Our national electoral audience is experiencing the demise of the Republican Party as constituted going back to the time of Goldwater Republicans. What we have is a gang that doesn’t know how to shoot straight; a gang that rose to electoral influence and congressional power using tactics of anger, divisiveness and the most serious degradation of political civility we have ever seen.
Nationally, the party now faces the ironic appropriateness of a presidential candidate stuck within his quite obvious onset of dementia who resorts to tired old lines. It is also obvious that the next generations are weary of and for the most part tune out and ignore.
Awhile back John Dean wrote in Conservatives Without Conscience how the co-founder of the National Review, James Burnham, in a 1959 attempt to blend real-world politics with intellectual conservatism, distilled a 13-statement list of point-by-point comparatives to liberal positions that differentiate between the two.
Of his list, Burnham declared,
“Whether the cause of this linkage – which is not absolute, of course – is metaphysical, social or psychological, we do not need to decide in order to observe that it exists.” (Dean, page 9)
Metaphysical, social or psychological?
How about 50 years later we use the words supernatural, socio-pathic, psycho-pathic or just plain Left Behind?
Here’s the list as quoted in Dean’s book.
(1) There is a transcendent factor vital to successful government.
(2) Human nature is corrupt, and therefore conservatives reject all utopian solutions to social problems.
(3) Tradition must be respected, and when change is unavoidable it must be undertaken cautiously
(4) Governmental power must be diffused and limited by adhering to the “separation of powers” and “checks and balances” of the Constitution.
(5) Direct democracy must be rejected because people are not well informed and are easily misled
(6) [Conservatives believe] in States Rights
(7) Each branch of government must be autonomous and must resist encroachment or usurpation by any other
(8) Public support of limited government must be encourage in order to keep government in check
(9) The Constitution’s principles have permanent value
(10) Government must be decentralized and localized so that power is diffused
(11) Private enterprise should be encouraged.
(12) Morality begins with the individual
(13) Congress should be more powerful than the executive branch.
Current Republican talking points demonstrate that the transcendent factor vital to successful government is FEAR.
The corruption of human nature is considerably less dim than the corruption of the corporate nature. The abuse of corporate “personhood” identity has deteriorated to volumes of legislated non-Constitutional inequality that includes specific partisan legislation on behalf of non-mortal corporate “persons” at the tragic expense of human citizen persons.
Our contemporary Republican self-styled “conservatives” of this generation have no notion of change undertaken cautiously and gradually. What has become unavoidable is change based upon greed.
Invoking the fear-based metaphysics of some sort of politically spiritual transcendence, MAGA politicians subscribe openly to a notion that people are easily misled and therefore should be led by aggressive lying. We see a Republican suppression of separation of powers, checks and balances based mostly on abuses utilizing radical demagoguery.
This was quite aptly expressed by Naomi Wolf 16 years ago in her history article: Fascist America in Ten Easy Steps.
Included in those “Ten Easy’s ” are
Set up and internal surveillance system
Harass citizen’s groups
Arbitrary Detention and Release
Target key individuals
Control the Press
Dissent = Treason
Suspend the rule of law.
States Rights.
Permanency of Constitutional Values
Imperialist invasion and occupation supported significantly by National Guard and Reserves.
Limited Government.
Well, the Conservative Republican version was probably still alive in the 70’s, when Goldwater and Dirkson told Nixon to get his ass out.
By the 1990’s limited government merely became the on-going talking point of Gingrich-Delay Republican partisan governance.
Until of course the surprise election of a manipulating candidate so short of wit, wisdom and maturity that he will be without peer the most incompetent Republican ever to sit in that office.
And so much for decentralized localized government and diffused power.
“Private enterprise” – in terms of small-business entrepreneurs is the talking point joke behind which big business sucks at all the biggest troughs.
Morality begins and ends with the individual. It doesn’t spill and splash from a pulpit nor self-promote itself as an artificial and manufactured construct entitled “Morale Values.”
Legislation and policy are the purview of represented electorate.
Execution of the law – putting into effect the will of the people – every four years that’s what we hire (or rehire) the President to do.
If we “conservatively” applied this last notion, future candidate posturing during presidential elections would be mere taking point politics and the narcissistic ego of implied influence: “When I’m President I will – ” nonsense.
This is what MAGA Republicans have come to and now demand by screeching voter permission to continue.
You want to give it to them?
Arthur Ruger: Curmudgeon at Work 