Is It Time to End the Republican Party?

After its performance in the torture debate, I see no way that the Republican Party can regain its honor. Can we as a nation afford to have it around any longer?

Matthew Yglesias writes:

Matthew Yglesias / proudly eponymous since 2002: Torture as Investigation: Vladimir Bukovsky:

Investigation is a subtle process, requiring patience and fine analytical ability, as well as a skill in cultivating one's sources. When torture is condoned, these rare talented people leave the service, having been outstripped by less gifted colleagues with their quick-fix methods, and the service itself degenerates into a playground for sadists. Thus, in its heyday, Joseph Stalin's notorious NKVD (the Soviet secret police) became nothing more than an army of butchers terrorizing the whole country but incapable of solving the simplest of crimes. And once the NKVD went into high gear, not even Stalin could stop it at will. He finally succeeded only by turning the fury of the NKVD against itself; he ordered his chief NKVD henchman, Nikolai Yezhov (Beria's predecessor), to be arrested together with his closest aides.

It goes on, including tales of Bukovsky's own experiences as a victim of Soviet torture and deserves to be read in its entirety. But this here is essentially the key point at hand. While you can obviously imagine or gerrymander or stipulate a situation in which torture might yield useful information, in practice the systematic authorization of torture creates an army of butchers, not a crack investigative team. Bush, Cheney, and those around them remind me of Nietzsche's line about staring too long into the abyss. They've become transfixed, hypnotized almost, by the evils they believe themselves to be fighting. Obsessed to the point where they've clearly developed an admiration for the brutal methods, ruthless dishonesty, and utter secrecy with which the enemies of liberalism conduct themselves.

But these things they're so eager -- determined, really -- to cast aside aren't frivolous luxury to be abandonned in times of peril. They're the very essence of what makes our system of government work. They're what makes it worth preserving, as a matter of ethics, but also as a matter of practice vital to the preservation of our way of life. Liberal democracy isn't a fluke occurrence that just so happens to have survived despite its drawbacks. It's actually a superior method of organizing a state. The idea that the country is being run by people who don't understand that is sad and frightening. The idea that the very same people claim to be embarked upon a grand mission to spread our system of government around the world is like a horrible tawdry joke, but doubly frightening in its own way.

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach him now.

Comments

[Altoid]

"They've become transfixed, hypnotized almost, by the evils they believe themselves to be fighting."

Yglesias's larger point is surely right, and so is your call for these people to be dealt with according to constitutional procedures. But Yglesias is far too kind about the impulses that drive them to do what they do.

He evidently believes that the good which they must-- if Aristotle is right-- be seeking is the same good which he seeks himself. This cannot be so. What they seek does not reside anywhere near the Constitution of the United States.

[andres]

I second that. God only knows what Bush is thinking, but I can't believe that people like Cheney and Rumsfeld are so stupid that they actually believe torture is an effective tool of fighting terrorism.

My guess is that terrorism is only a smokescreen and terrorists are not the real target of these measures. The real targets are domestic political troublemakers who actually believe in liberal democracy or in holding the powerful to account for crimes such as military aggression.

And although I won't go into it in depth, it's time to realize that impeachment is not going to work because there's no way you can impeach and remove from office an entire political party. It's time to think bigger, Brad. Dust off the old copy of Thoreau and give it a good rereading.

[RWB]

Unfortunately, the number of Democrats who stood against this evil was shockingly small. Democrats have covered themselves with shame by making a sick political calculation not to vigorously oppose torture by U.S. agents.

[Dave Llorito]

i could not understand why despite all the horrors in iraq and the continuing failure in afghanistan, americans voters cant seem to appreciate the problems with the bush foreign policy. is this just a case of democrats failing to do better as a party or that americans themselves actually dont give a hoot about global issues besides the cost of gas for their SUVs?

[Delicious Pundit]

The Republican party lost sight of American values and chose to wallow in Jesus and/or greed porn a long time ago. It's the Democrats I'm mad at.

This is a very basic test of values and the Democrats called in sick. It makes you think you live in a one-party state and your only choice is moderates or hardliners.

[anatol]

Dave Llorito doesn't understand:
"I could not understand why despite all the horrors in iraq and the continuing failure in afghanistan, americans voters cant seem to appreciate the problems with the bush foreign policy."

Bill Clinton, as quoted by David Remnick in the excellent profile in the 09/18 issue of the New Yorker, explains:
"they can run somebody convicted of armed robbery and, barring a national catastrophe like 9/11, we couldn't win by more than fifty-five to forty-five, and neither could they, under the present circumstances"

Josh Marshall: "Clinton is simply the most gifted politician of our times"

[bad Jim]

We're missing the point by indulging our moral repugnance, just as we do when we employ a reality-based perspective.

The other side is manned by authoritarians, militant followers motivated by fear. Torture has never bothered them, and neither has doubt. They receive their principles as direct revelations from the authorities they trust, and they'd question their senses before they'd give their received opinions a second thought.

They're not aware of their own condition. John Dean's "Conservatives without a Conscience" reproduces some of the questions Bob Altemeyer used to diagnose the Right Wing Authoritarian type. Can you imagine affirming this question?

"Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us."

[Bupa]

Ending the Republican Party is a interesting fantasy, but surely we can't abandon a 2 party system. We would need some kind of reasonable center-right party to take its place and keep the Democrats honest.

[christofay]

The Democratic party is a center-right party that can't keep the Republicans, our first post-American party, honest. I agree with Big Bad Jim, the Republican party is not a democratic party. They're past that whether for fear or greed.

[Matt McIrvin]

By that standard the Democratic party should have been banned in 1865.

[Jon Fernquest]

There's one thing for sure, this is not something resolved with democracy, like: "Who wants to comply with the Geneva convention? Please raise your hands."

In Thailand, even before Thaksin was deposed, the national human rights commission had reopened the 3,000 blacklisted deaths during the drug war of a few years ago. Peoples' name would show up on a government blacklist and a few days later a gunman would show up and shoot them dead. Enemies of powerful people often made it onto the lists which were drawn up without any due process by local officials and never followed by investigation. Autopsies were not allowed.

Thaksin used reactionary public opinion that supported him to justify it all. I personally almost tore my hair out listening to people who bought into the charade who would inevitably accuse anyone who questioned it of being complicit with the drug dealers themselves.

If "democracy" supports torture and extra-judicial killing, we need democracy++ , a new improved version.

[BroD]

"Liberal democracy isn't a fluke occurrence that just so happens to have survived despite its drawbacks."

I'm not so sure about this.

While I'd agree to its virtues, I don't believe liberal democracy guarantees its own survival. Indeed, I fear that my grandchildren may not experience it.

[kharris]

Bupa,

Extending your point about one keeping the other honest, we have an explanation for the behavior of Democrats. Democrats face no ethical opponent, so Democrats fail to behave ethically. I'm perfectly comfortable with the notion that Republicans are far worse – they led the slide – but Democrats certainly haven't struggled much, as a group, on the way down the slope. It would be nice to have a party that took ethics as its starting point, but we don't have one. Now what do we do?

What Brod said.

[vtcodger]

The Republican Party is pretty much a trainwreck in progress. I'm told that George W Bush is not a stupid man, an assertion that leads me to wonder whether the people claiming that are mentally defective, controlled by aliens, or both. The Republicans have pretty much followed Bush's leadership in lock step and surely deserve what is most likely going to happen to them when the public tires of their antics.

Presumably the small government, fiscally responsible folks will eventually take their party back, but they probably will not have much to work with.

That is not to say that the Democrats have much to offer. You can't go wrong by being against what Bush is for. (As far as I can see, the single thing he has gotten right in the past five years was prompt and effective aid to Indian Ocean tsunami victims.) What are the Democrats going to do when they no longer have a signpost showing them the wrong decision at every juncture? It's not like they have a goal.

I think that when things settle out, this is going to be a period much like the times leading up to our Civil War. A period when few of our political and social leaders are going to look very good in retrospect. And the few who do seem to have their heads glued on straight (Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chaffee, Russell Feingold, Howard Dean ... a handful of others -- mostly Democrats, but certainly not including such beauties as Hillary Clinton and John Kerry) probably are not going to emerge as future leaders.

I fear that the US is in for a rough couple of decades. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Anderson]

"After its performance in the torture debate, I see no way that the Republican Party can regain its honor."

The funny thing is how well this sentence also works when you put "Democratic" in for "Republican."

I'm not usually a "pox on both their house" guy, but DAMN.

Don't the Dems realize they're mocked for not standing up for anything? For not knowing what their values are?

If you can't take a stand against *torturing people,* what won't you lie down for?

[sm]

"Liberal democracy ...is actually a superior method of organizing a state. The idea that the country is being run by people who don't understand that is sad and frightening."

No, what's frightening is that the public doesn't understand that its leaders despise liberal democracy. And that the public doesn't understand it or value it. And have a less acute understanding of the practical need of the rule of law (habeas corpus) than 13th century warlords (Magna Carta).

That's frightening.

[Ginger Yellow]

"After its performance in the torture debate, I see no way that the Republican Party can regain its honor."

Agreed. Also: after its performance in the torture debate, I see no way that the Democratic Party can regain its honor.

[Bupa]

FDR had it right: "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself".

After 9/11 we lost a free, balanced, and investigative press, we lost an opposition party (the latter was already is a self-destructive collapse in the wake of the stolen 2000 election, and we lost an inter-governmental system of checks and balances. We lost these critical institutions because of fear.

We now know that we can't take the survival of liberal democracy in America for granted. If we as a nation cannot get over the fear triggered by one day of terrorist attacks then the terrorists have struck a fatal blow to our fundamental values and way of life.

But there is still hope that the nation can overcome its fear. The Post-Katrina press is starting to regain its investigative skills. The Cheney Administration is languishing in the polls (the recent up-tick notwithstanding). The Republican party is showing early signs of losing its monolithic ways...a trend that is bound to continue as the 2008 elections approach. The Democrats are still pitiful and shrouded in fear, but they ousted Liberman, Gore looked reasonable in his movie, Bill Clinton nearly assaulted a CNN reporter yesterday who implied he was weak on Osama....so let's not lose hope folks.

[Dave]

Erich Honecker receives a gold watch for his birthday that he is very fond of. He even keeps it under his pillow when he goes to bed. One day, while at the office, Erich realizes that he is missing his watch. In a panic, he calls Erich Mielke (the head of the Stasi) and tells him that someone has stolen his watch. Later, he realizes he left it under his pillow, and being relieved, calls Mielke to tell him to cancel the investigation. Mielke responds "Too late, we've arrested three suspects and they've confessed everything!"

It is not a good sign if one can tell DDR-jokes on one's own country.

Have you heard about the joint venture between Dubai, Iran, and the USA, to raise the Titanic?

Znxgbhz vf vagrerfgrq erpbirevat gur tbyq naq qvnzbaqf sebz gur fnsr; Nuznqvarwnq jnagf gb trg gur grpuabybtvpny xabjubj; naq Ebir jbhyq yvxr gb svaq gur onaq gung cynlrq ba qrfcvgr rirelguvat pbyyncfvat nebhaq gurz.

[CSTAR]

I keep reminding myself and others of the south american example, particularly of Uruguay. That desperate nation went from a high standard of living in the preWWII era to a variant of hell in the 60s and 70s. For several years in the 70s it could boast one the highest per capita rates of political prisoners in the world (beating even Cuba). Anecdotal evidence suggests that conscripts were forced to participate in "torture events" to sanitize the responsability of the perpetrators.

Of course I don't claim we're anywhere near that level of depravity, but the WoT logic ("anything to keep us safe from the terrorists") leads reliably and conclusively to that state, as it did there, in Uruguay, but also in Argentina and Chile.

[Matt]

As I understand it, God told Bush that it is OK to torture religious fanatics.

How can anyone argue with that?

[David Airth]

George Bush thinks he is the"Burning Bush".

[CalDem]

I'm reading "Dark Star" about a Soviet Journalist who gets caught up in the political machinations surrounding the purges and has to become NKVD to survive. its a brutal book but incredibly well written and conveys what happens in a society where torture is commonplace.

[Alberto]

I totally agree.
Personally I would rather live a riskier life to keep the freedom and rights president Bush is stomping upon.

[Richard Cownie]

The Republican party deserves to be flushed down
the toilet of history. No decent person should
consider voting Republican for any national office
until the party leadership commits itself clearly
to the following principles:

1) No torture of anyone, anywhere, for any reason.

2) Reality-based policy-making. For example,
when the Chairman of the JCS says that occupying
Iraq will need "several hundred thousand troops",
you don't invade with only 150K; and when your
tax cuts are bigger than your spending cuts,
you don't call it "deficit reduction".

3) No racists or crypto-racists. That means you,
Senator George "Macaca" "doe's-head" Allen.
You can run on a KKK or CCC ballot line, but
get out of Lincoln's party.

4) A commitment to make it easy for all citizens
to vote and to have their votes counted
impartially and accurately.

[TomC]

I am pleased to see someone finally use the word "honor" when criticizing the torture bill under consideration. There is a new American crisis before us. We are past the questions of policy, past questions of ideology, and are finally at questions of character.

FDR is still right: fear is the real enemy. Are we honorable? Are we humane? Or are we merely afraid?

[peg]

"...Soviet arrests were designed to inspire terror. ..."
from "Six Questions on the American "Gulag" for Historian Kate Brown" in Harpers this month
http://harpers.org/sb-six-questions-kate-brown-1158926209.html

"Torture's Dirty Secret: It Works"
by Naomi Klein

"....The fear is even thicker among Muslims in the United States, where the Patriot Act gives police the power to seize the records of any mosque, school, library or community group on mere suspicion of terrorist links. When this intense surveillance is paired with the ever-present threat of torture, the message is clear: You are being watched, your neighbor may be a spy, the government can find out anything about you. If you misstep, you could disappear onto a plane bound for Syria, or into "the deep dark hole that is Guantánamo Bay," to borrow a phrase from Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. ......This is torture's true purpose: to terrorize--not only the people in Guantánamo's cages and Syria's isolation cells but also, and more important, the broader community that hears about these abuses. Torture is a machine designed to break the will to resist--the individual prisoner's will and the collective will....."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050530/klein

time to show the world that we, us regular folk, are not barbarians...as huffington said -- "let's put out the fire...vote democrat this time" ...and then we can work on getting a govt we want

[Pete]

I was very glad to see the Yglesias piece and have enjoyed reading all the comments. Yglesias really cut through the false choice between doing the morally right thing and effectively protecting against terrorist attack. Respecting human rights is not only the right thing to do, it is much more effective at producing intelligence through sound investigation. I enjoyed CSTAR's comment about Uruguay, as I recall reading a lot about terror in Chile and other Latin American countries in the 60s through the 80s, and most of what I read echoed the point from Naomi Klein's Nation article that the reason torture was used was not to gain information, but to terrorize, intimidate, maim the regime's opponents. I'm trying to make this point to some of my conservative friends, but my memory is not as good as it should be. Could someone point me to some good authority on the limitations of torture as a way to gather good intelligence?

[Ralph]

Two professors who have written articles for commondreams.org deserve mention on this subject. David Michael Green of Hofstra University wrote a prescient article, "Munich in America and there will be no Normandy" about the downfall of constitutional government under Bush and David Orr of Oberlin College who wrote an article predicting that after Bush leaves office the Republicans will be in the doghouse for a long time in the eyes of the electorate. Also notable are the articles of Paul Craig Roberts a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan and a champion of Supply-Side economics who has written numerous blistering articles on the tragic mistake of Iraq for antiwar.com.

[johne]

"I keep reminding myself and others of the south american example...."

But it seems to go both wider and deeper than the Southern Cone's episode of torture that CSTAR mentions. Bush, et al., are replicating the South American political elite's response to the circumstances of close to two centuries ago. (Can some of it be due to losing our manufacturing base, as Latin America did its infant industrial revolution in the wars of independence, and as we have done to swell corporate coffers?) In any case, we are adopting a strong executive that only loosely follows the country's constitution (and it is increasingly assumed that only that which is expressly itemized and codified in that constitution has any degree of legal validity whatsoever), the legislative branch is of little moment and paralyzed by fierce partisan division, the judiciary is expected to support the political currents of the moment, as is the military (and marginalized judges and military feel increasingly called upon to make their dissenting views known), there is an increasing attempt to involve the military in civil affairs, and increasing expectation that the proper role of government is to benefit the highest strata of society, their cronies and supporters, abroad as much as at home.

It has been common in the United States to pity societies that are so governed, but the fact is, that it is a system that has proven itself stable, resilient, and long lasting. The deeper we enter into that maze, the more difficult it will be to return, and we are already very deep.

[Doctor Jay]

Just one thought, Anderson. What the Democrats in Congress say these days doesn't end up meaning much. They don't get much media oxygen, and they can expect to be edited and soundbited in such a way as to look their worst.

What matters is how they vote, how they can get their message out, and whether the bill actually passes.

The polls are running pretty solidly against torture, in case you didn't know. Which of the Republicans has the ovaries to vote FOR torture?

I'm beginning to think this is a ploy to allow the moderate Republicans look moderate and palatable, prepping them for their elections. A way of dramatizing their sensibleness and moderation. As long as they don't change caucuses.

[Frank Wilhoit]

Bear in mind that when you talk about the Republican Party, you are talking about half the country, plus or minus noise. What can be done in such a case as this?

[andres]

Frank: The point to remember is that the way things are going, the Republican leadership will soon get rid of itself, either peacefully through the ballot box or violently after this country starts to tear itself apart in a replay of 1968.

Keep in mind that a good portion of the Republican electorate would vote Republican with or without Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, Charles Krauthammer, NR, Weekly Standard, Don Luskin, and Fox News/other Rupert Murdoch creations whispering into their ears, at the prompting of people like Karl Rove, Tom DeLay, and Dick Cheney.

The trend of events in the Middle East (and the world environment?) is to discredit the above individuals, not the Republican Party as a viable institution. Unfortunately, I don't think such individuals are going to be discredited until the Middle East turns far worse than it already is, and until either an electoral disaster or a blatantly rigged presidential election (and its backlash) prompts the Republican leadership to hold a purge and a subsequent public disavowal similar to Khruschev's secret speech but much more far-reaching. And they will take that option once they realize that it's either that or some US equivalent of the Nurnberg trials (sorry Mr. Godwin).

Give the _whole_ Republican party some leeway: they are more politically intelligent than Russia's communists, so I think they will step back from the abyss in time, though not before they've done much more damage to the country than they already have.

[andres]

Oops. That should be Nuremberg Trials above. Think too fast, type too fast, and all that hard work at school tends to frazzle...

[Tom Hewitt]

Such a good blog, and *ALL* the posters are saying good things that shed light on our predicament. I'm going to change direction somewhat by talking strategy.
(1) We are all in agreement that torture is morally wrong, unfortunately a lot of our fellow citizens are deluded in this regard.
(2) Outside of morality, we try to argue torture doesn't work. But yet many places around the world still practice it (and not just to intimidate those that haven't been picked up), so they must think it does provide information. I suspect that probably 90% of the INTEL is wrong, but if you do it to enough people you might be able to find the 10% via correlation. So I'm afraid we haveto fight this also.
(3) The last point involves a pretty broad net, and as any scientist/medical professional would tell you, that means there are planty of "false positives", probably more innocents then quilty.
I think a significant part of the public condones torture cause they think we are only doing it to those who have done us terrible harm (or plan to do so). We gotta make the point that a lot of innocents will be caught up in it, and well how would you like to appologize to someone you tortured, then discovered was innocent. I'd be damn scared to release him. So we gotta get the public to imagine this, then they will begin to realize it can never be condoned.

[Tom Hewitt]

A couple more debating points, from past US wars:
During the Revolutionary war, the British treated captured Americans as illegal combatants, after trying without success to pursuade the British to change this state of affairs George Washington gave instructions to treat British prisoners as they would like to be treated if they had been captured.
The communist side in the Korean War didn't follow the geneva convention, yet our side was scrupulous in doing so. After the war tens of thousands of POWs we were holding requested to NOT be sent back. Now didn't that make you fell proud of your country.

[Ponzi Q. Globalization]

How many books have you read and how many movies and TV shows have you seen that include the good guy having to resort to violence or torture against a bad guy in order to do good? It must appeal to something deep within us.

Maybe the ability to commit 'justifiable' acts of violence and torture or to revel in it being done by others in our name is pleasurable in some way? So maybe all we need is a little less understanding of history and potential consequences and a little more fear and dehumanization of 'bad guys' to start us down this road.

[JonF]

Re: I can't believe that people like Cheney and Rumsfeld are so stupid that they actually believe torture is an effective tool of fighting terrorism.

Why not? Down through history people as intelligent as Alexander the Great and Elizabeth I believed that torture was an effective investigative technique. Now that's not an apologia for torture, but it does belie that fact that only the incurably stupid would rely on it since rulers far brighter and more enlightened than that gang in the White House have done so.

[ken]

We have a new political philosophy rising from the failure of conservatism. Let's call it Naziconism.

Nazicons are people who call themselvese republicans and embrace conservative authoritarianism over liberal democracy.

They have always been among us but never before have these people had the power to impose their twisted idealogy upon the rest of us let alone upon the world.

The Democrats have been wimps caving into these Nazicons at every turn. We need someone willing to stand up to those wanting to employ terror and torture. So far the Democrats have failed out of fear of being called wimps. Well they are wimps.

We are a nation of almost three hundred million people. But there are less then three hundred Democratic congressmen and women in a position to do something about this. What he hell are they afraid of? Losing their elections? What does that matter when our very soul as a nation is at stake? Is there no one in Congress willing to stand up for America anymore?

[bob mcmanus]

I actually don't think it is constitutionally possible, but I have called for the banning of the Republican Party.

This is aside from all its members, they can start a new Party called "Conservatives" or "Whigs"

But the "Republican Party" has become a basket in which a few good things and many bad things are able to fit, and is, as Brad says, gaining a history, an identity, that is dangerous to America.

The "Republican Party" is more than simply the sum of its policies and membership.

[failingeconomist]

I'd say it isn't a function of being Republican (or Democrat) rather, one of power. It's what I consider the great lesson of classical liberalism: that as PJ O'Rourke pointed out, we shouldn't ever let the people with all the money be the people with all the guns. That's just too great a concentration of power and it leads to nonsense like what is going on now with torture. It should be simple: we're civilized, we don't do that. But when there is too much power at the center, when people honestly believe that they are doing the right thing, it can and does happen. The answer is not to allow that much power to concentrate: which is indeed what the Constitution is for.

[albatross]

The problem isn't that the Republicans like torture and the Democrats hate it, it's that a lot of the American people are willing to accept torture if it's sold as a way to keep them safe. And that's exactly how it's being sold--as a way to prevent future 9/11 scale attacks on US soil by tearing the details of the next plot out of our prisoners, fingernail by fingernail. That's reflected in all kinds of popular entertainment. So long as that's true, both Republicans and Democrats are mostly going to continue their commitment to the high principle of winning the next election, no matter how many dead bodies or wrecked lives they have to step over to do it.

[Raven]

The answer is 42.

The question is, how many years back does the corruption of the Republican Party go?

In 1964, during the Goldwater campaign, the John Birch Society -- with its goal of a Leninist-style single-party takeover of the US goverment -- began infiltrating the Republican Party from the grass roots on up.

Around the same time, Meyer Lansky's mob, through its Hollywood front MCA, was grooming its own political puppet, Ronald Reagan, for greater things. (See Dan Moldea's Dark Victory: Reagan, MCA, and the Mob.)

The criminality of the Nixon Administration reflected what the Republican Party had become by 1968. By 1980, after a bare four years out of power, Republicans were willing to undercut the US in international affairs and prolong the capitivity of American hostages in Iran in order to regain power -- thus the Reagan/Bush/Casey October Surprise arms deal with Iran to prevent Carter from negotiating the hostages' release; thus the Iran-Contra scheme, which not only supplied the Iranians from US arms caches, but ran a profitable guns-go-south-drugs-go-north sideline (Operation Black Eagle, via Dan Quayle's office), and filtered the profits through donations from the Contras to Republican campaign coffers. The Newt Gingrich era's massive shakedown of lobbyists, institutionalizing Congressional bribery and extortion (you paid the Republicans, and only them, or you didn't get your laws passed), merely made the corruption shamelessly public.

Already by that point, the Republican Party should have been prosecuted under RICO, as a racketeering-influenced corrupt organization.

It soon might have been, because evidentiary documents classified under Reagan and Bush were going to start coming due for declassification and release.

The only way to prevent that was for the Republicans to re-take the White House in 2000, by any means necessary, and re-bury the evidence.

So it wasn't merely hunger for power that drove the blatant election theft; it was a fight for the very survival of the Republican Party, and a desperate fear of exposure.

Thankfully, that danger has now been averted, and power is steadily being centralized, oversight blinded, the "checks and balances" dismantled, to reduce and ultimately prevent any further risks to Republican monopoly of control.

And they (alone) will live happily ever after.

[andres]

Raven: any conspiracy theory that only requires a handful of men meeting in an enclosed room is plausible and needs to be investigated.

Any conspiracy theory which requires the participation of the _hundreds_ of people who have leadership positions (elected or otherwise) in a political party has instead wondered off the path of reality. That's what your theory requires, given the need for enough bodies in Congress, the White House and the RNC to (a) enact and approve Nixon's foreign policy, (b) pull off the October Surprise against Carter, (c) pull off the Iran-Contra scam, (d) steal the 2000 elections, (e) turn Congress into a *****house.

There certainly _is_ a pattern of criminality in the Republican party, but this follows from its mentality that oaths of loyalty (written or unwritten) are more important than _Laws_. You don't need wide-ranging conspiracies to explain it.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

Bupa,

America does not need a center-right party to balance the Democrats.

What America needs is a center-left, or liberal, party to balance the Democrats.

The Democratic Party is exactly where the Republican Party ought to be.

[Bupa]

David Lloyd-Jones,

I was making an effort to be reality-based in the middle of a fantasy. I was using the term center to refer roughly to the political center in contemporary American public opinion. Brad does claim it is a reality-based blog after all... even if he does offer a few enticing fantasies now and then.

If you prefer to fantasize that the center of American politics will shift to where readers of this blog think it should be don't let me interrupt your jollies. Have fun.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

Bupa,

You seem to think that there are *not* 40% of the American electorate who would oppose the War on drugs, and support decriminalization of marijuana; who would support single-payer health insurance, and oppose, say, Hillary Clinton's proposed bail-out of the insurance industry; who would support an instant withdrawal from Iraq, with an attendant impeachment of Bush and Cheney; and who would vote for a capital levy to recoup the taxes escaped by the rich under the Bush tax cuts of the past six years.

None of these are supported by the Democratic Party. That suggests that the Democrats are well suited to being the right-wing of a two party system, asuming the Republicans self-destruct -- which was the premise of *your* original post.

-dlj.

[Raven]

Andres wrote: "... any conspiracy theory that only requires a handful of men meeting in an enclosed room is plausible and needs to be investigated.

"Any conspiracy theory which requires the participation of the _hundreds_ of people who have leadership positions (elected or otherwise) in a political party has instead wondered off the path of reality."

By that reasoning, neither the Nazis nor the Communists conspired against their opponents -- or they'd have made glaring counterexamples to your sweeping generalization.

Have you somehow managed to miss how many of the current administration's planning sessions are kept secret? Or the energy policy meetings in Cheney's office -- whose participant list is *still* secret -- and Enron's favored access during the California power crisis, up to the breaking of the Enron scandal? Or how the previous Bush (GHWB) administration ended with a massive document-shredding spree, and a slew of pardons to staff facing criminal-conspiracy charges? Or how much of the Reagan-Bush-Quayle (and even Bush-Cheney) planning was kept away from official records by outsourcing it to organizations like the Heritage Foundation? The whole "Enterprise" parallel-government scheme that came to light during the Iran-Contra hearings? Have all of these become non-events to you, tossed down the Memory Hole for incineration?

[Bupa]

DLJ,

It would take a fantasy under the influence of mind altering drugs to think that Democrats would be electable under the campaign strategy you outline.

Look at my second post. I said among other things that the we lost an opposition party after Sept 11 because they can't overcome their fear of not being electable.

Rove and company have mastered the art of exploiting Americans' fear of terrorism. The Democrats have been pathetically unable to respond to Rove's tactics. A lurch to the left such as a campaign to decriminalize marijuana is not a winning strategy.

My first post was an attempt to sketch a vague path to reality from the pleasant but unrealistic fantasy of the end of the Republican party. Apologies if you find my fantasies unambitious.