DETROIT -- Our nation and the world would be far better off with the Republicans in charge. No, I haven't taken leave of my senses. I want the Republicans back in power instead of the Texas Republicans, the crazy crowd that runs the White House and dominates the Congress.
Texas Republicans created an unnecessary war, made Americans despised around the world and our nation less secure, attacked basic civil and human rights, lost millions of jobs, made the rich richer and the poor poorer, left 40 million Americans without health insurance, defiled the environment, created record deficits and fiscal chaos, debased political discourse and twisted democratic institutions.
The Republican Party of the 19th and 20th centuries stood for good and decent things, and the party produced many able presidents and congressional leaders who changed America for the better. The Texas Republican party of George W. Bush has as much in common with the party of Abraham Lincoln as the ACLU does with the Ku Klux Klan.
George W. Bush and his "brain," top political adviser Karl Rove, took Texas Republican politics to the national and international stage. The damage they've already done will take decades to undo.
Unlike the more broadly based traditional Republican party, Texas Republicanism has a narrow but politically effective base -- the hard-core extremist Christian right-wingers and the corporate and businesses interests whose only real ideology is money.
The religious right provides the political foot soldiers, and the pulpits of righteousness and the corporations fund the campaigners. Karl Rove developed this winning formula in state campaigns in Texas and now uses it nationally.
Texas Republicans like to call themselves conservatives, but they really are not. No true conservative would tolerate the deficits, the assault on the Bill of Rights, the protectionist tariffs on foreign steel and the shameless subsidies and corporate welfare the Bush administration fosters.
They just figure that, if they constantly refer to themselves as conservatives, people will buy it. So far, they generally do. Just say you're for the Ten Commandments in schools, limited rights for gays, the death penalty, guns everywhere and tax cuts, and favor a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, and people won't look carefully at those other telling issues.
Much of the impetus for the Texas Republican brand of vile politics came from Rush Limbaugh, the admitted druggie who used the airwaves to create an atmosphere of intolerance, exclusion and distrust.
The fact that he was usually high or seeking highs from street-drug merchants explains much of his distorted thinking, and those under his spell must now examine all the shallow rhetoric they bought into with such blind faith. Limbaugh, as influential as he was dope-crazed, helped spawn the radical right's seizure of the Republican Party.
Newt Gingrich accelerated that process and effectively silenced moderate voices in the Republican congressional leadership. He led his forces to control of the House with the well-marketed, but thoroughly fraudulent, "Contract with America."
Newt claimed the Republicans were "idea-driven," but, in fact, he spent most of his time as speaker of the House as an angry, shrill voice of divisiveness, attacking anything the Democrats or President Clinton advanced.
Gingrich's hubris and the public's disgust with his vituperative style led to his fall from power, but his bitter resentment and vision of the Republican Party as a club for the radical right lives on in the person of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader from Texas.
DeLay, who's Newt Gingrich without the charm, actually runs the House. Speaker Dennis Hastert is a mere figurehead. He takes all his cues from DeLay, an iron-fisted political thug who sees government and the Republican Party as instruments to protect and enhance private interests. The broader public good never enters DeLay's mind.
The former exterminator did inhale a considerable volume of pesticides while driving cockroaches out of the slums of Houston. The long-term effect of chemicals on his mind, like the drugs on Limbaugh's, brings a medical dimension to their political views.
DeLay leans shamelessly on big-money interests to pay dues to the Republican Party. He practices legal extortion with impunity and rewards those who kick in, based solely on campaign donations and promises of political support.
DeLay practices the politics of the religious right -- that's Christian minus the beatitudes -- and he uses his power to advance every wacko extremist position imaginable. The few moderate voices in the Republican Senate have no chance getting anything past DeLay.
The Senate version of the $87 billion for the colonial tab in Iraq includes a provision to provide some of that money in the form of long-term loans. Reasonable enough, thought the Republican moderates, but George W. will have no part of that and he can play hardball, knowing full well fellow Texas Republican DeLay will kill the loan provision in conference. These guys think compromise is a sin.
Looking at the pantheon of 20th-century Republican leaders, most of them would, at least, be uncomfortable, and many of them would be run right out of the Texas Republican party. Teddy Roosevelt, for sure. His passion for nature and national parks would be a big strike against him. Toss that in with his attacks on monopolies and child labor and his support of multinationalism, and old T.R. would be booed in Crawford, Texas.
Dwight Eisenhower was the quintessential moderate. He built the interstate highway system -- imagine using public money for infrastructure improvements instead of tax cuts for the wealthy.
Ike sent federal troops to Little Rock, Ark., to enforce desegregation. He didn't like the Supreme Court's decision integrating public schools, but he saw it as his duty to carry out the court's ruling.
Eisenhower's greatest offense to Texas Republicanism was his wise warning of the dangers of the "military-industrial complex," a phrase he coined. The Bush administration is beyond cozy with military contractors. It's a full partnership, a seamless garment of collusion that would make Ike sick.
Barry Goldwater -- "Mr. Conservative" and the 1964 Republican presidential candidate -- would find the Patriot Act repugnant, the Bush deficits an abomination and the Texas Republican social agenda intolerant.
Richard Nixon, crook that he was, did some very good things. Nixon signed the law creating the Environmental Protection Agency and supported federal revenue-sharing with state and local governments.
On the international scene, Nixon brought China into the community of nations and sought to engage the Soviet Union. Bush and his Texas gang always choose war and confrontation over engagement. Iran, North Korea and Syria are demonized, driving them into more isolation and creating greater threats. Bully is better, say the Texans.
Bush is even rattling his sabers at Cuba in a disgracefully transparent ploy to win votes in Florida. Even Nixon would have more sense that that.
Gerald Ford was a healer with a gentle manner. The Texas Republicans would consider him "soft."
During the economic downturn, Ford supported the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, a program whereby the federal government funded hundreds of thousands of public service jobs, immediately pumping billions of dollars into the economy and helping people find work. Ford didn't think big tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans was the way to get the economy moving.
Ronald Reagan ended the arms race with the Soviet Union and said we had to trust our old enemies in the long, costly Cold War. The neocons who now shape the foreign policy for the Texas Republicans did not support Reagan's bold and courageous initiative that gave the world hope for peace.
Even the president's daddy, an essentially moderate man, doesn't fit the bill for Texas Republicans. In his book, "The World Transformed," George H.W. Bush wrote of the dangers he saw in deciding not to occupy Iraq after the Gulf War. "We should not march into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and making a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight what would be an unwinnable urban guerrilla war, it could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability," Bush the Elder prophetically noted.
Let's turn to Texas and be thankful for so much -- Molly Ivins, Dennis Quaid, Dwight Eisenhower, Nolan Ryan, Willie Nelson, Janice Joplin and the beloved Dixie Chicks. We need more Texans like them. Let's hope the Texas Republican party and its leaders fade into political oblivion, and honorable Republicans regain control of a great party that once served the nation so well.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | October 21 2003 |