"Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose."
Columnist - George Will
The recent internal strife experienced by the Republican Party is the direct result of their inability to accept changing times as reality. And their intransigence in the face of a massive American social realignment, has opened a political chasm between themselves and the very people they need to reelect them to office.
As host of MSNBC's Morning Joe, former Republican politician Joe Scarborough's newly published book, "The Last Best Hope", states a truth that is at the very heart of the Republican dilemma:
"I told [2006] Republican candidates that if they wanted to remain in the majority, they would have to admit to the voters that the [Bush] White House had been reckless with taxpayer dollars.....Our president was wrong to believe that the United States could fight two wars, cut taxes and increase federal spending all at once.
Once again, Republican candidates chose Republicanism over conservatism. They chose instead to remain silent. The result was a political and economical disaster we will be paying for over the next generation."
"Before discussing the most effective conservative approach to foreign policy in the future, we should first review how much of a break Mr. Bush’s approach was from a conservative foreign policy tradition that was once defined by realism and restraint....
"Why did conservative leaders respond to the events of that September morning the way they did?"
"Why did the same cautious Republicans who resisted Bill Clinton’s calls for military intervention in Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Sudan, and Iraq adopt George W. Bush’s preemption doctrine - without question?".....
"And why did so few conservatives criticize Mr. Bush’s Wilsonian pronouncement that the United States of America would lead a global democratic revolution that would end tyranny itself? What exactly were conservatives thinking during Mr. Bush’s second inaugural address when the Republican president promised the world that U.S. troops would single-handedly bring freedom and peace to all corners of the globe? .....
"Why did the same Republicans who quoted Colin Powell’s doctrine to justify their restrained foreign policy approach in the 1990s treat General Powell’s cautiousness toward Iraq with such contempt in 2002?"
These are biting questions that draw blood from the very epicenter of the Conservative heart. And it would appear that the Republicans haven't the slightest clue, as to what it is that drives the average American working class to be loyal to this country and its founding ideals.
A clear-cut example is an article published at CNN.COM by Republican, John Feehery, a staffer for former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other Republicans in Congress.
He is president of Feehery Group, a Washington-based advocacy firm that has represented clients including News Corp., Ford Motor Company and the United States Chamber of Commerce. Feehery's mindset is a perfect template for the Republican Party thought process.
Feehery's article lists four points as to why the country is failing financially, but it is not necessary to go beyond the first two to understand where he is coming from:
Commentary: What's driving the U.S. over a cliff?
CNN.COM - April 16, 2009
First, why do we let people retire too early and then expect them to live so long without working?
"In 1910, the average retirement age in the United States was 74. In 2002, however, the average retirement age was 62. Average life expectancy in 1910 was around 55, while in 2002 it was 77.
"Throughout most of our nation's history, people were expected to work regardless of their age. Only over the last several decades has that changed.
"Now it is assumed even if you are completely able-bodied and able-minded, you don't need to work and indeed you shouldn't be required to do so if you reach a certain age and certain number of years at one job. But that is crazy. We can't afford it. As people live longer, they should work longer, be productive longer, pay taxes longer, and be full participants in our nation's economy longer."
Feehery thinks that early 1900 is a desirable aim for the American workforce to go back to. Would he be willing to work for 1900's wages, in 1900's working and living conditions, or assume the life expectancy of the average working class citizen of that period? I seriously doubt it.
Feehery seems unaware that it was the Republican Party that has stood in the way of any attempt to put teeth into age related workplace discrimination laws. Industry didn't want them and the Republicans have been their staunchest supporters in Congress.
However, not to be too forgetful, Mr. Feehery does remember to close the backdoor on senior health care as well:
Second, why do most Americans spend so much of their health care expenditures in the last three months of their life?
"Fully 27 percent of Medicare is devoted to spending on end-of-life health (in other words, health care that doesn't work), according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"According to a Mayo Clinic study, "Older people with chronic illnesses have the highest rates of intensive-care-unit (ICU) use at the end of their lives. The country's aging population has an increased prevalence of chronic diseases, signaling that ICU's may treat more and more people in the years ahead. Intensive care costs comprise 30 to 40 percent of hospital spending and may continue to grow as the population ages."
"In other words, we are paying a lot of money for health care that ends up with the patient dead (note: these are his words)" (Click HERE to read complete article)
.............................................................
This inhumane analysis is offered as serious fodder by a member of a party that is - anti abortion and in favor of mandatory birth - even for families who can't afford it. And in the case of a terminally ill individual's slow, painful slide to death is also - anti assisted suicide.
It is almost as though the Republican Party is seeking to achieve a reliable cache of Minimum Wage workers and, in some ways, the installation of a - back-door corporate driven socialist agenda.
If successful, the end result would be equality of all working people (scientist, engineer, store manager, nurse and factory employee) as a backlog of highly skilled and educated - Wal Mart greeters.
Mr. Feehery continues down the path of the sublime to the ridiculous in a second commentary (excerpted) on June, 2009:
Franken victory is not funny
(CNN) July 1, 2009 "-- The metric system is the kind of thing that you can expect from the 60-vote filibuster-proof majority Democrats now have in the United States Senate.
After the Watergate scandal in 1974, Democrats trounced Republicans in the mid-term elections, getting 61 seats in the Senate and 291 in the House.
In the Senate, they adjusted the rules to make it harder for Republicans to filibuster (reducing the magic number from 67 to 60 to invoke cloture, which ends debate). In the House, they passed all kinds of reforms to take power away from senior members and give it to junior members. And Congress mandated that the American people embrace the - metric system - [Note: which would have made our manufactured systems and machines more competitive throughout a world market].
The metric system idea never really caught on, and although the pain of Watergate afflicted Republicans for another two elections, they eventually pulled themselves out of their deep hole...
Democrats have once again reached the magic number of 60, as Norm Coleman finally threw in the towel against the one-time joke writer for Saturday Night Live, Al Franken.
....This is a good time for such self-reflection. Republicans lost three top-notch senators in the last election -- Norm Coleman, Gordon Smith and John Sununu (an advocate of privatizing Social Security) -- who lost not because they were bad senators, or because they had scandals, or because they had lost touch with constituents. All three lost because they were Republicans."
What I find most astonishing is that CNN would provide this individual of lackluster intellectual ability, a forum to expose his ignorance to the world. Or could it be - that was their intended plan?
Republican Schizophrenia
Try as I may, I could not come up with a better stated explanation of what is now plaguing the Republican Party, than the one outlined in an article by Leonard Pitts in the Miami Herald.
Commentary: Conservatives aren't being persecuted
By Leonard Pitts Jr. | The Miami Herald - June 18, 2009
...... If conservatives were ever gassed or beaten because of what they are, I must have missed it.
But some conservatives admit to no such distinction. They see themselves not as adherents to a political ideology, but as a besieged minority, which speaks volumes about the deterioration of that ideology since the days of Ronald Reagan. I mean, I often disagreed with the 40th president, but at least I understood him, at least he articulated an intellectually coherent vision: small government, fiscal restraint, foreign-policy pragmatism.
By contrast modern conservatism is defined by an Alice-through-the-looking-glass incoherence: small government - except when it is growing larger than ever, fiscal restraint - except when we are spending like Michael Jackson in a Disney gift shop, foreign-policy pragmatism - except when we are trying to transform the Middle East.
Indeed, sometimes it feels as if it is no longer defined by principles at all, nor energy and ideas, but rather, by a limitless ability to feel put upon and slighted. To be a conservative these days is, or so they would have you believe, like being black in Birmingham in 1952. It is to be the victim of media, culture and law, which hate you just for being.
(Click to read entire article)
The Republican-Conservative Pyramid
The long-term goal of today's Republican Party and its Conservative Core is difficult to comprehend, unless one understands the function of each layer of the party:
Level One: They have invested in a vote producing core that is based upon specific fixed principles and Christian based religious convictions: an element that regards change as perverse.
Level Two - is intense funding by a Corporate America that would like to rid themselves of the following: Minimum Wage requirements, Employee Health Care benefits, Anti Trust Laws, caps on executive pay and bonuses, eliminating or softening the Emancipation Proclamation - and the like. This level's occupants have tied themselves in with the elite of Level One, to the point of imbuing their goals and desires as an integral part of Christian Ethics.
Level Three - is the Party Faithful who surrender their thinking capability at the polls, preferring instead to get in lockstep with the party line. But much to their befuddlement they can't quite figure out how they managed to achieve the present disastrous economic equality with the rival Democratic Party base - when their side had complete control of Congress for 8 years.
Taking into account former Vice President Dick Cheney's quest for an Imperial Presidency, it becomes clear they are trying to take America back to a form of government those early Liberals like Franklin, Jefferson and Madison struggled to 'constitutionalize' the country away from.
The Future of the Republican Party
At present the Republican Party is a 'corporate America good-time party' - with nowhere to hold itself: The bridges they've burned are rivaled only by the ones they've sold.
There is an old theory in the science of physics that postulates if one stands still in time, eventually the past will catch up with you. I am quite certain that major elements of the Republican Party take delight in the possibility, for it would allow them to return to those - thrilling days of yesteryear!
Failing that achievement, their only hope is that the Obama administration will make one big mistake - possibly spilling substantial American blood in the process. But their former hero, George W. Bush, has already done an efficient job of that in Iraq and Afghanistan - which is a hard act to top. |