Posted on 08/10/2005 8:43:22 PM PDT by Psion
The New GOP Betrays America
Diane Alden Thursday, Aug. 11, 2005
The biblical truth "Hope deferred makes the heart sick" described my state of mind on July 27, 2005. That was when the House Republican leadership stopped the clock on the CAFTA vote because they didn't like the way it was going. It gets more and more difficult to write about politics. The hope some of us placed in Republicans was misplaced. We had hope they might make a small attempt to lead this nation back to constitutional government: limited government. Hoping Republicans will be conservative, constitutional or less venal than Democrats, however, is hopeless.
One unnamed Republican related my feelings at a meeting of conservatives who supported House and Senate Republicans: "There's an old story that elephants never forget. I wish it were true. The tragedy is that conservative Republicans never remember. They never remember that Republicans have sold them out on NAFTA, the Fed, the World Trade Organization, bailouts of the U.N., Planned Parenthood subsidies, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Legal Services Corporation, Bosnia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, federal control of education, quotas, immigration, taxes, spending, and almost everything else that really matters."
He concluded: "Call it what you will: amnesia, Alzheimer's or asininity – to be a conservative Republican, you must consistently forget the past, and be consistently condemned to repeat it."
Hit by Lightning
The CAFTA "agreement" – i.e., trade treaty – puts our economy and political system in jeopardy. It was jammed down our throats by Republican leadership and the Bush White House in service to corporate interests and the Bush "vision." That vision is to create the Trading State of North America.
It includes recreating the world through trade and commerce, some call it globalization, and on occasion use of the U.S. military in service to that vision. According to George W. Bush at Monterrey, Mexico, in 2002, trade is a moral principle.
In any event, the machinations surrounding passage of CAFTA are more than the usual insider effort to get their favorite agenda through. When I found out how it went down and the actions of both the White House and the Republican congressional leadership, I told my son, "If an establishment Republican's hair was on fire, I wouldn't throw a bucket of water on him to put it out."
After 30 or more years of promoting all things conservative – and, by extension, all things Republican – I just can't take it anymore. The tremendous effort in time, money, talking, writing expended to get Republicans elected so they would promote a conservative agenda and/or uphold the Constitution has come to nothing.
The problem isn't simply leftist Democrats preventing them, the real problem is that the New GOP has other ideas about what government should do and the kind of place America should be in the 21st century.
The New GOP does not believe in limited government. It will do nothing to strengthen and promote U.S. sovereignty or put America before its desire to create a global economic and political empire.
At the heart of the New GOP belief system is a post-Cold War philosophy wherein borders are meaningless, and trade and commerce are the religion that replaced Christianity. The end game for both trade treaties and unrestricted migration from most of the Third World, particularly Mexico and Central America, is to further the day they will claim a regional trading state where citizenship will mean zip.
Your place in the world will be almost totally economic and utilitarian. America will evolve from a constitutional republic to a commercial republic, where trade and commerce are the reason we exist, placing them above all else.
Some deluded Republicans actually believe the establishment mantra that trade agreements are all about free trade and open markets. For this bunch, complete faith in the thinking of 18th-century economic guru Adam Smith and his invisible hand are a must. According to the true believers, the invisible hand is going to save America from a future of buggy-whip manufacturing and wooden clipper ships.
Although President Bush hardly uses the invisible-hand argument, plenty of those in the hothouse corporate think tanks that support efforts like CAFTA and NAFTA do.
In order to deconstruct the nation-state, which the recent trade and immigration squabbles are about, sovereignty is considered no longer applicable. The Constitution is a quaint but irrelevant document they drag out on the Fourth of July or when their particular ox is being gored and they need to claim it once again.
Frankly, it makes me sick to my stomach that I spent most of my adult life trying to bring these people to power and defending their policies and believing their hogwash about core principles and what they would do once they had power. Well, they have it now, and they are just as dangerous with that power as the Democrats are.
Deconstructing the nation-state: The next step is passing the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) "agreement." This should scare any thinking conservative. When you add Bush's guest worker amnesty, which will be forced on us this fall, conservatives who fall for this will also drink arsenic Kool-Aid.
Meanwhile, kidnapping of Americans along the Mexican border continues unabated. Shootouts are an almost everyday occurrence along the border, while U.S.-trained paramilitary called the Zetas have become bodyguards and mercenaries for drug cartels. They have a $50,000 bounty for each law enforcement or Border Patrol agent killed.
Drug cartels pretty much have a free pass into the U.S. through Mexico. Nonetheless, Condi Rice, Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff and GWB himself say nothing much can be done because it might adversely impact trade and commerce.
It turns my stomach that men die on the border and young men and women sacrifice in Iraq for this nation while the leadership at home say buying and selling, trade, is what we are all about. They are also telling us this is what we are going to bring to the rest of the world even if we have to use the U.S. military to do it.
I have come to the conclusion that if I wanted to deconstruct a nation, I would have voted or become a Democrat. If I wanted to lie, cheat, steal, deceive, be involved in double dealing, payoffs and influence peddling, I would have become a Democrat. If I wanted to use ridicule, marginalization and name calling to silence my opponents, I would have become a leftist Democrat.
But the New GOP under Bush and the Beltway Iron Triangle Corporate mob are giving the Dems a run for their money in the misuse-of-power department.
As for how CAFTA went down, the GOP and House leadership should be horse-whipped for the intimidation, hollow promises, double dealing, cheating and changing the rules in the middle of the game to get the desired outcome.
The conservative Republicans who voted against CAFTA have incurred the wrath of the GOP establishment and the Bush White House. Regardless, the Fab 27 deserve a medal and our gratitude that a FEW Republicans don't cave when the going gets rough.
All this has clarified something I have believed intuitively: When establishment Republicans REALLY want something, they can fight dirty, lie, cheat and steal to get the desired outcome – just like Democrats. Only with CAFTA their effort will further erode conservative support for anything the Republicans want in the future.
But the New GOP doesn't care. They satisfy the business and corporate world, keep their options open after they leave office, and hope we will forget. Other Republicans will come along who learn quickly how to adopt a little conservative lingo or Jesus talk to snow the natives. But the conservative agenda to the New GOP is unimportant as they remake the hemisphere and the world to fit their vision.
Absolute Power Corrupts – and Absolutely, Power Has Corrupted the GOP
Trade agreements are international in nature, and have the force of law. Treaties require a super-majority in the Senate for ratification. By calling them "trade agreements" instead of the treaties they are, only a simple majority is needed for passage rather than a two-thirds vote of the U.S. Senate.
Kent Snyder has been around politics and politicians for several decades. I was on a speaking podium with him a few years ago at the Freedom21 Conference in St. Louis. Kent pushes conservative causes and advises constitutionalists like Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.
He is also knowledgeable about what went down on the CAFTA vote:
"When the official 15-minute period ended, CAFTA had gone down to defeat, 180 'nays' to 175 'yeas.' But the House leadership was so politically driven to get what they wanted, they broke the House rules: They simply violated the time limit in order to keep twisting arms and making deals until they finally had bought or coerced enough votes to pass CAFTA nearly an hour later."
Two hours of debate on CAFTA ended in the U.S. House at 10:59 p.m. Wednesday night. Representative Ray LaHood, R-Ill., speaker pro tempore, then ordered a 15-minute vote – at the end of which CAFTA had been defeated!
But with the vote kept open for more than one hour after it began, the "final" vote tally was 217 in favor to 215 against, with two not voting. Or was it? We were led to believe that the two members who didn't vote, Jo Ann Davis, R-Va., and Charles Taylor, R-N.C., who were already on record as going to vote "no" and would have defeated CAFTA, had been persuaded to remain silent. Mr. Taylor's was a key vote from a textile state that everyone was watching.
Republican leaders "spent much of [the] time wrestling with about 10 rebellious but 'undecided' Republicans, pleading and pressuring one after another to vote for the agreement." – New York times, July 29, 2005.
Kent writes, "The herd mentality dictates that if you can break key resistance, the rest will follow."
My own congressman, Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., hadn't been sure about how he would vote on CAFTA in early July. I suspect he had his own arm twisted or decided he didn't want to get on the wrong side of Dennis Hastert, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush or the other powers that be. He voted for CAFTA. More on that in another column.
Another source close to the scene said when it appeared CAFTA was going to be defeated. Bush, Cheney and U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman spent more than an hour in Congress to persuade Republicans who were going to vote no to change their vote.
The final vote came after midnight, when Republican managers put the vote back an hour so enough arms could be twisted, useless promises made, threats and intimidation could pummel Republicans who would have otherwise voted no.
Meantime, 27 core constitutional conservatives voted against CAFTA. At least 24 of the 27 understand that CAFTA and NAFTA and FTAA are not about trade and commerce. They are about something far bigger and more dangerous.
The monstrous piles of legalisms and bureaucratic strictures in these faux trade agreements are really COMMISSAR-style systems for the benefit of certain corporate and financial interests. They are also a tool to advance the regional-trading-state idea, which will mean an end to U.S. sovereignty. What that means is we will be at the mercy of an unelected managerial bureaucracy chosen by one or another type of elite.
The CAFTA Shafta and the Best Government Money and Connections Can Buy
In fact, NAFTA and CAFTA, as well as the upcoming FTAA, will ultimately make corporations and politicians richer and more powerful, U.S. citizenship meaningless, the taxpayer more oppressed, and the Constitution and U.S. sovereignty as dated as Hula Hoops.
The idea behind this system of "trade and commerce" is part of a vision for our future and that of the Western Hemisphere which calls for a super state. You and I will be represented by some handpicked clods fingered by the goofs at the CFR, Harvard, some K-Street suits, an investment group, politicians, or any combination of those who swim in the deep waters of the Beltway, international finance or believers in world government.
There is next to nothing in these trade efforts that is going to improve the lives and fortunes of average people in the American lower and middle class. They will do a great deal for the investor class, but, as usual, we peasants are going to get screwed.
Then, of course, the souls who line up to get a day's work at sweatshops in Nicaragua or Guatemala aren't going to be any better off either. As the Mexican working class discovered after NAFTA passed, they work cheap, in sweatshop conditions, and they don't make enough to buy much in the way of American goods. That is why our trade surplus with Mexico became a trade deficit.
The other problem NAFTA was supposed to solve was the invasion of people into the U.S. from Mexico. Instead we absorbed the 14 million poor created by NAFTA.
With passage of CAFTA, the migration of people from the poor countries of Central and South America will continue. After the guest worker amnesty bill is passed this fall, the Mexican invasion will include a stampede from the rest of the world as well. The new guest worker program which Bush supports will allow people from all over the world into the U.S. when some corporate doofus claims they are taking a job no American wants. Count on it.
William Hawkins, an expert on economic matters and adviser to small to medium-size U.S. companies, understands the implications of the various trade agreements. Hawkins concludes:
"An August 3 editorial in the Los Angeles Times called the Democrats 'the protectionist party' because they voted 188-15 against CAFTA. They are not in bad company, since George Washington, Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt were also protectionists. But the editorial failed to note that a majority of Republicans also did not support CAFTA on the basis of 'free trade.' A week before the vote, the Congress Daily survey of the House could find only 100 GOP Members willing to support the agreement. All the lobbying by the advocates of globalization and transnational business, from the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Business Roundtable, and K Street firms, had failed to produce a majority even within the GOP. Even when the roll call vote started, a majority was not ready to endorse 'free trade.'"
Hawkins surmises: "What ultimately brought another 102 Republicans on board were arguments not just different from, but opposite to, the ideology of David Ricardo. According to Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), the strongest argument for winning over GOP members was foreign policy. The argument was that to help cement democracy in Central America, CAFTA would create a trade bloc that could fend off Chinese competition, giving protection to regional industry."
The dots are there to connect. All you are required to do is plow through dozens of speeches, boring policy papers, conference notes, news articles, government testimony, GAO reports, foreign policy tomes, as well as historical documents and observations by the more honest analysts, and the big picture comes together.
As a trade agreement CAFTA isn't that big a deal. Our trade with Central America is pretty small compared to trade with China. Nonetheless, it is what is behind CAFTA where the story gets frightening for those who still believe in limited government, the Constitution and American sovereignty.
Trade, Immigration and Deconstructing America
Joined at the hip with trade is the immigration issue. The "vision" for the hemisphere includes lots and lots more Mexicans and Central Americans heading our way. The rehashed guest worker amnesty is actually a repackaged proposal tied around the sacrificial goats, Senator Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas.
The guest worker amnesty opens up our borders even more. Along with more hordes from Mexico and Central America, we will get planeloads of economic refugees from Timbuktu and Mosul.
The 'new' proposal is worse than the old, similar guest worker amnesty proposal of 2003. This one includes a "non-immigrant temporary worker program" (Title V) and something called "deferred mandatory departure" (Title VI).
Juan Mann is an immigration lawyer and immigration reform activist. He concludes that the new program is a dud: This "departure" scheme gives the immigration agencies of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) a new excuse not to deport illegal aliens, while handing out all the same benefits of lawful permanent resident status under the table to outright illegal aliens and visa over-stayers.
Mann relates: "Though masked behind some tough-sounding 'enforcement' provisions in the Cornyn-Kyl bill, the same non-deportation and job destruction schemes are still there. So don't be fooled, as were National Review and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)."
The White House wants this guest worker amnesty so badly, it has formed a coalition of business and immigration activists to fight against us knuckle-dragging types who think immigration is a disaster and that we are being invaded through our southern border with Mexico. Some of us also believe the invasion is taking place through airports – legally. In any event, a few are coming to grips with why nothing is being done to fix the problem and why nothing will be done.
In order to buy into the establishment GOP, White House coalition, corporations and businesses must pony up $50,000 to $250,000. The truth is large GOP donors depend on cheap labor from Mexico and other countries and are most likely the MAIN reason the GOP will not do anything about immigration, legal or illegal.
The new group of plutocrats and politicians are called Americans for Border and Economic Security, which will be led by Cal Dooley, a Democrat, and lobbyist Dick Armey, a former congressmen from Texas. The overseer of this Monty Python bureaucracy is a Washington insider and longtime Bush supporter: Ed Gillespie, who has a lobbying firm blocks from the White House. Armey also used his connections to push CAFTA. So what else is new?
A spokesman for Bush's 2004 campaign, Terry Holt, stated: "The politics of the Republican Party isn't going to change by itself. It needs help." Or as lobbyist ex-congressman Armey implied recently, those who are demanding serious immigration reform, which includes closing the borders for a period of time until it is sorted out, must be closet Nazis, racists, anti free trade, un-American idiots who haven't read the words on the Statue of Liberty.
Maybe so, but most of us have read the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, which tell us what constitutional government should look like and how tyranny portrays itself as good and true. History also tells us that those in power are willing to do anything in order to maintain or advance their power and status. A great deal of harm can occur when lots of money and power are at stake.
During the rise of Republicans the last 40 years, conservatives, Christians and others were used. In the world of Bush, Armey and the GOP establishment, this same group of supporters are now knuckle draggers harboring hatred for anyone who isn't white or Christian or whose ancestors haven't been in America for 200 years.
That is the same tactic used by the left against conservatives. Nothing changes when it comes to the misuse of power and playing political games. A word of warning: Conservatives aren't buying it anymore, nor are we going to be quiet to please the establishment.
Nonetheless, come next election cycle, the Armeys, Gingriches, Dreiers, Hasterts and others will whisper to one another, "Where else can they go?" Armey told the press, "The Tancredo wing appeals to the prurient character of our nature." He added, "We want to talk to the better angels of our nature."
The better angels of the New GOP must be named Lucifer and Beelzebub, because the only thing these guys are appealing to are the deep-pocket companies and corporations that want more cheap malleable labor, which will displace or place in jeopardy the gains of American workers over the last 100 years.
The payoff for the Beltway nabobs of the GOP are fatter salaries, more influence to peddle, and piles of money in their campaign coffers, or a cushy job once they leave office.
While their power grows, the displacement of Americans, workers and citizens, is taking place with the full complement of trade agreements, visa systems and expanded guest worker programs, and through organizations like the WTO. When the hemispheric power bloc forms, watch out, America, your cushy days are over.
The impact of bad trade deals and increasing numbers of Third World poor into the U.S. will impact not only blue collar and unskilled workers but also, as it has in recent years, the jobs and prospects of even more high-tech professionals, artists, doctors, nurses, computer techs, waitresses and Wal-Mart workers will also be in trouble.
If you have a job, it will be more difficult to leave; if you get a new job, you will probably take a pay cut. In fact, it is indeed a race to the bottom. There is a labor glut, and the new world order likes it that way.
The day after CAFTA passed, the Washington Times reported: "Incomes are growing 'smartly' for the first time in years." Yes, yes indeed! According to the Times, the Commerce and Labor departments tell us it is wonderful for top wage earners who receive stocks, bonuses and other income besides wages.
The Times relates, "The nearly 80 percent of Americans who rely mostly on hourly wages barely maintained their purchasing power, according to the Labor Department.
Even establishment figure Alan Greenspan knows you can spin the economic facts only so long.
"Since 1975, wages fell from 62 percent to 56 percent of income," stated Greenspan. Income from sources such as businesses, investments and one-time payments from bonuses, commissions and stock options helped alleviate the disparity.
Raises have been meager, averaging about 2.7 percent in the past year – a tad above the 2.5 percent inflation rate. Fed Chairman Greenspan and multimillionaires like Bill Gates put it down to the rotten U.S. education system, wherein between fourth and 12th grade American students rank in the toilet internationally. They insist there is a shortage of educated engineers and scientists.
My bet is that if Bill and Al and the rest of the elite factored out recent immigrants and poorly educated inner city students, American kids would fair much better in the international rankings. Of course their selective thought process clears the way for allowing more and more foreign engineers and scientists to "fill" these shortages.
The only shortage that exists is decency among the elite like Gates and Greenspan and the Beltway morons of both parties. They are expanding work and student visas and the caps at this very moment. The caps they put on them are a charade. The caps are about as tight as 25-year-old elastic on a pair of size 26 women's shorts.
Expect the cretins in both parties, along with the Bush White House, to expand the visa system even more. They will create a never-ending supply of foreign students that universities demand as well as scientists and engineers replacing our own.
There is no shortage of scientists and engineers at the moment. Considering that unemployment among U.S.-born engineers is high, the shortage exists in their pea brains and the corporations who want quality on the cheap.
Haven't you figured it out yet? We are of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation.
Trade treaties like CAFTA and FTAA add even more visas to the pile in the great American sell-off. America for sale – cheap.
Greenspan did get one thing right. "A free-market, democratic society is ill-served by an economy in which the rewards are distributed in a way" that leaves out the majority, he said.
The Times article concludes: "Small businesses, which for decades have been the engine of U.S. job growth, in recent years increasingly replaced hourly and salaried workers with contractors. One result has been a drop in salaries at small firms, said Michael Alter, president of SurePayroll, a tax- and wage-form preparation service for small businesses. Pay at small companies declined by 4.8 percent last year, he said, and is running close to that rate this year."
While the lower and middle class are trying to live from paycheck to paycheck, with little or no savings, the evildoers in power repeat the biggest lie of all: "They only take jobs no American wants." If it keeps on the way it is, that will be every job in America except those of politicians and bureaucrats.
Free Trade as a Moral Principle
According to the Bush Doctrine, trade and morality are coequals. The "ideals" of trade and commerce, in fact, trump national security. I didn't make that up. You can find it in the statements of Condoleezza Rice, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, the new head of DHS. [Find them in Borderline Insanity, Part IV.] Additionally, in at least four major policy speeches, George Bush has made it clear that trade and commerce are at the core of this republic and how it lives or dies.
The recent dust-up regarding a CFR policy paper telling us we are living in a new world order where sovereignty is passe and we need the regional trading state for security, etc., is YOUR future if you allow it.
Trade and morality as coequals. Who said that? George W. Bush, Monterrey, Mexico, 2002:
Bush: The concept of "free trade" arose as a moral principle even before it became a pillar of economics. If you can make something that others value, you should be able to sell it to them. If others make something that you value, you should be able to buy it. This is real freedom, the freedom for a person – or a nation – to make a living. To promote free trade, the Unites States has developed a comprehensive strategy."
There is a philosophy of sorts behind the lunacy on trading states and open borders and bringing that to the rest of the world. It is almost religious in nature, as Bush's statement would indicate.
While sympathetic to the Bush vision, Claremont Institute's Allan Wolfson writes in July 2005 in Ethics and Public Policy Magazine, to which Judge Robert Bork, Fr. Richard Neuhaus, and Catholic intellectual George Weigal also contribute.
Wolfson: "But a more central part of the theory was what became known as doux commerce – namely that the values and habits associated with commerce encourage peace. The emphasis of such philosophers as Montesquieu and Hume was on the commercial republic, not democracy per se. It was the new bourgeois man who would have little interest in war, so busy would he be to tending his self-interest."
He adds: "When Bush gets down to specifics about his democracy program, he's almost always sure to discuss the place of commerce. His national security strategy devotes several pages to the promotion of 'free markets and free trade,' and in his address to the National Endowment for Democracy he specified among the 'essential principles' of a 'successful society.'"
The founders must be rotating in their mausoleums to hear a U.S. president say with sincerity that free trade is a moral principle. Free trade is an economic principle. It ONLY works among moral, righteous people who understand the Golden Rule and who live in a moral, righteous, constitutional system.
If Bush or anyone else can't understand that, we are lost until someone arrives on the scene who does. I am so angry at the economic and corporate snakes and the libertarians and neocons who bolted this disaster together and passed this policy "vision" onto Bush. This will not only end badly for Republicans who have blown every chance to promote a constitutional conservative agenda, but it will also end badly for this nation.
For Bush to conclude that a centrally planned mess like NAFTA, CAFTA and FTAA are about free trade and helping people in Central America leads me to believe he is as disconnected from real life as his father seemed to be. Those in power who fed him this offal should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rusty rail.
Behind the vision include Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Feith, Haas, Negroponte and lesser messiahs from academe, think tanks like the CFR and American Enterprise Institute. The first time I heard the term "commercial republic" was when neocon Charles Krauthammer used it at a speech at AEI. It set off warning bells that have not stopped ringing.
As it is, trade and commerce are not going to remake mankind and create a worldwide peaceable kingdom. This "vision" is as goofy and just as dangerous as Hillary's global village lunacy. One would think a professing Christian would remember Christ's admonition about earthly kingdoms and attempting to create them on earth, particularly through trade and commerce.
The Chinese have had trade and commerce for thousands of years, as have the Arabs. I don't see great democratic states in any of their systems. It makes me wonder if people who spend too much time in the Beltway are so bored or drunk with power they see themselves as some sort of Second Coming.
The problem with Mr. Bush and the neocons is that they ARE drowning in messianic thinking. Their vision is so broad and so foolish, it is doomed to failure. In that vision they justify a pre-emptive-strike doctrine, and I will discuss the real reasons we invaded Iraq in a later column. Meanwhile, their support of the murderous Palestinian state is such a dangerous pipe dream I am appalled any sensible Israeli leader would fall for it.
While doing the research I found one Rumsfeld/BushCFR/U.S. Naval War College adviser conclude: "America's gift to the world is globalization."
If that is the case, America is not the America I know and live in. America's gift to the world is a system based on the idea that rights for man and limits on government come from the Creator and not the limited selfish "vision" of men.
When are conservatives going to wake up and understand and accept that the current crop of Republican leaders are blind guides, arrogant and full of themselves.
These erstwhile rulers of the world have forgotten they were elected to represent the people of the United States and uphold the Constitution. We did not put them into office to remake human nature or bring KFC to every corner.
I wish Bush had paid attention to Teddy Roosevelt instead of listening to Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Haas, Zoelick et al.
Roosevelt said: "The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being." (Theodore Roosevelt, speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, "The New Nationalism," August 31, 1910)
Ain't No Mountain High Enough
True believers ask me, "Would you rather have Kerry or Hillary in office?" That is no choice. It is a false choice, a choice I will no longer make. There comes a time, in good conscience, when you simply can't support the lesser of two evils or the evil of two lessers. Nor can you support the party to which they belong, particularly when they are trying to destroy everything you believe in.
There are individual conservative Republicans who deserve support, and they will always have mine. But the current GOP represents a nightmare rather than a vision that even borders on American or constitutional.
It is the height of arrogance for these people to think they have a mandate to rewrite the Constitution or end the nation-state millions of Americans have fought, worked and died for. Reality is that we are currently stuck with two parties in a race to take this nation apart.
If conservatives, Christians, constitutionalists or what is left of a few good Truman-Scoop Jackson Democrats can't or won't see this "vision" for what it is, then for the foreseeable future we are in real trouble.
You know, I started off this tome really bummed out. But something wonderful happens when you give up your illusions about life, politicians, political parties, promises and hard work that comes to nothing.
Nonetheless, what gives me renewed hope is that despite threats and intimidation there were 27 Republicans, men and women, who voted against CAFTA. That number and those individuals should be remembered because they are our hope for the future.
While I was moaning about Republican betrayal to a friend, that friend reminded me that only 55 signed the Declaration of Independence. With any luck, perhaps a core of 24 to 27 constitutional conservatives will have had enough from the powers that be and sign a declaration of their own. At that moment those who believe in America as the founders envisioned rather than as the GOP or CFR see us, then and only then will we be able to begin again.
The Core Constitutionalists – 24 belong to the Congressional Librerty Caucus:
Charles Boustany (LA) Shelley Moore Capito (WV) Howard Coble (NC) Barbara Cubin (WY) Virginia Foxx (NC) Scott Garrett (NJ) Virgil Goode (VA) Gil Gutknecht (MN) John Hostettler (IN) Duncan Hunter (CA) Bobby Jindal (LA) Walter Jones (NC) Frank LoBiondo (NJ) Connie Mack (FL) Thaddeus McCotter (MI) Patrick McHenry (NC) John McHugh (NY) Candice Miller (MI) Bob Ney (OH) Charlie Norwood (GA) Butch Otter (ID) Ron Paul (TX) Denny Rehbert (MT) Rob Simmons (CT) Mike Simpson (ID) Chris Smith (NJ) Tom Tancredo (CO)
Other good news: Something is stirring in the heartland. Don Goldwater is running against Arizona Democrat Janet Napolitano for governor, stressing issues of immigration reform. Goldwater is also talking about the importance of bringing responsibility for border control back to the state since the feds and Bush administration refuse to police the border with Mexico.
My bet is that the establishment GOP will try to screw up Goldwater's chances or attempt to convince him to adopt their stance on open borders and trade. If we are lucky, Don Goldwater will be as plucky and in your face about the establishment GOP as was his Uncle Barry. The other in-your-face conservative who took on the GOP establishment was Ronald Reagan.
Something else to cheer about: One of my heroes is California Minuteman, former Marine and MBA Jim Gilcrist. Jim is considering running for Congress in the seat vacated by Chris Cox. Cox is moving onto the Securities and Exchange Commission. Gilcrist supporters say the GOP-anointed candidate is another squishy establishment type: State Senator John Campbell, who is soft on border issues. Both Arnold and GWB want Campbell.
Given what I have passed along in this piece and in the next three parts in the series, it was predictable: Conservatives need not apply to the New GOP. The Beltway GOP and the moneybags who pay their freight prefer candidates who are easily bought and paid for. To use Arnold's phrase, they are girlie men – no guts, who go along to get ahead.
If you would like to support an honest-to-gosh conservative like Jim Gilchrist for Congress, you can sign up at https://secure.responseenterprises.com/jimgilchrist/?a=129.
Well, hope may be deferred, but it only becomes despair if we give up.
A great patriot and firebrand named Thomas Paine may have said it best.
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again." (Thomas Paine, "Common Sense," 1776)
Next: Betrayal 101: Part II
The History Behind the Bush Doctrine; Pre-emptive strike, regional trading state theory, open borders, and the Pentagon's New Map: the U.S. military as "security commodity" and other elite weirdness.
Part III: Conservatives Need Not Apply: The Sign on Libby Dole's Committee to Select Senatorial Candidates.
Part IV: Constitutional Conservatives: Ain't No Mountain High Enough – A Plan for America
I've also noticed you're avoiding challenging what I've said directly, which means the truth is too painful for you to handle. Common among those who ignore the lessons of history.
___It can easily be challenged but it's not going to do anything but fill up this thread with pointless denate...I'm not going to debate the issue of whether or not America has been a good ally to Israel or any other nation.
since he had made the decision to pull out anyway, was to carpet-bomb Haiphong harbor into rubble.
)____I guess you don't remember all the screaming over the "Christmas bombing" of Haiphong that brought the NV's back to the peace table...Nixon took enormous heat for it...he didn't have the
poilitical capital EVER to escalate the war or take it north...that should have been LBJ's goal...but he botched it...I have no doubt that Nixon would have won the war had he been in charge from the get-go.
He saved Israel because they told him they were going to nuke the oilfields along with the invading forces and Arab cities.
P____If that is true, then Israel was risking destroying itself and plunging the world into nuclear war...Nixon couldn't permit that...but I question your sources....Nixon aided Israel because Israel was in peril and that was not in American interest--to see an ally let down...
you mention nationalism in a positive vein, the RINO's equate nationalism with fascism.
))___Maybe, but I'm not a RINO..but the US public is not conservative either and RINO's are neeeded to fill in the centrist gaps...without the RINO's the Democrats would control the Senate.
Also, you made the statement that America never abandoned an ally, which was proved by history to be false.
___It is not false. We expended bllood and treasure in Viet Nam way beyond the call of duty...
That does not equate to contempt for America.
If I were filled with contempt for America I'd be happy to see her invaded by the swarms of illegal aliens the RINO's allow into our beautiful land. Those who betrayed our allies in Southeast Asia are the same faces that have betrayed America, Ted Kennedy being the best example.
The United States is the best nation on earth, and my I be so bold as to say in all of human history. She is the finest flower of all western civilization, blooming from the finest branch of the west, Anglo-Saxon civilization, nourished by Roman, Greek and Judean roots.
The ones who are doing the greatest damage to the beautiful land of my birth are the RINO's.
____I agree with everything you sat but the last...the public is NOT CONSERVATIVE...the GOP must govern as a center-right coalition...ideological purity will lead to minority status.
They would be happy to pass out green cards to the little pukes of Fallujah who danced around the charred corpses of our men hanging from a bridge, put the up in public housing, drawing food stamps and Medicaid. They would call it compassion. They allow the MS13 gangs to roam at will over this great land. They sell out America to the open borders lobby, for 30 pieces of silver.
I agree that we will probably see the federal government spending about 20% of the GDP, America can survive that. She cannot survive the tidal wave of illegal immigrants and those who do not want to assimilate, but expect the Romans to do as they do when they are in Rome! This is issue number one, being AWOL on this issue will destroy the Republican Party, as the Whigs were destroyed by slavery.
++____Yes and no...we have to stem the tide of illegal aliens but at the same time not alienate Hispanic voters...Bush pulled 40% od the Hispanic vote, with less, he would have lost the election...there has to be a compromise of some kind on Hispanic immigration.
If there was not a public consensus to win Nixon would not have been elected in 1968,
____He barely won---and he won because people hoped he would get us OUT of Viet Nam...not escalate the war. If he had proposed an escalation of the bombing, he would have lost the election.
Massive immigration will mean the group which went 60% for Kerry will grow. If the GOP alienates 1% of the white vote pandering on the issue of illegal immigration, they will need to increase their share of the Hispanic vote by 15% to make up the lost votes
++____The idea is to work for a majority of the Hispanic vote..this is doable, provided Bush and the GOP is careful on the
immigration issue.
My grandparents were immigrants from Eastern Europe...who never learned to speak English...I guess you would have wanted them to be kept out, too?
Nixon began with a commanding lead over Humphrey, on the order of a 60/40 split. George Wallace jumped in and took votes from Nixon,
____Not true..Humphrey kept gaining as Democrats came home and he started to distance himself from LBJ..the last poll had them tied..
It ended up splitting about 43% Nixon, 42% Humphrey and 15% Wallace. Most of the votes Wallace got were in the South, he carried Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas. Nixon won comfortably in the electoral vote, with 301 electors to 191 for Humphrey, with 46 for Wallace.
Nixon was very smart when it came to politics, if he regarded his failure to do Linebacker II in 1969 I trust him. The people would scream and protest don't vote Republican anyway, it is crazy to pander to them. "Dance with the person what brung you to the dance," if the GOP follows that advice they will do well.
_____Nixon's appeal waned as people began to see Humphrey as being willing to extricate us from Viet Nam.
________________________
TTo conclude, there is no conservative majority in America...you need centrist votes to win...the new GOP is not "betraying" anyone...Bush did not follow the failed Gingrich "government shutdown" model...you need to get ELECTED before you can institute conservative policies...
Gingrichism resulted in Clinton's re-election when the GOP had him on the ropes...and Reagan was criticized by some on the right the same way that Bush is being bashed..but RR was a winner and so is Bush./
Which is always the case with party lapdogs.
Take your own advice.
Good analysis. You do know the history of that war.
Not a bad idea if we could make it retroactive. One less RINO.
One less RINO.
____Nice "fringie" sneer, but I've served the conservative cause in local government and at the polls on every election day for decades...where have you been?
Volunteering on campaigns. And surely trying to defeat RINOs of your ilk.
Speaking of sneers, what's that tagline of yours, Squishy?
"I'm not going to debate the issue of whether or not America has been a good ally to Israel or any other nation."
Considering how sure you were that we'd come to the rescue of Taiwan, you needed a reality check.
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