawed, but insightful, little book, "Democracy and Populism: Fear and
Hatred," John Lukacs concludes that the left fears, the right hates.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>[5] The
GOP cult of Ayn Rand is both revealing and mystifying. On the one hand, <st1:place
w:st="on">Rand</st1:place>'s tough guy, every-man-for-himself posturing is a
natural fit because it puts a philosophical gloss on the latent sociopathy so
prevalent among the hard right. On the other, <st1:place w:st="on">Rand</st1:place>
exclaimed at every opportunity that she was a militant atheist who felt nothing
but contempt for Christianity. Apparently, the ignorance of most fundamentalist
"values voters" means that GOP candidates who enthuse over Rand at
the same time they thump their Bibles never have to explain this stark
contradiction. And I imagine a Democratic officeholder would have a harder time
explaining why he named his offspring "Marx" than a GOP incumbent
would in rationalizing naming his kid "Rand."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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