The GOP, Party of Cowards

Most Americans seem to believe that Trent Lott deserved to suffer for his "insensitive" comments at Strom Thurmond's birthday celebration. Now that Lott has been forced to step down as Senate Majority Leader, neo-conservative Republicans are the ones cheering the loudest.

"We've wanted him gone for a long time," some have said. "We needed to get rid of him and move on with our agenda." The trouble is, no one in the party seems to know exactly what that agenda is.

Of course, that hasn't stopped neo-cons before. Pragmatism has always trumped principle, and as long as the polls reflect public approval for their actions, they really don't care about anything else. They must increase their majority in 2004 at any cost, and to do that they must first shake their xenophobic image.

As everyone knows, the GOP has long been branded as the party of racists. Such labels have been successfully utilized by the liberal left for years, and Republicans have tried everything to keep those labels from sticking. The end result is that in order to present the voting public with a kinder, gentler GOP, Republicans typically begin adopting Democratic positions.

It's the same three-step process every time: 1) liberals make the accusation of racism against a Republican, 2) the Republican denies the charge and 3) the Republican agrees to sign on to the liberal agenda, hoping that in doing so he might prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is not a racist. The entire fiasco surrounding Trent Lott is only the latest example of this kind of Republican cowardice.

Lott's comments sparked all the predictable reactions from all the usual suspects. Men like Al Sharpton and NAACP president Kweisi Mfume —both veteran champions of racial divisiveness —wasted no time in attacking the senator.

Sharpton, who had remained strangely silent in 2001 when Senate Democrat Robert Byrd let fly with his "white niggers" remark, said, "[Lott] should step aside. No one is saying that if the people of Mississippi want to elect him to the Senate that they don't have the right to do that. But to be the head of the party in the Senate, given the sensitivity of that position for the interest of the country and the party, Mr. Lott should step aside."

Mfume's response was a bit more harsh. He called Lott's little speech "hateful bigotry that has no place in the halls of the Congress," and dismissed Lott's subsequent apology as "too little, too late."

Reacting to the verbal barrage from the left, the neo-cons scattered. No one even bothered to mention the possibility that Lott was simply acknowledging the distinguished political career of his 100-year-old colleague. Nobody proposed that when the senator from Mississippi implied that we would be better off had Strom Thurmond been elected president in 1948, he was referring to some of the more noble causes Thurmond stood for, like states' rights and a less-intrusive federal government.

No, the neo-cons were so desperate to prove that they could be just as racially sensitive as their slightly more liberal counterparts that Lott's political fate had already been sealed. He was the perfect fall guy, and his sacrifice was worth it if it meant keeping the GOP in power.

Republicans, listen up. Whether you agree that Trent Lott should have resigned as Majority Leader or not, his ousting is yet another sign that you just don't get it. No matter what you say or do, you will always be viewed by the left as a bunch of bigots and racists. Bending to political peer pressure doesn't help —in fact, it makes you look weak. The sooner you learn that, the sooner we can begin repairing the damage your party has done to the conservative cause.

But it's probably too late. The mob has spoken, and Trent Lott has been forced out of his leadership role. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah summed up what Republicans expect of Bill Frist, Lott's successor: "I think Bill has a kind of a more moderate record and a more moderate approach toward things, and I think that it's going to be very difficult to criticize him."

In other words, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." And that, my friends, has become the battle cry of the neo-conservatives in the GOP, Party of Cowards.

December 11, 2000

A Republic, Not a Democracy

Throughout the presidential election controversy, we have been bombarded with references to our sacred "democracy." Television and radio shows have been inundated with politicians worried about the "will of the people" being thwarted by the courts. Solemn warnings have been issued concerning the legitimacy of the presidency and the effects on our "democratic system" if the eventual winner did not receive the most popular votes. "I'm really in love with our democracy," one presidential candidate gushed to a reporter. Apparently, the United States at some point become a stealth democracy at the behest of news directors and politicians.

The problem, of course, is that our country is not a democracy. Our nation was founded as a constitutionally limited republic, as any grammar school child knew just a few decades ago (remember the Pledge of Allegiance: "and to the Republic for which it stands"...?). The Founding Fathers were concerned with liberty, not democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. On the contrary, Article IV, section 4 of the Constitution is quite clear: "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a Republican Form of Government (emphasis added). The emphasis on democracy in our modern political discourse has no historical or constitutional basis.

In fact, the Constitution is replete with undemocratic mechanisms. The electoral college is an obvious example. Small states are represented in national elections with greater electoral power than their populations would warrant in a purely democratic system. Similarly, sparsely populated Wyoming has the same number of senators as heavily populated New York. The result is not democratic, but the Founders knew that smaller states had to be protected against overreaching federal power. The Bill of Rights provides individuals with similar protections against the majority. The First Amendment, for example, is utterly undemocratic. It was designed to protect unpopular speech against democratic fervor. Would the same politicians so enamored with democracy be willing to give up freedom of speech if the majority chose to do so?

Our Founders instituted a republican system to protect individual rights and property rights from tyranny, regardless of whether the tyrant was a king, a monarchy, a congress, or an unelected mob. They believed that a representative government, restrained by the Bill of Rights and divided into three power sharing branches, would balance the competing interests of the population. They also knew that unbridled democracy would lead to the same kind of tyranny suffered by the colonies under King George. In other words, the Founders had no illusions about democracy. Democracy represented unlimited rule by an omnipotent majority, while a constitutionally limited republic was seen as the best system to preserve liberty. Inalienable individual liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights would be threatened by the "excesses of democracy."

Last week I introduced a resolution in Congress which reaffirms our nation's republican form of government. H.Con Res 443 serves as a response to recent calls for the abolition of the electoral college. The collectivist liberals want popular national elections (rather than the electoral college system) because they know their constituencies are concentrated in certain heavily populated states. They want to nullify the voting power of the smaller, pro-liberty states. Supporters of my resolution in Congress can send a strong message that every state still matters, and that liberty is more important than shifting majority sentiment.

http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2000/tst121200.htm

MARK17 WROTE: "What the Heck Is a 'Neocon'?"

TLBSHOW ANSWERED: "It is people that stabbed Lott in the back!"

Random House Dictionary defines neo- as "a combining form meaning: a. new or recent: neophyte. b. in a new, modified manner: neoclassicism"

A neo-Conservative, then, is a new or recent conservative (which I am NOT) or someone who sees conservatism in a new, modified manner.

I guess since I CANNOT stand UP for an INCOMPETENT, INEFFECTIVE "LEADER," I must see conservatism in a new, modified manner. I've been VERY conservative (socially and fiscally) for 40+ YEARS and I have ALWAYS stood up for what was RIGHT, NOT for what was easy to just "get along."

But I certainly did NOT support Lott since shortly after he became SML the FIRST time. His REPEATED INCOMPETENCE and INEFFECTIVENESS with the latest issue was the straw that broke the camel's back.

That's the trouble. Other than RULING the world, in particular, the ME, what IS your agenda. For AMERICANS, that is.
I've been a Republican all my life, and we have never been a Party that throws their weight around the world, except to be anti-communist/USSR!
We thank you neo-cons for helping us with that MAJOR problem, but this neocon agenda for the ME is NOT our style.
We Americans don't LOOK for war. Now that GW is captured by the neocons into fighting Sharon's war, I think he should go on tv and tell the American people the truth...and that the next country on Sharon's list is Iran.
Sooner or later the sheople will figure that out, and if they do that by themslves, GW and OUR Party will be in big trouble for many years.

Those are OUR loved ones who are going into harm's way!

Did Strom cost the Republicans that election?

No, but he could have cost Truman the election. Punishing Truman by denying him the White House would have sent a message about integration to both major parties.

No Republican could have carried Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, or South Carolina in 1948. Memories of the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Depression and the New Deal ran deep.

But that a Democratic President who had been quite unpopular won without those Deep South states was truly unexpected. Truman held the Upper South. The West and most of the Middle West came through for him as well, as did Texas and California. Dewey carried the Plains States and such New Deal big labor states as Michigan, New York (his two home states), and Pennsylvania, as well as other Eastern states.

1948 was very different from later elections, when Republicans dominated the South and West, and Democrats had their strength in the Northeast. Maybe Carter in 1976 was the closest parallel.

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