Is “Clown Car” Wave Of Future

Life for today’s Republican faithful is brutal.  Their hearts will not allow them to retreat from the party, yet their heads tell them a deeply embedded right-wing fanaticism and the resulting slate of presidential candidates is an absurdity.   Conservative columnist George Will pleaded for an end to this absurdity; “…that between now and 2016 both parties have to do some serious thought as to whether they can develop some filter to prevent this process, particularly with this mad proliferation of debates, from being hijacked by charlatans, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial charlatans.  The one who dropped out - Mr. Cain – he used this as a book tour in a fundamentally disrespectful approach to the selection of presidents.”

 

Peggy Noonan, conservative columnist for the Wall Street Journal, recently had a few choice words for the absurdity as well; “…Republicans look more and more like a clown car.”  

 

Nevertheless, there is still hope for the Republican Party.  It resides on two fronts.

 

This is not the first time a political party has been “hijacked.”  After the 1972 overwhelming defeat of George McGovern the Democratic brand was badly tarnished.  It was widely accepted that the Democrats had moved too far to the left.  To regain an image of political balance, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton spearheaded the creation of the corporate Democrat.  The Republicans are currently looking for a way to strengthen their image.  They too have chosen to move to the right.  However, moving further right for the GOP can only result in far right-wing fanaticism – the same fanatism that caused Democrats to eventually modify their positions.    

 

What is lost in the Republican message of today, and was lost in the Democratic message in 1972, is that neither the far right or just the Republican faithful, nor the far left or just the Democratic faithful, determines the outcome of a national election.  Those elections are determined by Americans who have not been indoctrinated by either party.  To reestablish credibility, Republicans will have to return to that reality. 

 

Secondly, there are still Republicans that are admirable and worthy of respect.

 

One such Republican has a clear message and vision for America.  While his political doctrine, is badly flawed, his courage to lead and his character in refusing to pander deserves our admiration and respect and thus our attention.  He is a rare breed today; “Some people want it either or – You either believe in something and you’re not in the race, or, you’re in the race and you don’t believe in anything.  I don’t understand why you can’t believe in something and still be in the race.”  He further states; “That is my goal- to make sure that campaigning and political activity represents true beliefs and a true understanding in what we are doing rather than saying superficially how do we win the race?”  This is not just political rhetoric.  Ron Paul truly “walks the talk.” 

A second admirable Republican is Buddy Roemer.  Roemer is a former four term congressman and the former Governor of Louisiana.  He is the only Republican presidential candidate with those political credentials.  He also clearly understands the single biggest threat facing our country today and has the courage to aggressively attack it; “You can’t tackle the jobs program, the budget problem, the tax problem or American rising without tackling the first problem – money in politics.  It is corrupt.  It is institutionally corrupt.  They spend their time getting big checks from big special interest.  It’s the special interest…who write the tax code. You can’t read it, it doesn’t work for America, it hurts jobs.  We give’ em away. They’re being stolen by unfair trade.  And nobody does anything.  You know why?  Corporations have never made more money they are right now.  They wrote the tax code and they really don’t give a damn about the rest of America.”

Roemer has been shutout from all the Republican debates.  In addition, the mainstream media have arbitrarily determined that both Ron Paul and Buddy Roemer are not viable candidates.  This is the same mainstream media and Republican Party that embraced the "entrepreneurial charlatan" with serious character flaws, Herman Cain.  Until the Cains’ of the party are replaced by the Roemers’ and Pauls’ – until their courage and character gain dominate national attention, the Republican brand will continue to suffer diminished credibility and widespread support.   

Republicans can survive, but they will need the help of the electorate.  Should Barack Obama, struggling with racist bias, rarely seen economic woes, and a badly fractured and misguided Democratic Party win reelection; and should the Republicans fail to hold the House and make no gains in the Senate; the stranglehold enjoyed by Grover Norquist and the John Birch Society “Tea Party” should be considerably lessened. The “clown car” will stall if not run out of gas altogether.  

However, should the “clown car” continue on a smooth unimpeded journey in the far-right lane of American political traffic, Americans will find some very rough road and very formidable potholes to traverse in the future.  But then, what’s a parade or American politics, without clowns????  

”The Unholy Alliance”

In America we have two methods for redress of grievances. The first is through our vote. The second is our courts. It now appears that both are slipping away.

Let’s begin with our vote. 

To strengthen the Democratic brand that was badly tarnished by the embarrassing defeat of George McGovern, President Carter politically positioned himself as a moderate Democrat to escape the perception that Democrats were far left lunatics.  Special interest and large financial institutions then recognized that, for the first time since the great depression, both political parties could now be influenced through vast sums of money.  Thus was born the corporate Democrat. 

During the Carter Administration, deregulation of the airlines and trucking industry took hold.  It also began deregulatory reforms in banking.  Deregulation of banking opened the door to greatly increased profits made possible by investments in riskier assets financed with greater leverage — namely more borrowing.

With Carter’s success, more corporate dollars began flowing into political coffers.  This motivated succeeding Democratic candidates to jump on the deregulation bandwagon.  This eventually led to the single biggest deregulation catastrophe on November 12, 1999.  President Clinton signed the "Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act." This repealed the provision in the "Glass-Steagall Act" of 1933 that forbad the merging of financial corporate interests such as investment banks and insurance companies with commercial banks.  Clinton's single stroke of a pen created, “too big to fail.”  This, along with all the previous deregulation legislation, sent the country into the financial meltdown of 2008.

Even in the face of this economic catastrophe the juggernaut kept right on rolling.  

On January 21, 2010 the United States Supreme Court, in "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission", ruled that unlimited money could be legally spent on political campaigns.

Meanwhile President Obama offers no hope for change on this front.

President Obama’s largest campaign contributors in 2008 were AIG and the insurance industry.  In his bid for reelection we find Goldman Sachs as his largest contributor thus far.  He is also receiving money from JP Morgan Chase and Company, Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley, USB AG and, of course, AIG. 

In addition, the president had two golden opportunities to act.  The first was in crafting the 2010 Dodd–Frank legislation.  President Obama could have insisted previous provisions from Glass-Steagall be resurrected and implemented. Without breaking up the current huge conglomerates that control our financial industries and have huge influence within our government , we are left vulnerable as more of them achieve “too big to fail” status. While language addressing “too big to fail” is incorporated in "Dodd-Frank," there is absolutely nothing in the bill that prevents another 2008 financial meltdown.  

Secondly, Bernie Sanders, Independent Senator from Vermont, has proposed a Constitutional Amendment ("Saving American Democracy Amendment") to repeal the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court.  The State of The Union provided President Obama with an excellent opportunity to throw his full support behind the measure; but he chose to remain silent.

Since 1977 there have been three Republican presidents and three corporate Democratic presidents.  They are ALL duplicitous, meanwhile, business as usual continues in Washington DC.    

The Supreme Court - that hot bed of wisdom - is hardly the only court culprit.  It have lots of company.  

In the HBO documentary, “Hot Coffee” we learn that $10 million dollars is routinely spent on various individual state appellate and state Supreme Court judicial elections.  Special interests and large corporate concerns, such as tobacco companies and pharmaceutical companies, are using their money to stack these courts with judges favorable to tort reforms.  This money is funneled through the U. S. Chamber of Commerce.   Karl Rove, former campaign advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush, has been so successful in this endeavor that it is now almost impossible to get a fair civil verdict rendered in Texas.  If this abuse is left unchecked, it is estimated that as much as $100 million will soon be spent in getting tort reform judges elected.

As our liberties for redress of grievances continues to be stripped, the only remaining solution to halt the spread of these grotesque, yet legal, activities is activism.  It was activism that gave rise to labor unions; that led to Civil Rights legislation; that propelled an end to the Vietnam War; that forced the truth to surface surrounding Watergate and the despicable conduct within our government.  The “Occupy Wall Street Movement” could be considered an activist movement.  It failed because it was absent leadership and organization without any defined set of goals – no specific programs to end the stranglehold and thus no wide-ranging public support on a mandate for change.  Nevertheless, it remains, that without EFFECTIVE forms of activism to restore our democratic and legal process, we will be left with no means in addressing our grievances.     As Bill Moyers recently quipped; “…waking up to how campaign contributions corrupt our elections (and) to the fact that if speech is money – no money means no speech.”