The dysfunctional Republicans

Let's say you're a leader of a political party. Your party has just won 55 out of 100 seats in the Senate; you have maintained solid control of the House; and your candidate for president has just been re-elected by a margin of three million votes. Now you're faced with crucial political issues you campaigned upon. Do you: a) go for it, or b) compromise?

If you're the Republican Party, you compromise. Republicans are so used to being a minority party -- or at least a party in control of single branches of government at a time -- that they have no idea how to get things done in this new political environment. What's clear to every semi-literate observer of politics -- the basic principle that when you have power, you ram your agenda through -- remains murky for the Republican leadership.

Senate Republicans are stalled on Social Security personal accounts. Senate Republicans are stalled on the John Bolton United Nations ambassador nomination. And Senate Republicans are stalled in foiling the Democrats' desperation filibuster of popular textualist judges who will surely win approval in a full Senate vote.

Republicans own 55 seats in the Senate, a solid majority in the House and the presidency. What in the world is going on? President Bush vowed after his three million vote electoral victory margin to spend his political capital. Yet his political capital drains slowly away, day by day -- his latest approval ratings are below 50 percent. Bush's political capital is not draining away because he's pushing unpopular measures; it's draining away because he isn't doing anything . Approval ratings for the Senate reflect similar disenchantment with inaction. The American people elected President Bush, a Republican Senate and a Republican House in order to see a certain agenda pursued. Yet Republicans, afraid to alienate portions of the voting public they have already captured, dillydally.

It's easy to blame Republican inaction on the obvious: grandstanding by a few key "maverick" Republican senators seeking airtime and press raves. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, has vowed to shoot down any Social Security proposal that includes personal accounts. Because the Committee is split 11-9 in favor of Republicans, Snowe's defection could spell the end of President Bush's Social Security proposal.

At the same time, Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), as well as Sens. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), seem poised to crater Bolton's confirmation.

Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has pledged to vote against any effort on the part of Senate Republicans to end Democratic filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees. Chafee and Snowe will likely join McCain in his ploy for publicity, which leaves Republicans with the requisite bare majority, 52-48, as long as no other Republicans defect. But if the current Republican trend of bucking the White House continues, even this measure -- perhaps the measure most important for Republicans in maintaining the support of their base -- could go down to a humiliating defeat.

But even these obstacles could be overcome by a show of power from Republican leadership. Such a show of force probably won't occur any time soon. Instead of pressuring Republican senators to step back in line, the White House has pursued a patty-cake policy of compromise and appeasement. President Bush had an opportunity early after the election to whip Republican "mavericks" back into line when Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) threatened his judicial nominees. Yet instead of calling for Specter's ouster as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, President Bush remained largely silent. Specter is still chair of the committee.

Compromises between single senators and an incumbent president are known in psychological parlance as "enabling." Republican weakness enables their opponents. By allowing dissention to spread within the Republican Party, the White House and the Senate Republican leadership, endanger all the gains that have been made over the last decade.

Meanwhile, the Democrats, in flux just a few months ago, sit back and chuckle. They're standing fast against Bolton and against Social Security personal accounts, where they can exploit Republican divisions. And they're offering the oh-so-tempting carrot of compromise to a wobbly Republican Senate with regard to judicial filibusters, stating that they will allow a few Bush nominees to reach a floor vote if Republicans promise not to end the practice of judicial filibustering. You can almost hear the drool hit the floor as Sen. Bill Frist looks at Sen. Harry Reid's compromise offer and then glances uneasily over at the Hole-in-the-Republican-Senate-Gang, led by Snowe, Chafee and McCain.

Republicans have been down so long that they don't even know when they're up. They'd better recognize their strength and start using it quickly or they'll be down again before they know it.

"But even these obstacles could be overcome by a show of power from Republican leadership. Such a show of force probably won't occur any time soon. Instead of pressuring Republican senators to step back in line, the White House has pursued a patty-cake policy of compromise and appeasement. President Bush had an opportunity early after the election to whip Republican "mavericks" back into line when Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) threatened his judicial nominees. Yet instead of calling for Specter's ouster as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, President Bush remained largely silent. Specter is still chair of the committee."

Actually, this is somewhat misleading. If Bush had acted decisively to Arlen's early threat, Specter would not have become Judicial Chair in the first place. I explained the dynamics of this at the time, during the Stop Specter fight.

Now incorporated into my 2004 Campaign Notes:
http://groups.msn.com/2004CampaignNotes/_whatsnew.msnw

Here is the email I sent out at the time:

On November 7, Robert Novak wrote that Arlen Specter “…could be denied that post [the Judiciary Committee Chair] by a vote of his Republican colleagues, and several said he will be asked to commit himself to support Bush’s judicial nominees.” The implied plan is to get a loyalty commitment from Specter and then, on the strength of that commitment, elevate him to the Senate Judiciary Committee Chair.

The mistake the Republican Senators contemplate here is similar to the one made by Britain and France in their decision to appease Hitler at Munich in 1938. There, Britain and France effectively gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler in return for his “ironclad guarantee” not to invade Poland. Hitler was threatened with war if he broke the agreement.

How do the lessons of Munich apply to the possibility of Specter attaining the Judiciary Chair? Before making an agreement with a man, ask two questions: What are his stated intentions and what is his track record on agreements? One of Hitler’s prominent stated intentions was German domination of the world, as laid out in his book, Mien Kemp. One of Specter’s prominent stated intentions is to prevent strict constructionists from being appointed to the Supreme Court, as laid out in his book, The Passion for Truth. In this regard, Specter’s book proudly recalls his lead role in blocking the Supreme Court confirmation of Robert Bork, who was nominated by President Reagan.

In terms of his previous attitude toward agreements, Hitler had repeatedly violated the Versailles treaty by occupying the Rhineland, rebuilding the German Army, etc. As the “Pittsburgh Post Gazette” (a Liberal newspaper that endorsed Specter in the recent election) pointed out on November 6, “Senator Specter has a bad habit of making different promises to different people and playing them off one another. Thus, after all his recent statements claiming he would support President Bush’s judges, it should come as no surprise that he specifically promised a newspaper’s [the Post Gazette’s] editorial board that he would, in fact block Bush’s conservative and pro-life Supreme Court justices to gain their [the Post Gazette’s] endorsement!”

Having given his word to both sides, Specter has to betray one of them. In his last term, he is trying to achieve a legacy (please the Democrats), not act with political expediency (please the Republicans). Specter’s deeply held, oft expressed conviction is that strict constructionists like Robert Bork are wrong. Specter’s goal is to block such nominees from confirmation to the Supreme Court. Once elevated to the Judiciary Committee Chair, Specter will be helped by the Democratic Senate minority, the convoluted Senate rules of procedure, and a barrage of friendly artillery cover from the media. Combining the power of the Judiciary Chair with the benefit of four terms of practice in ruthless Senate operations, Snarlin’ Arlen will achieve his goal.

A final lesson from the Anglo-French confrontation of Hitler is connected to another idea being discussed: that if the Senators make Specter the Judiciary Chair and he blocks Bush’s appointments, they will later remove him. This is where the French and British inability to take action during the German 1939 invasion of Poland is so instructive. To marshal sufficient forces to quickly conquer Poland, the Germans had to turn their back on the French army and leave their Western Front virtually undefended.

The French army was nearly 100 percent mobilized at the moment of the German attack and had as many troops and tanks as the entire German army, and the French tanks in 1939 were at least as good as those of the Germans (The Unfought Battle, Jon Kimke, Stein and Day Publishers, 1968, p. 88-9, 139). “After months of fearful speculation and intelligence, the French and British allies were at last face to face with the German reality [on the eve of the attack on Poland]. But the ‘psychological block’ to which Churchill had referred was still at work.” (Kimke, p. 89).

While France and Britain did immediately declare war on Germany as soon as Poland was attacked, they took no immediate military action. As Kimke points out (and as Hitler well understood then) even a French attack unsupported by Britain at that time would have almost certainly led to a swift victory over Germany. This would have prevented World War II (Kimke, p. 138). “General Ulrich Liss, the able German officer who had to make a special study of the French forces before and after the outbreak of the war, has rightly warned against judging the fighting capacity of the French soldier of 1939 by what happened in [the French collapse of] the summer of 1940, after Poland had been overrun and after a demoralizing year spent in inexplicable inactivity in the trenches and the fortifications of the Maginot Line (Kimke, p. 139).” Once you’ve appeased an enemy, it is difficult to spring into effective and timely action later.

In the wake of President Bush’s election mandate, the Democratic Party, the Media and allied forces are as weak, in as much disarray and as distracted by their own infighting as they will be for a long time (just as Germany was most vulnerable during the invasion of Poland in 1939). Whatever makes the Senators afraid to act decisively now will only get worse. In addition, removing a sitting chairperson is harder than preventing a person from assuming the chair. If the Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee choose not to act now, they will be unable to act later.

Disclaimer: I am not in any way accusing Arlen Specter of Nazism or anything like that. That would be heinous and also ridiculous. Arlen Specter is Jewish, which would make such a charge especially repugnant. In fact, I am Jewish myself. But all this is quite beside the point of this essay. The point being that the situation faced by the Senate Judiciary Committee today is closely analogous to the situations faced by the French and British when they tried (and failed) to deal with Hitler in 1938 (at Munich) and in 1939 (during the invasion of Poland). In fact, the numerous historical analogies correlate so well that we would ignore them at our peril, if we hope to see Bush successfully nominate non-activist, strict constructionist judges to the Supreme Court.

You are correct. What people have to keep in mind is that the KGB has subverted our society, and continues to do so. Putin rules Russia with a KGB clique.

American patriots fight against an unseen adversary that most people do not believe exists. The Communists are the most skillful practitioners of subversion the world has ever known. The organ of the Soviet Communist government that actually practised subversion for them---the KGB---now rules Russia. This is little understood.

From an article in the Wall Street Journal, page 1, Wednesday, February 23, 2005:

"Mr. Putin him self served more than 15 years in the KGB and later headed its successor, the FSB [actually, the KGB split onto 2 organizations, the FSB (international, like the CIA) and the SVR (national, like the FBI).] Since taking over the Kremlin in 2000, he has presided over an unprecedented influx of ex-KGB men into the upper echelons of power---men whose formative years were spent learning how to undermine the West's interests.

Prominent among the ex-KGB officials who now pace the Kremlin's corridors are Defense minister Sergei Ivanov, Interior Minister Rahid Nurgaliev, and FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev, as well as the heads of Russia's arms-export, defense-procurement, and drug-enforcement agencies. A close Putin aide and former KGB man, Victor Ivano, serves on the board of flagship airline OAO Aeroflot. A favorite parlor game in Russia is to divine which other senior officials and businessmen have suspicious gaps in their resume that suggest a past with the intelligence services."

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