Why the GOP Is Going Down While Seeming to Go Up

It's like watching someone being sucked down into quicksand. I'm referring to the sad, desperate struggle of the Republican Party to try to resurrect its electoral fortunes by championing the exact same policies that took them to embarrassing defeat in the Obama/Democratic landslide. By their actions, it's plain they got nuthin'.

Nothin' except to flail about in self-destructive obstructionism, basically in temper-tantrum mode. If we can't be victorious, they seem to be telling the Democrats (and, by extension, the country), we'll make sure you go down with us. This kind of schoolboy behavior is rolled out at a time in American history when the country's financial and governmental institutions are close to free-fall catastrophe unless some drastic corrective action is taken.

But, even when considering the necessity for an immediate and massive economic -stimulus package, they can't seem to help themselves from playing their failing hand of old-style political gamesmanship.

The Senate's "compromise" economic-recovery bill that is likely to pass is about 50% tax cuts, which do little to create jobs in the near-future. The Republicans forced drastic cuts of all-important stimulus funds for cash-strapped state and city governments to start shovel-ready infrastructure projects -- ones that would quickly put spendable cash into the hands of poor and urban middle-class citizens. Meanwhile, they made sure to insert even more funds and tax breaks for the better-off elements of society.

Again, the Republicans aren't trying to hide where their priorities are: with the very wealthy and large banks and corporations; the rest of the population will just have to muddle through on their own.

TACKING RIGHT

How Obama and the Democrats will respond to the GOP obstructionism in crafting the final stimulus bill in the House/Senate Conference Committee will tell us a lot about the hope for significant change in the next four years. Given the desire of Obama and the fight-averse Democratic leadership to play nice with the Republicans, in order to be able to claim "bipartisan" support for the stimulus package and other important legislative initiatives, the picture doesn't look good for the kind of major change Americans voted for in November. In effect, while tacking toward the Republicans, Obama more or less sold out his progressive base, figuring they'll stick with him when push comes to shove.

The country will be lucky to get some incremental moves forward, which, given the humongous problems that cry out to be fixed, in some cases is almost worse than no change at all, since, unless something changes, will mean the Senate Republicans' will have effectual veto power over the course of governance at least until the midterm election of 2010. That future, of course, could be altered if Obama and the Democrats finally were to discover their governing chops and feel comfortable with engaging in the political street-fighting being waged by the Republicans.

Obama, who has an email list of 13 million voters, has not really employed this mighty political weapon to generate a tidal wave of pressure on wavering Democrats and moderate Republicans. He could still do this, of course, but he's weeks late, and the damage has been done: The Democrats lost vital momentum (not aided by their abysmal vetting process for some Cabinet and other high nominees) and permitted themselves to be outmaneuvered and, to a significant degree, rolled by the Republicans.

It's almost as if the Democrats aren't convinced they possess a huge electoral mandate to effect major change. If so, they've forgotten some mighty relevant history.

BUSH AS TRUTH-TELLER

To a large extent, the GOP lost so big in the 2008 election because they were too overt about their true intentions. The usual art of governance is based on sleight-of-hand tricks, keeping our eyes focused on something while the real agenda is hidden away from view. But the CheneyBush Administation didn't seem to care who knew what they were really up to.

The elites who pull the strings behind the curtain must have cringed every time George Dubya opened his mouth. The poor dummy couldn't help blurting out aspects of the actual agenda. "My job is to catapult the propaganda," he said. And, telling a citizen who criticized his policies: "Why should I care what you think?" And his thrice-stated "joking" remark: "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just as long as I'm the dictator."

In terms of foreign policy, the U.S. long has been an imperialist power in the Realpolitik world. But it wasn't generally talked about openly in polite company. America placed its iron fist inside a velvet glove. Stealth imperialism, as it were. Virtually all modern presidents played that one well.

But George W. and Dick Cheney operated on the neo-conservative principle that they wanted potential enemies to see, and if necessary experience, the iron fist. To make sure their perceived enemies got the message, CheneyBush attacked Iraq, a country that (they believed) couldn't fight back. It would all be over in a few months, Rumsfeld told us in 2003.

GOD APPROVES OF LYING

Part of CheneyBush's reasoning for behaving in such an aggressive fashion lay in the U.S. being the last remaining superpower on the planet, so no need to be subtle about all this. Just get out of our way and you won't get hurt. That was the philosophy of The Project for The New American Century (PNAC), a rightwing think tank composed of high-powered neo-cons that eventually came to run the CheneyBush foreign and military policy of "benevolent hegemony." Leading PNACers included Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Woolsey, Perle, et al. (See ##"How We Got Into This Imperial Pickle.") ( www.crisispapers.org/essays/PNAC.htm )

Another important part of neo-con reasoning derived from the philosophical underpinnings of such latter-day Machiavellians as conservative philosophers Albert Wohlstetter and Leo Strauss. These ivory-tower thinkers believed that the neo-conservative elite had discovered with absolute certainty what needed to be done in the nation and around the world and, in the service of carrying out the correct master plan, one was entitled, nea required, to do whatever was needed to be said or done in order to obtain victory.

If you needed to lie a nation into war or smear someone in opposition, by all means do so. The ends justified the means, and propaganda and spin would paper over the truth, especially since the corporate-owned media was supportive and ideologically in cahoots with the neo-con agenda.

It was a black-and-white, you're-with-the-terrorists-or-with-us, era. No wonder the religious fundamentalists found such a comfortable home in the American rightwing. Didn't God tell George Dubya to invade Iraq? In short, it didn't matter to the fundies that the White House lied about weapons of mass destruction, or lied about Saddam Hussein being behind 9/11, in order to rush the nation to war with Iraq. Those lies were necessary in order to justify the "crusade" (Bush's term) against the Islamist hordes, and, not incidentally, to keep key natural resources in U.S. and Western hands.

THE U.S. PUBLIC CATCHES ON

As long as there was no effective countervailing power to stop the world's lone superpower, the operating principle was little more than just go out there and grab what could be taken and make sure nobody else could challenge U.S. might and will. Again, PNAC doctrine -- including a dictator-like President, warrantless domestic spying on Americans, and torture of prisoners -- turned into state policy under CheneyBush.

It took a number of years for the American populace to figure out the ramifications of such policies. America was now hated and feared as a mad-dog, torturing, imperialist bully -- but not respected or liked or viewed as a moral force in the world. The midterm election of 2006 verified that the voters had rejected the arrogant, self-destructive style and policies of the CheneyBush Administration, and swept the Republicans into the minority in the House and Senate.

Did these results chastize CheneyBush? Not in the slightest. Under Karl Rove's tutelage, the arrogance, the bullying, the endemic corruption, the lies, the wholesale destruction of the environment, the huge deficits occasioned by the Iraq War -- all continued as before. And so the voters once again, in November of 2008, sent an even louder message by sending the Republicans even further into a the minority role in Congress, and sweeping more Democrats into the House and Senate and Barrack Obama into the White House.

STEALTH CONTROL

The voters wanted major domestic reforms, but weren't necessarily willing to give up the perqs of imperial power and control in the world, though they certainly wanted to change the tone of American policy abroad. Stealth imperialism was back.

To get its way, the U.S. once again would use diplomacy, economic power, political suasion, multilateral alliances, and, when deemed necessary, threats of the use of force. Torture, while universally decried as alien to American values and largely ineffectual in any case (since those being tortured will do or say anything to get the pain to stop), under Obama it remains as an available tool in the CIA kit, for use in rare circumstances.

In other words, under Bush, all was revealed and bragged about. Under Obama, much the same goal is desired -- a world in which the U.S. leads and effectively controls -- but handled with much more finesse, and relying first on non-violent means.

SQEAKING WHEELS AND GREASE

As evidenced by the stimulus-bill fight, Obama is being tugged toward the far-right, and winds up closer to the center-right, in order to get at least some percentage of center-left policies enacted. Progressives need to be cognizant of how all this is playing out, and make their opinions heard and felt in the corridors of power.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Progressive silence implies acceptance of the shift toward the right.

If this trend continues and not much significant change takes place, it's possible that public disappointment, frustration and anger will quickly attach to Obama and the Democrats, and the chance for major policy reforms in this country will come and go, with a whimper. What might follow that leadership vacuum is scary to contemplate.

For the good of the nation, friends, it's squeaky-wheel time. Big time.

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for two decades, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org ). To comment: crisispapers@comcast.net .

First published by The Crisis Papers and Democratic Underground 2/9/09.

Copyright 2009 by Bernard Weiner.

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