Last night, the cynical and hypocritical attempt by Republicans in the Congress to link a badly needed minimum wage increase to yet ANOTHER tax cut for gazillionaires failed in the Senate. As Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, "under the bill, '8,100 of the wealthy and well-off hit the jackpot, while millions of working families get $800 billion in [federal] debt.'" According to the Washington Post:
Most congressional Democrats support raising the minimum wage and oppose cutting the estate tax. Most Republicans take the opposite view, although some from both parties support both proposals. Democrats said they will keep pushing to raise the minimum wage with no strings attached.
What does this debacle demonstrate about today's Republican Party? Three things.
1) They have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they have no ability to govern the country effectively or to exercise power responsibly. This Congress is one of the worst in American history, a blend of corruption and "do-nothing" worthlessness that we have rarely seen, particularly at at time of war, $3 per gallon gasoline, massive deficits, and disastrous global climate change (and yes, scientists say that the current heat wave IS caused by global warming), etc. The Republican President and the Republican Congress have done absolutely NOTHING to improve the situation in ANY of these areas. In fact, they've made matters worse. They cannot govern.
2) It is utterly callous, despite false claims to being "compassionate," except to the needs of the super-rich, the top 0.1% of Americans (as opposed to you, me, and pretty much everyone we know). Cutting a tax on dead rich people, the most progressive and "fair" tax we have, at a time of war and $300 billion deficits is "compassionate?" More like "disgraceful." How about "cold-hearted, calculating conservativism" as a slogan? Yeah, I guess that doesn't work so well politically for Republicans. But, it's a lot more accurate than the oxymoronical drivel about "compassionate conservativism."
3) It is collapsing. According to E.J. Dionne, writing in today's Washington Post ("The End Of the Right?"), "this is the week in which conservatism, Hamiltonian or not, reached the point of collapse." Dionne continues:
The most obvious, outrageous and unprincipled spasm occurred last night when the Senate voted on a bill that would have simultaneously raised the minimum wage and slashed taxes on inherited wealth.Rarely has our system produced a more naked exercise in opportunism than this measure. Most conservatives oppose the minimum wage on principle as a form of government meddling in the marketplace. But moderate Republicans in jeopardy this fall desperately wanted an increase in the minimum wage.
So the seemingly ingenious Republican leadership, which dearly wants deep cuts in the estate tax, proposed offering nickels and dimes to the working class to secure billions for the rich. Fortunately, though not surprisingly, the bill failed.
Brilliant.
Meanwhile, Dionne notes that there are several "ther profound fissures within the right" - Iraq, immigration, stem cell research, spending and deficits - all of which pit "cultural pessimists" and so-called "social conservatives" against "libertarians," the "big business right," and "culturally optimistic conservatives."
This unholy alliance has been held together for years by fear and bigotry - against Communists, "socialists," long-haired freaky people, feminists, gays, Blacks, Hispanics, you name it. Just see the rationale given by the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of the world for events like 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, and you'll see what I mean. Today, it's "Islamic terror," as epitomized by the bumper sticker "Fight Terror."
There's only one problem with "fight terror" as a unifying force for the otherwise incoherent Republican Party - the mission of combatting those who hit us on 9/11, nearly 5 years ago, has been totally sidetracked by the Republican Party's strategic blunder in Iraq - a war that grows increasingly unpopular with the American people every day. Possibly worst of all, the entire Iraq fiasco - and one could argue the post-9/11 Republican coalition - was based on lies, distortions, fallacies, and fatal misjudgments. Turns out that...
*Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11
*Iraq had NO weapons of mass destruction
*Iraq was NOT the real threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East; that was Iran, against which Iraq served as the major strategic counterweight
*Saddam and Osama bin Laden hated each others' guts
*You can NOT "nation build" on the cheap, as Don Rumsfeld et al. tried to do in Iraq
*You cannot "fight terror" worldwide when you're completely bogged down in a growing civil war and debacle in one country, Iraq.
The bottom line is that Bush and Cheney's Excellent Iraq Adventure has not been "excellent" in any way, shape or form. And, instead of unifying the American people around a REAL threat, as occurred after Pearl Harbor, the Berlin Wall or the Cuban Missile Crisis - today's Republican Party decided to use 9/11 as an excuse with which to pursue phantom menaces and long-held dreams, like "tranforming the Middle East" into a thriving Democracy in America's image. Well, we need look no further than Israel, Lebanon, Iraq's civil war and Iran's nuclear ambitions to see how THAT is working out.
What does that leave the Republican Party with in order to keep itself from flying apart at the seams? What "external threat" can they jin up next in order to distract from their utter incompetence and ideological incoherence? We can only imagine, although Newt Gingrich's fantasizing about "World War III" might just give us a clue. The only hope? We need to toss this Republican Party into the dustbin of history, and we need to do it ASAP. The only question is, what (and who) will take its place? As E.J. Dionne writes, concluding his op-ed:
Between now and November, conservative leaders will dutifully try to rally the troops to stave off a Democratic victory. But their hearts won't be in the fight. The decline of conservatism leaves a vacuum in American politics. An unhappy electorate is waiting to see who will fill it.
Personally, I vote for leaders like Jim Webb - independent, wise, mature, serious, honest - to fill that vacuum. Here in Virginia, we can send a message this November to the entire country that we've had it with fake "cowboys" like George Allen and George Bush, and ready for a real American Hero to save us from their latest lunacy. There's no question that it's time for a change, and there's no question who can lead us in the right direction. Jim Webb for U.S. Senate.
Lowell Feld is Netroots Coordinator for the Jim Webb for US Senate Campaign. The ideas expressed here belong to Lowell Feld alone, and do not necessarily represent those of Jim Webb, his advisors, staff, or supporters.
No, republicans will respond to threats to their continued electoral dominance in many ways, most of which have worked very well for them in the past. Such as:
1) Drumming fear into the electorate (of terror, of evil Muslim conspiracies, of "liberals" who hate America, of cultural threats like gay marriage and non-white immigrants, and so on)
2) Setting up a worse war with Iran/Syria (obvious efforts are already underway, note Bush's cheering of Israel to more extensive military action and attempts to create greater intransigence by Hezbollah, Syria, Iran through the time-honored method of setting unrealistic conditions)
3) Convincing voters that Iraq is almost, almost ready to "stand up" on its own, things are "turning the corner" 4) Distracting voters with publicity campaigns or even bringing lawsuits against selected Americans based on secret use of datamining by NSA or something similar
5)Flatly denying bad economic news (phony statistics already have often convinced analysts and ordinary folks things are not deteriorating, their economic pain is personal, not evidence of a national malaise)
6) Reinforcing the popular notion that BOTH parties are corrupt, "it's just politics" and republicans are not as bad as Democrats (hard as it may be to believe, this really is the attitude of many voters, who treat the endless stories of corruption with a "ho-hum")
7) Stealing votes they cannot earn, committing voter fraud and suppression on such a scale that most honest people cannot believe it, "because the margin is too large to have been stolen"
It's worked before. Why should 2006 be any different? Their corporate donors have infinite money to make it happen.