Posted on 08/17/2005 4:01:28 PM PDT by HalfAMind
To many, some American politicians' reaction to the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corp's (CNOOC) offer to buy US-based Unocal has made clear what they have long suspected: the conservative movement in America, particularly as envisioned by its patron saint Ronald Reagan, is dead.
Ironically its downfall began only after the Congress and White House came to be controlled by Republican radicals who claimed to be motivated first and foremost by a visceral hatred of liberals and everything for which they stand. First, despite rhetoric to the contrary and almost immediately upon taking power, these conservatives-in-name-only began expanding the size of the federal government (number five on the conservatives' cardinal sin list).
The resulting bloating was exacerbated when the wave of new Republicans on the Hill assumed the behaviors of their traditional enemies, tax-and-spend Democrats, and in a few short years spent trillions of dollars the government never had (sin number four) to fund pork barrel projects in their home states in order to pay off the special interest groups that had earlier filled their campaign coffers. In the event they turned an inherited surplus into a whopping deficit (sin number three).
They have since abandoned the principle of states' rights (sin number two) with legislation aimed at placating the party's far right wing's need to dictate decisions conservatives have traditionally left to individuals, things like to whom their fellow countrymen may and may not be legally married.
But the final blow to any pretense of conservative values came last month when these liberals in conservative clothing called for federal investigations into the CNOOC $18.5 billion bid for Unocal, outstripping California-based Chevron's offer by more than $2 billion. Again under the guise of concerns for national security they chose to interfere with the most holy of conservative places - the free market (sin number one).
According to those raising the alarm, the CNOOC bid places the US in danger from communists out to control the world's energy supplies. A spokesperson for House majority leader, Tom DeLay, a leader of the radicals who happens to be the Republican representative from the oil industry-intensive town of Sugar Land, Texas, said that the congressman does support 'free trade and economic interaction with the people of China' but has 'serious concerns about the communist government owning an American business and substantial American energy sources'.
One would expect a man from a Houston suburb whose biggest employers are operators (including Unocal's Houston office), contractors, vendors and service companies, would know better. If he paid any attention at all to the industry in which so many of his constituents toil, he certainly would know that Unocal is a very small player in the global energy business and that its oil and gas reserves reach nowhere near the threshold of 'substantial American energy sources'. Indeed, Unocal holdings are concentrated in Asia and sold almost exclusively to those markets and changing ownership would not affect that at all.
Secondly, if he and others were concerned about the commies owning an important American business, they chose to not mention it when China bought up IBM. Certainly they could have made a case the reds were aiming to control the worldwide web and hold it hostage until the entire Western world embraced communism or at least use it to Google 'the pentagon' and learn the secrets of the nation's defenses in preparation for an invasion.
DeLay was not the only supposed conservative turned free market traitor. Martin Frost, R-Texas and Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, also took swipes at the deal. In late June, 41 US congressmen, Republicans and Democrats, signed a letter to President George Bush urging a federal review of the CNOOC offer.
If this attempt to stymie the free interaction of the global marketplace were only the result of an ill-informed few sincerely, if mistakenly, worried over a renewed communist attempt at world domination through the control of petroleum, this latest performance by the radicals would be merely amusing. But given the circumstances and the Republicans' record to date, it would seem something very much more sinister may be afoot.
One is forced to wonder, for instance, if the long-rumored armies of sleepers, supposedly planted in the US by then Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, have finally awakened. Sleepers, according to cold war lore, were very young children brought to the US in the late 1940s and early 1950s and raised outwardly as ordinary Americans while at home their parents taught them to be good communists and to await the day they would take over America from within. The sleepers would now of course be in their 50s and 60s - of an age to run for office.
To accomplish their goals these sleepers might well have learned that by pushing certain hot buttons they could get elected by lax voters who tend to judge a candidate by what he says rather than what he does once in office. Thus, as long as they said they opposed the left, they could act any way they chose and indeed foster the essential leftist cause of centralized political power and a micromanaged economy.
Of course, men like Tom DeLay, who daily wrap themselves in the flag and stand always ready to defend all America from the Godless masses of the media, the press and any other group that does not think the right way, cannot possibly be closet communists.
Still, the question begs: if they are not working for the communists there must be some reason they are yet again willing to turn on all that is supposedly sacred to them. It only remains to discern who or what would benefit most from the CNOOC deal being scotched. Perhaps when that question is answered, the truth of what motivates these faux conservatives will out.
oops.
Title should be "and another thing ... Sleeping with the enemy"
I'm glad you cleared that up. I was thinking it was "enema."
;)
Thank goodness for that. I thought the headline read "Sleeping with the enema."
I don't know if we're great minds, but we do think alike. :)
No, but anyone who who thinks Martin Frost is a Republican or is even in Congress anymore is a maroon.
I guess I fall into the category that is being blasted in this article, because I would rather commit the "sin" of messing with the free market than hand over our soverniety to a country that is transparently clear on their communist agenda FOR ALL.
I'm with you. To me, national sovereignty is #1 - above FAIR TRADE. (Free trade is a globalist scam.)
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