Rove’s True November 2nd Surprise
Oct 23 at 3:03pm by Anonymous
It wasn’t Bill Clinton and it wasn’t Nader. It wasn’t Hillary Clinton nor Howard Dean. Neither Kucinich nor Al Gore. It was Karl Rove who awoke the sleeping giant of the American Left. Ironically, he doesn’t see this, which underscores why he’s not a genius—evil or otherwise. Rather, he’s a tragic fool who will be blamed for helping marginalize the GOP for the next 30 years. It’s amazing what Rove, an ardent student of history, cannot see. But bigger mistakes have been made in Western political history..
The Soviets for too much of the 1930s welcomed the rise of Nazi Germany. The Communists’ radicalized worldview told them their way would thrive even better in an industrialized Germany once Nazism – a mere symptom of capitalism – failed. The tragic punch line, of course, is that by the time Nazism really got itself going, the Russians couldn’t stop it without paying the price in millions of lives.
The lesson of this factoid isn’t about Communism nor Nazism as much as it is about human nature when blinded by ideology. It was a stunning miscalculation, as we’re seeing now with Rove’s assertion that he’s going to transform the Republicans into the majority party for the next 30 years. He’s not; he’s going to assure the GOP a minority status for a generation to come.
Our nation is just ending a thirty year cycle of Republican dominance that began with Nixon, was briefly thrown off course by a little scandal called Watergate, but moved full stream ahead for 22 years under Reagan, Bush the Elder who continued Reagan’s flirtation with fascism and, for 8 years, under Clinton who did everything to advance the Republican pro-business, deregulation agenda.
But Rove can’t see that. Rove drinks deeply from the well of persecution sensed by all disgruntled Republicans from Nixon’s time. The persecution fantasy is the same reason why so much rightwing posturing and propaganda has the air of an edgy, “fed-up with liberals” defense. Persecution and estrangement was the feeling among devoted Republicans after Nixon stepped down. Nixon’s 1972 campaign was, as we all know, when Rove first cut his teeth in national politics. Moreover, that’s when the seeds of the Republican revolution were planted. The same seeds that gave us a network of think tanks, of readymade pundits and right-leaning opinion proffers on Sunday morning talk shows. Everything, in fact, that has framed the political discussion in America for the last 30 years.
But with the GOP in control of the three branches of the government the “fed up with liberals” line is, at best, a pose. Quite an unsatisfying one at that. Especially for an electorate living with the consequences of right-wing mismanagement. The urge to accuse liberals when Republicans are confronted with trouble of their own making is only excuse-making writ large.
The underlying truth of the matter is the Republican agenda is simply not popular enough to carry the GOP forward further. The Republicans, according to Rove, should be growing more popular with an ever-widening slice of the electorate in 2004; but Bush couldn’t even win the popular vote in 2000. The Republicans couldn’t win the 2002 mid-terms without cheating in Texas by funneling illegal corporate contributions into political campaigns. (See Tom Delay’s current ethics commission problems). Upon winning, Texas Republicans called an unpopular special session in the State House to cement their victory for years to come through a redistricting battle. In California, they pulled a fast one on the sitting Democratic governor—citing Bush v. Gore, by the way—to seize power.
And they call this winning?
Technically, I suppose it is. But it’s not anything like winning with the support of the citizens, which is what it takes to stay in power in a democracy. It’s not like winning comfortably. Confidently. It’s not the kind of winning that will last.
The Republicans are desperate. They will try anything, legal or otherwise, to win again in 2004. But they’re going to be surprised by the new militancy of Democrats and liberals a like.
For that reason, Rove has the Secret Service screen out all dissenters from the crowds appearing at Bush’s campaign stops. Those who are admitted must sign loyalty oaths. (Sounds real American, doesn’t?). If Bush was exposed to the real public he would be treated as he was on his inauguration day. You saw the footage of the eggs hitting his limo rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue.
What I mean to say is, we live in a time of total Republican political dominance but it looks much more like the last desperate grasp of a party about to exit the political stage for good. The Republicans can barely keep the populace down. Stories about 250% surges in the registration of voters in Democratic precincts in swing states foreshadow a different America after Nov. 2, 2004.
Rove either can’t see this or refuses to. Yet Rove’s shortcomings are larger than this. Most of his direct mail and political consulting experience comes from clients in the Mid-west and South. The bulk of Rove’s campaign management experience comes from work in Texas and Alabama: two states trending conservative at the time. Rove knows winning in familiar territory but he’s in way over his head on a national scale. He’s a naïve and dangerous provincial in this way, who understands nothing of the motives of the other side.
Does he know, for instance, that nearly a century ago in states that had enforced segregation, farmers crossed racial lines to form cooperatives to protect themselves from the predatory business practices of big business? Does he understand that during the Depression, the New Deal sought to help Americans regardless of their color or ethnic background? No. Such matters and the motivation to do these things baffle him. He would write them off as examples of an aberrant idealism, yet these events happened precisely at America’s most desperate moments. Rove doesn’t understand that the true culture war in America is the endless question: how much of a culture of freedom do we have? How often can the citizens be duped into ceding their rights? With what righteous indignation will they reclaim it? These are the true questions of the American people. One thing is certain: Americans will not be satisfied to live under eternal fear. They will not be satisfied with a secretive, evasive presidency with ties to foreign powers (like, say, the Saudis). It’s a culture that, even should Bush win, will not rest until transparency and integrity is restored to government.
Rove is still operating on the antiquated Southern Strategy that came about in the time of his political education. The Southern Strategy was developed in a time of white flight from the cities, bussing and federally enforced desegregation. Apparently, he hasn’t noticed that bussing has ended, the city centers are repopulating, and the people in the suburbs want not just national security, but economic, health and environmental security. Because Rove rode into power on the now-fossilized strategy of Nixon’s campaign he’s shown little ability to adapt to the changes of this time. He’s a one-trick pony, who is adept at raising tensions between voting blocks, but is oblivious to the deeper history of the nation.
Rove likes to cite President McKinley’s ability to appeal to urban and minority voters in the election 1896 as a precedent for Bush’s 2004 victory. But Rove doesn’t need to look that far back. He need only look back to his parents’ generation: The GI generation.
The Generation that grew up in the time of the Depression and went on to fight WWII knew intimately what a world of war and inequality meant. They made up the moral and electoral backbone of the Democratic party. What FDR did for the country through the Depression and into WWII, assured that the Democratic Party was the default party, the mainstream party, the checks-on-power party.
In contrast to Reagan, whose legacy was that he “made people feel good” FDR and the Democrats of yore actually did good. This is what made the legacy of the New Deal so damnably hard to defeat for so long by Republicans. The Dems delivered. This is why the apex of the Republican revolution, which is drawing to a close, was Reagan’s two terms. But an important reading of the Reagan legacy, especially in regards to the sought after Reagan Democrats is the simple fact that Baby Boomers were too old for their youthful talk of revolution and but not satisfied with the unpleasant truths the Democrats had to offer in 1980. The Baby Boomers, true to their roots, opted to feel good. They crossed party the lines to vote for Gipper. Karl Rove should not be looking for a “feel good” vote in 2004.
In fact, the psychic damage Bush, under Rove’s direction, has done to the American electorate has added insult to the injury of 9/11 by exploiting what happened on that day to create an atmosphere likely to be associated with Republicans for years to come. Rove might be surprised to learn that, pre-Bush, liberals like me enjoyed discussing politics with my conservative counterparts. Outside of Washington, there was civility between liberals and conservatives in a time when just finding someone who cared about politics could mean more than finding someone to agree with.
But that’s gone. In its place is anger and resentment. Suspicion and doubt.
Americans don’t like being at each other’s throats day after day. They don’t like shouting matches with their fellow citizens. Americans don’t like living in a world defined by fear and stark choices, made under unforgiving circumstances.
I’m not sure Rove can understand this. Yet, I believe this anger, frustration and resentment was a part of life in the 1930s. Certainly FDR thrived as he fought the root causes of such turmoil. Voters reacted favorably. “Nothing to fear but fear itself” were FDR’s words not after Pearl Harbor but years earlier at his inauguration.
If Karl Rove really wants a lesson from history to inform the current situation, he doesn’t have to look back a century. He’d be well served to look at the legacy of the FDR Democrat generation. Each succeeding generation is a reaction to what came before it. You could make the argument that the rise of Clinton and the DLC coincided with the decline of the influence of the FDR voters in the Democratic Party. With fewer FDR Democrats around to keep the party focused on bread and butter issues of political and economic power, Baby-boomer Democrats fell for the image-rich social wedge issues framed by the Republicans. Liberals through these years have pretended that if they just ignore the angry, aggressive Republican Party, it would simply go away. What that got them—and the world–was the Bush Administration, rightwing radicalism and consequently, this mess in Iraq. Now, with their backs against the wall; liberals are in the fighting mode for the first time in, well, a generation.
For voters coming of age in this extreme time, the realities of the Bush Years will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Not unlike the experience the Depression had in shaping the political conscience of the FDR Democrats.
Young people today are facing an excessive national debt, a possible reinstatement of the draft, college costs spiraling out of reach, jobs moving overseas as they migrate to cheaper labor markets, and corruption throughout the federal government. They will be voting against inequality and for checks on power for the rest of their lives. The one person who masterminded this political wake up and its call to arms is Karl Rove. He has no one but himself to thank.
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What freedom is worth to Republicans
Dec 8 at 6:06am by Anonymous
So the Republicans are pushing the message of their “positive” campaign? The Democrats, they claim, are the party of protest and pessimism, filled with people who “hate” Bush for the sake of hatred. I guess the RNC has no choice but to go with an oversimplified message to an electorate of who already sees the world in such uncomplicated terms. They would have to be simpletons in order to support the RNC after it declared war on the common sense of the world by attacking Iraq. The Republicans certainly declared war on international peace-seeking institutions and the goodwill of our allies. But this is of little consequence to them. Liberals, like foreigners, didn’t vote for Bush in 2000 and aren’t likely to in 2004, so to hell with them, they figure. But Bush and his devious advisers have made the conscious decision to be president for the (less than) half of the country that voted for him.
The rank-and-file moral simpletons who support Bush blindly need to take a good look at the Republican Party to see how positive it really is. Go the the RNC website and look at how much space is devoted to questioning Democratic candidates not on the basis of policy or philosophy but in issues of relevance to Democrats. For example, questions are asked about whether Dick Gephardt, John Edwards, and Joe Lieberman are “true friends of labor.” What should that matter to Republicans? Republicans are confirmed enemies of labor. Just look at how they insisted the Department of Homeland Security offer only non-union jobs. What business do the Republicans have parsing out the subtleties of one Democrat’s labor stance versus another?
More sneering and innuendo filed headlines on the GOP site: “Kerry Whopper Watch” (you can hear echoes to what they did to Al Gore in 2000),”Howard Dean, unpasteurized”, “Edward’ Trial Lawyer Gold Rush” (trial lawyers are all evil–as opposed to corporate lawyers, I suppose). The purpose of these meddling articles is to make sure the moral simpletons have the tools to undermine the credibility of legitimate Democratic candidates, and of course, feel good while doing it. That way, when they get in discussions with a Democrat or call in to a radio show, it’s a fill-in-the-blank political argument. The talking points don’t elucidate policy or political differences. The talking points brand candidates and slander them. This is negative not only to the candidates but the democratic process (as the rise to power of any fascist in history could tell you.)
Republicans love to crow on and on about freedom. Freedom, oh, how they love that word! Any criticism of Bush and what do you get? Some red-white-and-blue clad moron giving you a loud and angry defense of “freedom.” But we truebelievers in America, understand that with freedom comes responsibility. Freedom for us is not just a flag-sticker slapped on the back of a SUV while someone else’s poor and dark-skinned children are led into a shooting gallery overseas. No, for us, the true value of freedom is priceless. And for the Republicans, what is freedom worth? Well, it’s worth GOPoints. That’s right, you can sign up to be a TeamLeader on the GOP site. In exchange for calling talk radio shows, newspapers and TV stations to tell them what a marvelous job Bush has been doing you can earn GOPoints that can be redeemed for GOP bumper sticker (75 points), water bottle (125 points), coffee mugs (165), or windbreakers (375). Each, of course, silk-screened or stitched in red, white, or blue. So you see, the Republicans have succeeded in trivializing politics to the point that citizens are literally trading away their rights and responsibilities for a handful of political Marlboro Miles. This is where Bush’s fund raising money is going. This, and of course untold behind-the-scenes slander and personal destruction campaigns against any candidate who steps near the Democratic nomination.
In terms of trinkets, the Democratic Party must seem like a real rip-off. All they do is ask for money and fight tooth and nail to offer the only hope of restoring sanity to the nation. And yet, to the RNC, Democrats are simply “Bush-haters.” Their anger is to be held at a distance, examined, questioned. Not at all, like the 8 years of blinding rage directed at Clinton. The level of disrespect shown to Bill Clinton – legitimately elected, by the way – tells you a lot about the hysterics Republicans resort to.
I remember quite well in the 1990s asking Clinton haters what was so bad about him. What I got was replies like this, “I wouldn’t let that man inside my house let alone the White House.” Okay, but why? “I can’t even get started on why I hate him.” Okay, well, I have time. Tell me, I said.
Inevitably the argument came down to the vague crime of “what he symbolized.” And for them that was enough.
As for Bush, there is nothing symbolic about his criminality. It’s fact after fact.
The voters struck from the rolls in Florida. Ripping up the Kyoto Accord. The handling of Sept. 11th intelligence. Exacerbating the bad economy and shifting burdens away from those who can most easily shoulder them to those who can’t. Alienating allies. Trying to undermine the 40-hour workweek. Trying to allow Big Media to further consolidate. Fomenting hatred against any nation that disagrees with the White House. A reckless, idiotic foreign policy. An unnecessary war. No bid contracts. Americans dying for his lies. Exposing a CIA spy. And we have to justify our hatred of this? We have to play nice? Hah. The Republican strategy of manipulating the discourse to where we feel uncomfortable about being negative is downright post-modern. It defies conventional logic. And yet it’s their best hope of blunting our legitimate anger. That fact of the matter is, Bush and the Republicans in power bear a sizeable responsibility for the negative state this country is in. They compound violence with violence; fear with fear and I can’t help but wonder if it is because fear is at the heart of Bush and his cronies. Of that paranoid, xenophobic, greedy, powermad mindset. The essence of a bully is a coward and the Republicans through their manipulations, distortions, misrepresentations, scares, lies, false alarms, accusations, bullying, and posturing are the biggest cowards around these days. But we believers in democracy, we legitimate and idealistic heirs to the Founding Fathers, are not afraid. We won’t be dragged down into the darkness the Republicans count on for their success.
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Loyalty to the Truth or Loyalty to the GOP?
Jul 19 at 5:05pm by Anonymous
If, as former White House counsel John Dean explained a few weeks ago in an interview, there is “no chance” the Republican house would impeach Bush for lying to the American people, the nation has transcended mere blind partisan politics and entered a time of living fiction. This is the same Republican Party whose members badgered and hounded President Clinton until he was caught in a lie. His prosecutors, the legions of right-wing radio listeners, organizations dedicated to unearthing damaging material on Clinton’s past, showed a disgust for immorality in the White House. But when Clinton’s impeachment came, the vast majority of Americans refused to march on Washington demanding his removal from office. In fact a few went so far to march in his support. Americans, both for and against President Clinton, knew in their hearts, if not minds, that the question he was asked should have never been asked because it involved his personal life; not his public life.
Now, the situation has reversed. We have an unelected president who lies to the American people and the world, sacrifices innocent American and Iraqi lives to create a distraction from his disastrous ineptitude at home. This president can’t poke his head out in public without an angry crowd forming.
Still, the Republicans are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The Republicans I know, the little rank and file footsoldiers who spent the late 1990s jeering at President Clinton, can’t defend Bush themselves. Something about American commonsense knows a high crime from a misdemeanor. No group, except possibly for American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, can feel as betrayed as Bush’s reluctant pre-war WMD believers. They shouted that anyone who stood against the war was a yellow, cowardly Quisling. They said any argument against the war represented pin-headed, politically-correct handwringing.
Now, of course, even if WMD were found it would be hard to prove they were of an imminent threat to US troops. So we continue to ask where are the WMDs? Where is justification for this elective war?
Yet, there is still no call for his impeachment.
If nothing else, we need no more proof that the witchhunt to bring down President Clinton had nothing to with moral outrage and everything to do with undermining the legitimacy of an elected president. Rightwing radicals who feel so sure about themselves they can seek to bring down an elected US president are an unsettling group. They feel like “the consent of the governed” means an expensive PR effort and spin job to deflect criticism. They have a religious conviction in their own arrogance and supremacy. They have no ideal other than the consolidation of power.
But what of their political strategy that depends so heavily on lies? What personal friend of yours would forgive such constant lies? What business partner? Most Americans parents don’t tolerate lies from their children. Why makes excuses for it from a Bush?
The lies, if tolerated by the American people, or the Republicans in Congress say a lot about our country today. For the people, you could say we live in a fact-free culture of images, of sensation. (Think of the images of Bush’s aircraft landing versus the realities it masked). One where lies, assertions, spin and advertising language go unchallenged. For the Republicans in Congress, it says party loyalty means more than truth, more than justice, more than integrity. In fact, integrity for them is measured by uncritical loyalty. In this way they are more akin to a street gang or crime family than a political party. Of course, in a healthy society both street gangs and crime families are considered a public problem to be rehabilitated or prosecuted.
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The price of “freedom”?
Apr 24 at 10:10pm by Jagwire X
Check out some of the results of our foreign policy: Iraq Body Count
Really great stuff. I guess this is what a “benevolent global hegemony” looks like.
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As if we didn’t know this
Apr 22 at 11:11am by Jagwire X
Here’s a nice little aticle about how the US has plans to change and dominate the Mid-East. Who cares if the locals have other plans or desires. Wouldn’t it be nice if the US could stay the hell out of other people’s business? Or if we have to be involved I imagine there are a thousand other solutions than domination.
Here’s the article: Iraq first domino in Mideast plan.
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PNAC and The New Militarism
Apr 12 at 12:12pm by Jagwire X
Current policy, it seems, is being made by certain intellectuals and politicians who have been moving towards a new vision of American militarism for many years.
One of the focal points for this movement has been the think-tank group “Project for the New American Century”. They have been openly calling for a renewed militaristic expansion of “American interests” around the world. Basically, they feel that the US military is the glue that holds the world together; or, rather, should be.
But don’t take my word for it. Read their “Statement of Principles” on their own website, written in 1997.
It clearly foreshadows the current “preemption” policy, and reliance on military might as a foreign policy tool. Note the names who signed this statement. You may recognize a few.
Also see their 1998 letter to President Clinton, urging him to invade Iraq, where they conclude:
“We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.”
Sounds familiar. Again, notice the list of names at the bottom.
These people finally have the stage, and are implementing strategies that they have long written about, but never had the opportunity to put into practice. Bush, and 9/11, have given them that opportunity.
Again, don’t just take my word for it. For example, see this portrait of PNAC that goes over much of the same ground I do. It’s from a mainstream source: Were Neo-Conservatives’ 1998 Memos a Blueprint for Iraq War?
Of course, you can always “Google it”, as they say.
Try: “PNAC“, or “Project for the New American Century“, or even “neo-conservatives” (a moniker that some of these new century types go by).
It is my belief, and the belief of others within the antiwar community, that this agenda needs to be opposed. It’s humanitarian price is too high, and it’s methodology severely misguided.
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