This Is What I'm Talking About....
The other day, in a long post about how majority Republicans' fiscal tranformation into the Democrats they replaced eleven years ago is putting that majority status in jeopardy, I penultimated with this graf:
Deroy Murdock just called them "a collective embarrassment to the party of Lincoln and the republic he preserved." In today's American Spectator, Doug Bandow (admittedly a Libertarian rather than a conservative, much less a Republican, but still....) goes far beyond urging GOP voters to stay home:
Bandow isn't just taking opportunistic aim at Tom DeLay. He's opening fire on the entire leadership. And, I might add, going overboard to dump on Republican abuse, since (1) Democrats "succumbed to the temptations of power" decades before they finally lost it (it just took Republicans forty years to finally credibly challenge them for control) and (2) the mechanisms of abuse were already assembled when Republicans took control. Indeed, the wonder is that they've lasted a decade before their own "succumbing" with the full-blown temptation right under their noses for so long.
But Bandow doesn't ultimately stop at just the leadership, but urges the wholesale expulsion of every last Republican from congressional office:
There are two obvious (at least to me) problems with Bandow's conclusion:
1) The use of "ruthless" and "GOP" in the same sentence. Republicans don't know what to do with power. Even after eleven years they haven't figured it out. (Well, okay, maybe Tom DeLay does, which is why he's being persecuted.) That's the problem. What the House leadership is doing vis-a-vie post-Katrina relief spending and the RSC's drive to offset the cost with spending cuts isn't using majority power to its own advantage, because governing like Democrats will not help them politically. Columns like Murdock's and Bandow's and the others I linked to the other day are the deafening proof.
2) The Democrats, into whose hands Bandow would put "at least one organ of national power" ("at least?" Sounds like he'd hand the Donks the whole shooting match out of jilted spite), are far more corrupt, even now, than GOPers could ever dream of becoming, as well as seditiously insane. The middle of a war for national survival is not the time to settle intramural scores or indulge in "family" feuds, especially when doing so would surrender the national organs to people who would get us all killed.
But there is a bigger picture to this: Bandow is not alone. He's like the sneeze that heralds the onset of a head cold. Jay Homnick makes a more constructive but equally as ominous point about GOP profligacy alienating Republican-leaning independents who maybe don't advertise that leaning but tend to vote that way primarily on fiscal issues. Loss of those "silent Republicans" alone could cause the party problems next November. Pissing off core supporters who have an established track record of short-sighted fratricide could generate a ballot box disaster.
Although my "leanings" on this are hardly silent or secret, I am still not formally recommending support or plug-pulling on Republican congressional hegemony. I just point out the "leanings" of those who are always on a hair-trigger to lunge toward the latter. It is up to the GOP leadership of both houses to "learn from the past, that it not be repeated."
Make no mistake about this: I am not urging GOP voters to hold their nose and keep supporting the party anyway or to flip 'em the bird and stay home in November 2006. I am simply saying what a lot of GOP voters will do. Whenever the base perceives that its elected officerholders have strayed from the faith and stopped listening to them, it will punish them regardless of the political cost. It happened across the board in 1998 over Republican reluctance to impeach Bill Clinton and on the Senate side in 2000 for its failure to convict him. If GOP leaders keep copping this appallingly arrogant attitude they'll take a whupping from their own supporters yet again, mark my words.
Deroy Murdock just called them "a collective embarrassment to the party of Lincoln and the republic he preserved." In today's American Spectator, Doug Bandow (admittedly a Libertarian rather than a conservative, much less a Republican, but still....) goes far beyond urging GOP voters to stay home:
The House Republican leadership must go. Even if that means the GOP loses control of Congress. Democrats spent decades practicing the policy of spending lavishly to win elections. Republicans refined the practice in just a few years.
More fundamentally, it took the Democrats four decades to fully succumb to the temptations of power, ruthlessly abusing their control of Capitol Hill. After only one decade the Republicans are proving to be even worse. [emphasis added]
Bandow isn't just taking opportunistic aim at Tom DeLay. He's opening fire on the entire leadership. And, I might add, going overboard to dump on Republican abuse, since (1) Democrats "succumbed to the temptations of power" decades before they finally lost it (it just took Republicans forty years to finally credibly challenge them for control) and (2) the mechanisms of abuse were already assembled when Republicans took control. Indeed, the wonder is that they've lasted a decade before their own "succumbing" with the full-blown temptation right under their noses for so long.
But Bandow doesn't ultimately stop at just the leadership, but urges the wholesale expulsion of every last Republican from congressional office:
When it comes to policy there seem to be ever fewer serious differences between the two leading political parties. Both expand government power, increase federal spending, lavish money on pork barrel projects, and put their own interests before that of the public at every turn. And these days, at last, the GOP appears to be more ruthless about using every bit of the power that it has accumulated for its own advantage.
While there are few substantive reasons to choose between the parties, there now is a practical reason to vote Democratic: to put at least one organ of national power into someone else's hands. As Lord Acton famously observed, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." [emphasis added]
There are two obvious (at least to me) problems with Bandow's conclusion:
1) The use of "ruthless" and "GOP" in the same sentence. Republicans don't know what to do with power. Even after eleven years they haven't figured it out. (Well, okay, maybe Tom DeLay does, which is why he's being persecuted.) That's the problem. What the House leadership is doing vis-a-vie post-Katrina relief spending and the RSC's drive to offset the cost with spending cuts isn't using majority power to its own advantage, because governing like Democrats will not help them politically. Columns like Murdock's and Bandow's and the others I linked to the other day are the deafening proof.
2) The Democrats, into whose hands Bandow would put "at least one organ of national power" ("at least?" Sounds like he'd hand the Donks the whole shooting match out of jilted spite), are far more corrupt, even now, than GOPers could ever dream of becoming, as well as seditiously insane. The middle of a war for national survival is not the time to settle intramural scores or indulge in "family" feuds, especially when doing so would surrender the national organs to people who would get us all killed.
But there is a bigger picture to this: Bandow is not alone. He's like the sneeze that heralds the onset of a head cold. Jay Homnick makes a more constructive but equally as ominous point about GOP profligacy alienating Republican-leaning independents who maybe don't advertise that leaning but tend to vote that way primarily on fiscal issues. Loss of those "silent Republicans" alone could cause the party problems next November. Pissing off core supporters who have an established track record of short-sighted fratricide could generate a ballot box disaster.
Although my "leanings" on this are hardly silent or secret, I am still not formally recommending support or plug-pulling on Republican congressional hegemony. I just point out the "leanings" of those who are always on a hair-trigger to lunge toward the latter. It is up to the GOP leadership of both houses to "learn from the past, that it not be repeated."
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