A Preface to the Religious Right’s Revelation of Their ‘Righteous’ Royal Flush - GOP Endorsement

Where it all started: The Coalition formed by George Benson et al, Creating the New Religious Right
Though much has been penned about the American Religio-Political-Conservatism too little has been laid out about George Benson and his seminal work in pulling together Conservative Christian Values and Free Enterprise Economics.

----------

In 1964 semi-retired Ronald Reagan delivered a zinger of a speech for Barry Goldwater. That speech put Reagan on a path to 'sainthood' become the hero of the "stricken" Christian Conservatives of the American South. They were to find a new "media savvy" front man in Reagan - who became the "savior of conservative ideology" on into the 1980's.

The sudden shift of the Religious-Conservatives away from Jimmy Carter, who was too soft on race for the newly emerging Republicrats, created a giant opening for Ronald Reagan; he was to fill the gap and beyond for the South crushed and angry over the Civil Rights advances under Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson. This turning was the handiwork of Ronald Reagan, who found a way to substitute himself into national Republican politics and take advantage of the beginnings of the New Religious Right, the coalition that would propel Reagan into the presidency and mount what was then called THE REAGAN REVOLUTION - a spin off of the CULT OF REAGAN.

President Jimmy Carter, an active, genuine Southern Baptist "bornagainer," had activated the hope amongst religious conservatives and Old South diehards that there would be a "revival" of morality in the presidency following the moral debacle of the Richard Nixon Watergate and its cover-up disaster and resignation.

However, Carter failed to deliver on a long list of items of great interest and importance to the "New Religious Right." Carter quickly lost favor. The reaction of Fundamentalist on the ascendency in the Southern Baptist Convention and other aggressive politicos seeing real advantage in the 180 turn the south had taken following the Voting Rights and forced integration edits of the Federal government were aroused to a "white" heat. Nothing since the uptick of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1920's could produce such a rapid and indelible political "loyalty reversal" as first against Lyndon Johnson, and then the final slippage coming under Jimmy Carter.

It was the residue and angst of Carter that helped gin up the social conservatives and the old Dixicrats now coming on board with support for the smooth talking radical, Ronald Reagan. Reagan did not fail. One giant and profound signal was sent immediately following the 1980 convention when Ronald Reagan went to the selfsame county in Mississippi where civil rights workers were notoriously murdered and made his carefully crafted states' rights statement (part of a insidious Southern Strategy begun under Dick Nixon). The switch-over was "set" with that event. The Dixicrats had found their new man!

Resentment festered around the fact that Carter did not strongly attack the critical problems facing the South such as establishing "segregation academies" and other "moral" issues facing the nation and especially the South. This angst "helped to break down the long-standing feeling among Evangelicals that electoral politics was not the proper realm for Christian activity." Prior to this time, scripture shibboleths were etched on the minds of the faithful: a.) "Avoid the very appearance of evil (politics)." b.) "Do not be unequally joined together with unbelievers." These biblical admonitions were enough to keep "real Christians" out of politics and partisanship.

Carter had failed to stack his administration and the federal system with enough evangelicals and Fundamentalists, Carter did not actively make a move to overturn Roe V. Wade, he did not stand sufficiently in the way of forced busing for the purposes of integration. Advocates for church academies were hell bent to receive tax exemption for church schools which sufficed as the neo-segregation academies. Jimmy Carter appeared unable or unwilling to stop the spread of "secular humanism" seen as running rife in the public schools and the nation.

The capstone seen as the key to moral disaster ignored the up-whelming cry to reinstate prayer in public schools.

---------

Concurrently, at one critical interval, three secular New Right operatives/strategists began a bold crusade. They were: 1.) Howard Phillips 2.) Richard Viguerie 3. Paul Weyrich. They named their non-denominational creation, "THE MORAL MAJORITY" a clever all-inclusive coalition that quickly became the hub of radical political actions.

An assemblage of notable religious right captions and generals included: 1.) D. James Kennedy 2.) Jerry Falwell 3.) "Pat" Robertson 4.) Ed McAteer 5.) James Robison

At a precisely opportune moment during the August 1980 Presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan, speaking to a large gathering of like-minded religious far righters (over 15K), spoke these words:

"When I hear the First Amendment used as a reason to keep traditional moral values away from policy making, I am shocked...The First Amendment was written not to protect the people and their laws from religious values, but to protect those values from governmental tyranny." Reagan deserves credit for choosing a speech writer who could strike this once lost, then found, lost cord with the values voters gathered. And to cap off his remarks, Reagan added "I want you to know I endorse you and what you are doing." 

That was that, Reagan became their man of the hour, he went on with abundant help from the religio-political-economic Right to win the presidency. And as they say, "The rest is history."

George Benson, The Gipper's Far Right Mentor and Divine
For years in the unseen background, the little-known George Benson was building his National Education Program. He was there prior to 1980, with the Gipper, helping to present and hone a specific work, THE TRUTH ABOUT COMMUNISM, a film where Reagan and Benson had cooperated. Benson's lifelong cause was to be wed to that of the new leader, Ronald Reagan. As a later newspaper editorial put it:

"GEORGE BENSON WAS A MEMBER OF THE MORAL MAJORITY YEARS BEFORE THERE WAS ONE. In an era when most Fundamentalist clergymen would as soon be seen hoisting a highball with the local madam as become involved in something as worldly and tawdry as politics, Benson was laying the foundation for what become known as the Religious Right." 

(emphasis added)

Source: Mike Trimble Arkansas Times, July 1986.



And so "the Vote Values show" hits the road again this weekend. It's latest attempt to hornswoggle the nation, via the GOP and the U.S. Presidency, marches out of the minds of a crafty and deceitful group of religious leaders - still besmirched with the vetting and endorsement of the preemptive warmongering George W. Bush on their hands.


Original.

The 'Mouse' in the Room in the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary Seeking the Defeat of Barack Obama

Why Are Libertarian Leaning Republicans, the GOP’s True BLUE R.I.N.O.’s, Suddenly Afraid of the ”Mouse” That Scares the 'B' Juses Out of Their Effort to Unseat Pres. Obama?

The "Mouse" in the elephant's cage is not really so small a fright as it once was back when Jerry Falwell joined Frank Schaeffer (Christian Right leaders such as Tim LaHaye have credited Schaeffer for influencing their theological arguments urging political participation by evangelicals. (American terrorist) Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, also acknowledged the influence of Schaeffer"- Wikipedia) together these two created a powerful coalition of values voters/so-called social conservatives who could join the Misogamy of Phyllis Schafley's anti-ERA crusade ("Sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women" ) with the roiling Jim Crow sentiment that brought the Dixicrats into the Republican fold en mass under Barry Goldwater and Barry's ardent refusal to approve the Civil Rights legislation of the early 1960's.

Catering to the social conservative activists and pastor-led "church going voters"in Iowa has become a GIANT PROBLEM for the national Republican nomination process. Giving "social conservatives" the wheel and the driver's seat in legislation and candidate selection is seen as a clear path to SURE DEFEAT and the easy reelection of President Barack Obama.

An ardent Social Conservative may win the primary, and almost surely lose the November national election.

Always there has been the GOP Establishment's ability to slip stream, mollify, the anti-abortionists and ilk; just as every GOP president since Reagan has done so well. Now, having used this "morals issue" over and over, it's time to give the so-called "Social Conservatives" the big bone they are demanding, that they have worked so slavishly to obtain-a moral over-ride, cart blanche to enact any or all the raft of legislation these Hard/Harsh/Disciplining Fundamentalists, driven by "strong faith," desire.

The frothing desire of so-called "Social Conservatives" to enact all the oppressive and repressive laws and legislation they desire has the ability to stymie the Marketplace Corporatists (whose heyday of economic advantage has hidden under the skirts of "Social Conservatives." )

Here is the rub. If the "social conservatives" do not come out for a "strong convictions GOP candidate," sit on their hands and not vote at all, then the rolling advantage and heyday of Marketplace Entrepreneurals (given special advantage by Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Strict Catholics) will dry up and their commercial and legislative, unearned advantage will have to be won by Corporatists and "Market Fundamentalists" on their own merits.

No more True Believers handing out a free ride to Wall Street con men, Ken Lay, Enron, Koch Industries, and Amway could change and moderate the rancorous American political scene in a most healing manner.


Original.

RACE as the GOP’s Dog Whistle Political “Tool”

"Passion and prejudice properly aroused and directed...do about as well as principle and reason in a party contest."
-- Thomas Elder, prominent Whig politician, 1840

Origins of Race in GOP Politics: How the South Was, and Is, Won


From the masterpiece on American politics by Thomas Byrne Edsall (Washington Post) and wife Mary Edsall come these key insights:

"Within two weeks of the (1948) Democratic convention, the States' Rights Democratic Party (the "Dixiecrats) was formed at a gathering in Birmingham, Alabama. (Strom) Thurman and Fielding Wright, the governor of Mississippi, were chosen as the new party's presidential and vice-presidential nominees. Thurman, running on a segregationist platform, won only 1,169,021 votes, a twentieth if the 24 million votes received by Truman. But Thurman carried Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Alabama-the heart of the deep South, established what sixteen years later would become the beachhead of the GOP."

"The 1948 Thurman campaign was of profound importance, won the issue of race to break (the hold of) the national Democratic Party on the South, a step of critical consequence in a thirty-two-year process that would produce a regional realignment in presidential elections by 1980."

--Thomas & Mary Edsall, in Chain Reaction.

How did the Republicans become the party of choice for the segregationists in the former Dixiecrat "solid" South?

How could there be such a complete and dramatic flip from a "solid Democratic" to "solid Republican" South in such a short period? What gave rise to Republicrats?

In 1964 Barry Goldwater ran for President as a rock-ribbed die-hard conservative. "In the liberal, pro-civil rights atmosphere of 1964, the right-wing strategy of the Goldwater campaign was a short-term disaster."

Involved in Goldwater's nomination success, "the Draft Goldwater Committee used 'concepts and language so harsh that they were unfit for the day-to-day operations or dialogue of American politics," wrote Robert Novak. However, within one presidential cycle these concepts and language had become "publically accepted GOP strategy."

The shift from the support given Democrats to the Republicans in the Deep South played into Nixon's "Southern Strategy." Continued by Ronald Reagan with his trip to the Mississippi county (directly from his nomination at Detroit's National G.O.P. Convention, 1980) where civil rights workers were previously murdered, was Reagan's pandering when he spoke of state's rights. Read the account: "The G.O.P.'s own leaders admit that the great Southern white shift was the result of a deliberate political strategy. 'Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization.' So declared Ken Mehlman, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, speaking in 2005.

"And Ronald Reagan was among the 'some' who tried to benefit from racial polarization."
-- Paul Krugman in "Republicans and Race" Nov 1, 2007.

Reagan repeated his reiteration of the term "welfare queens" with targeted intent. One of Reagan's wedge statements made had especial appeal to the Southern Base; Reagan in 1980 said the Voting Rights Act was "humiliating to the South."

George H. W. Bush used the "Willie Horton ad", a racial device, and George W. Bush went to Bob Jones University to stake his claim to this line of subliminal, underlying "coded" race strategy.

Robert Novak Weighs In on Goldwater's Impact
The type of plans devised by conservatives in the early stages of the campaign to win in 1964 were, according to Robert Novak (THE AGONY OF THE GOP, 1964) the following:

"Policy A: Soft-pedal civil rights. While stopping short of actually endorsing racial segregation, forget all the sentimental tradition of the party of Lincoln. Because the Negro and Jewish votes are irrevocably tied to the Democrats anyway, this agnostic racial party won't lose votes among the groups most sensitive to Negro rights. But it might work wonders in attracting white southerners into the Republican Party, joining white Protestants in other sections of the country as hard-core Republicans.

Policy B: Assume a vigorously strong anti-Communist line...This wouldn't lose many votes among white Protestants and might snatch enough Catholic votes away from the Democratic Party to cut down Democratic margins in the big cities.

Policy C: Except for the civil rights question, stick to orthodox Republicanism on domestic issues."

How clever and effective; In fact Goldwater did all the wrong things to win the set of Southern States he won in 1964:

"Goldwater ran in 1964 as an ideological doctrinaire conservative calling for the sale of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the evisceration of the Rural Electrification Administration, a voluntary system of Social Security, and t he elimination of farm subsidies. None of these principled stands on the ideological right won him any states. In fact the states he did carry, each one of the government programs Goldwater sought to overturn had substantial, if not overwhelming, majority support."

The Edsall's expand:

"There was, in reality, only one issue that permitted Goldwater to carry five states in addition to his home state of Arizona: civil rights. Goldwater declared himself personally opposed to segregation, but even more deeply opposed on principle to federal intervention to end segregation. '(I)t is wise and just for Negro children to attend the same schools as whites,' Goldwater wrote in 1960, but, he added, "the federal constitution does not require the States to maintain racially mixed schools. Despite the recent holding of the Supreme Court, I am firmly convinced-not only the integrated schools are not required-but that the Constitution does not permit any interference by the federal government in the field of education."

Foremost and most importantly; the obvious and most important component of Goldwater's position and stratagem, Goldwater had cast the sole U.S. Senate vote against the Civil Rights Act.

This was the clear and singular act that made Goldwater the Deep South's 1964 Presidential Choice. The stunning reversal of popular vote from "solid" Democrat in the South to a "solid" vote for Goldwater, a Republican, transfixed GOP strategy going forward from that point.

It was a clarion signal to the Republican strategists going forward. Operatives discovered and would use the power of race to dislodge and covert voters who where, heretofore, thought unable to politically crack the Solid South.

The University of Michigan's Survey Research Center produced evidence that changes in the role of race in voting patterns were "significant and of lasting importance" the U of M study suggested that the "ISSUE OF RACE ACTUALLY PRODUCED AN IDEOLOGICAL CONVERSION OF POOR SOUTHERN WHITES FROM A DEEPLY HELD ECONOMIC LIBERALISM TO ECONOMIC CONSERVATISM." (emphasis added)

The U of M researcher goes on,

"By the early 1970's, poor southern whites had moved decisively to the right on these economic issues, becoming more conservative than Catholics, border state whites, and the middle and lower-status white northern Protestants . On the basic issue of government intervention to protect the less well-off, poor southern whites by the 1979's had become as conservative as upscale northern Protestants, a key Republican constituency."

The Edsalls wrote:

"As the 1964 Civil Rights bill worked its way from proposal to passage, and as the presidential campaign took its course, the public perception not only of Johnson and Goldwater, but also of the racial stands of the Democratic and Republican parties, changed radically. The biennial polls conducted for the National Election Studies (NES) reveal that the public before 1964 saw virtually no difference between the parties on issues of race."

Momentous Change Was Coming

"As recently as 1962, when respondents were asked which party "is more likely to see to it that Negroes get fair treatment in jobs and housing?." 22.7 percent said Democrats, 21.3 percent said Republicans, and 55.9 percent said there was no difference between the two parties."

"By late 1964, however, the public saw clear differences between the two parties. When asked which party was more likely to support fair treatment in jobs for blacks, 6o percent of the respondents said the Democratic party, 33 percent said there was no difference between the parties, and only 7 percent said the Republican party. Similarly, when asked in 1964 which party was more likely to support blacks and whites going to the same school, 56 percent said the Democratic party, 37 percent said there was no difference, and 7 percent identified the Republican party.'

"The events of 1964 gave rise to a process in which, over time, the partisan differences on race seen by the public would extend beyond presidential candidates to members of Congress, to the stands taken by the two party platforms, and to the attitudes of presidential convention delegates, party activists, and the much larger universe of voters who identify with the Republican and Democratic parties. BY 1964, THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WAS ON ITS WAY TO BECOMING THE HOME OF RACIAL LIBERALISM, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WAS ON ITS WAY TO BECOMING THE HOME OF RACIAL CONSERVATISM."

From the Edsalls, Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, " A Pivotal Year", CHAIN REACTION: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics, SEE this LINK.

"For the architects of the conservative revolution within the GOP, the southern reaction to the civil rights movement was a fortuitous and unplanned development."

"It was the civil rights movement, however, that gave the conservative insurgency a wider focus, a broader target, and an enlarged constituency. On a number of complementary fronts, the civil rights revolution interacted with the conservative movement to strengthen the right-wing drive within the GOP."

"Evidence that the Goldwater drive was mobilizing a new breed of Republican began to surface at party gatherings. At the 1963 Republican National Committee meeting in Denver, northern Republican leaders, proud of their party's ties to Abraham Lincoln and the emancipation of the slaves midway through the Civil War, were stunned to hear southern chairman carrying on 'boisterous conversation about 'n----rs" and "n----er lovers," wrote columnist Robert Novak in his book, THE AGONY OF THE GOP 1964."

Novak as quoted by the Edsalls:

"At the decisively pro-Goldwater 1963 convention of Young Republicans in San Francisco, there was according to Novak 'no doubt [the] unabashed hostility toward the Negro rights movement was fully shared by the overwhelming majority of the convention delegates...delegates from North and South talk,' Robert Novak observed: ' with a single voice on the race question...For the Young Republicans at San Francisco, their party was now a White Man's Party.'"

--Various quotes excerpted from: CHAIN REACTION: THE IMPACT OF RACE, RIGHTS, AND TAXES ON AMERICAN POLITICS, Thomas Byrne and Mary D. Edsall


What Role Will RACE Play in the 2012 Elections?
This election cycle will be peppered with all the coding and "dog whistles" associated with the GOP's tried and true use of RACE and ethnicity as keystone factors in legislation, politics and campaigning.

Even Henry Payne, The Michigan View in Detroit News, catches on; at least in part; when he bluntly concludes:

"So why are the elephants dooming their long-term viability? Having already alienated black and Jewish voters, they seem to determined to alienate the fastest-growing minority in America: Hispanics." Payne concludes: "...the GOP base wants to build a fence. And as Perry understands - and Bush and Rove before him - that look(s) to Hispanic voters like a fence around A WHITE REPUBLICAN PARTY." 

Closer to Home: Gingrich's Remarks and Race in Detroit
The crafty, often careless, but cunning Gingrich uses hyperbole and exaggeration for maximum effect. Brendon Berry, Thomas M. Cooley Law School, wrote this piece: DOG WHISTLES AND CODES: Covert Republican Message Making, May 21, 2011:

"Recent Republican race-baiting, in the person of Newt Gingrich and his allegorical references to Detroit and food stamps, raises anew the issue of Republican 'dog-whistle politics.' That Republicans habitually trip over themselves in the proverbial 'race to the bottom' with their appeals to the fears and anxieties of small-mindedness is well understood by any close observer of American politics. But the well-read and keenly alert are not the electoral targets or concerns of Republican message-makers. The people Republican strategists seek to reach-or at least not to scare-are the vast numbers of Americans who are not paying attention closely, those whose ignorance renders them susceptible to the game of bait-and-switch that the right-wing has been playing with Americans for decades."

Footnote on "Dog Whistle Racism": 

"Dog-Whistle Racism is political campaigning or policy-making that uses coded words and themes to appeal to conscious or subconscious racist concepts and frames. For example, the concepts 'welfare queen,' 'states' rights,' 'Islamic terrorist,' 'uppity,' 'thug,' 'tough on crime,' and 'illegal alien' all ACTIVATE RACIST CONCEPTS THAT THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN PLANTED IN THE PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS AND NOW ARE BEING ACTIVATED BY PURPOSEFUL OR ACCIDENTAL CAMPAIGN ACTIVITIES, MEDIA COVERAGE, PUBLIC POLICY AND CULTURAL TRADITIONS. So, what's dog whistle racism? It's pure political theater to push buttons to win elections and policies."
(emphasis added) 

For further information go to Dog Whistle Racism.


Original.

TeaPublicans: Civic Slackers Filled with Obstinacy, Obstruction, Obfuscation

"Extremists' obstructionism in pursuit of "our way or the highway" is no vice."
- Parody of Sen. Barry Goldwater

Eyes Wide Open
The general population is beginning to see the depth of the civic depravity of the TeaPublican agenda and the thrust of the American Legislative Exchange Council so much a part of the threat the Bush economic implosion thrust upon you and I, ordinary Americans. Two well-placed men from inside the GOP have helped us see the corrupt and malevolent nature of current TeaPartisanship:

1.) David Stockman has asserted that Bush and his cabal created a civic crime "Worse Than Watergate." Former Reagan Budget Director, Stockman was in the heart of the Regan regime and understood the guts of the "Cult of Reagan" far better than most. It was Stockman who enlightened the nation that Reagan cultists were willing to use the huge debt that Reagan ran up to control and defeat social spending in America.

Author John Judis writes this confirming Stockman's "worse than Watergate" assertion:
"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." "Emphasis added"

2.)  Now comes Mike Lofgren. Lofgren ended his career as a Congressional staffer after years as a respected professional staffer for Washington Republicans in both the U.S. House and the Senate and having served on the GOP Senate Budget Committees. From Mike Lofgren' s essay "Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult" on September 3, 2011:

Lofgren:

"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 US AND GLOBAL ECONOMIES AS HOSTAGES."

"...the attitude of many freshman Republicans to national default was 'bring it on!'"

Lofgren:

"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 Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant."

The cultish TeaPublicans around the country have made every attempt to rally the civic slackers, those

Lofgren:

"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.

"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 Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. AS HANNAH ARENDT OBSERVED, A DISCIPLINED MINORITY OF TOTALITARIANS CAN USE THE INSTRUMENTS OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT TO undermine DEMOCRACY ITSELF."

Lofgren:

"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.

"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)."

Lofgren:

"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 United States 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.

" 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."

Lofgren:

"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."

Lofgren:

"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 Middle East was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don't want those people voting."

Lofgren:

"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 America's status as the world's leading power."

(Emphasis added throughout these quotes)


See Also the previsous posting "Our Guides to the Bottomless Pit: Wolfram, Von Hayek, Lewis F. Powell, & A.L.E.C.".

Original.