ANN COULTER: THE NEW FACE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

Column No. 114 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - July 13, 2006

In this column we take a bit of a breather from giving advice to the Democratic Party.  (I think that we shall return to that theme next week.)  We turn instead to talking about the Republican Party, its public face, and what it truly stands for.  (Actually, there are some lessons for the Democrats to learn here, but they are indirect ones.)  For the relationship between the two is about to change.   Among people like most of the readers of TPJ, what it does truly stand for has been well known for quite some time: corporatism; the expansion of authoritarian government vs. Constitutionally guaranteed individual rights; an aggressive, militaristic foreign policy; the rapid expansion of globalization and the export of US capital seeking ever-higher profits; the shrinking to the maximum extent possible of those functions of government that support the broad national interest; and most recently using the national government to further the interests of the Christian Right by subsidy and the use of the criminal law.  However, until very recently to the extent possible the Republican Party has kept as much of their true agenda as possible in the shadows.

Now comes the latest book from the Far Right icon, Ann Coulter: Godless: The Church of Liberalism.  In typical Coulter style, it is filled with rage.  In fact a discussion of Ann Coulter's rage became all the rage on the Left when the book came out a couple of months ago. Even Hillary Clinton (hardly on the Left of anything) went after her for the remarks she made about those 9/11 widows who have become strong critics of the Georgites on a variety of fronts. Prominent is a group colloquially called the "Jersey girls." Its original objective was to push the Bush White House to create a commission to investigate the government's failures before the 9/11 attacks. This was a commission the Georgites absolutely did not want (wonder why not?) They fought hard to prevent its creation. Since the issuance of the Commission’s Report that left so many questions unanswered, the Jersey Girls have continued on as Bush critics. In her latest effort, Coulter accuses the women of being "self-obsessed" and acting "as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them." "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much," she wrote (as if she had done some massive study of bereaved wives, looking at their relative levels of enjoyment on becoming widows)

Much of the focus on Coulter's latest outburst has been on her rage and unadulterated nastiness in regard of the 9/11 widows who have been and continue to be outspoken opponents of Georgite policies. Whether she really thinks these things or just says them so as to sell more books is beside the point. She prominently puts them out there and many people focus on them. However, to my mind both the remarks and the predictable outrage against them serve a purpose for Coulter well beyond selling books. They distract from the book's central message, which is of central importance to Coulter and her ilk within the Republican Party, people like Mary Matalin (you know, the wife of "Democratic" pundit and sometime political consultant James Carville) who defended Coulter without qualification on NBC's "Imus in the Morning" on June 10, 2006. It is that central message which is of the most import to her followers at the core of the Republican Party’s electoral base and to which we should be paying the most attention.

Let us recall, as the media critic Eric Alterman noted in talking with Sam Seder sitting on for Al Franken on July 3, 2006, Karl Rove has openly said that what mobilizes his base is anger.  (Mobilizing fear he uses broadly, but it is anger that resonates with his base’s base issues.)  Nevertheless, until now the Republican Party has done a good job of keeping its anger mobilization off to the side, to the degree possible. Ann Coulter represents the coming public, open face of the Republican Party, folks. Make no mistake about it. The public Republican face will be contorted into anger, into rage, into fear, for all to plainly see.  No more Mr. Nice Guy or Ms. Nice Gal.  Mark my words.

What a sea-change there has been in the Republican Party over the past 50 years.  On Nov. 8, 1954, Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower famously said: "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Unfortunately that small number of (not-so) stupid people not only took over the Republican Party but they drove the whole political landscape in the United States well to the Right. Teddy Roosevelt was the greatest Republican President other than Lincoln (who was not a Republican even in the TR mold).  The Trust Buster railed against "the malefactors of great wealth;" made environmental conservation a major focus of his Presidency; was the first President to invite an African-American leader, Booker T. Washington, to meet with him in the White House;  put national health insurance onto his Bull Moose Party platform when he ran for President as an independent in 1912.  He would actually have a very hard time getting the Democratic nomination for President today; that is if the DLC had anything to say about it.

Beginning with Goldwater, Eisenhower's "oil millionaires" moved in to the center of the party, and married right-wing politics to their cause, with great electoral success: Nixon and the racist "Southern Strategy" in 1968, Reagan and the bows to both racism and the Christian Right in 1980, this Bush's total embrace of the Christian Right in 2000. But still, outwardly the Republican Party has managed to look somehow "normal," in the American tradition, and certainly gentlemanly and ladylike for the most part, although George W. and Dick C. have been starting to wear the veneer off that one. But now comes Coulter.

In a previous book, Coulter labeled all "liberals" and other non-supporters of Georgite policy as "traitors." The penalty for treason is death. Now liberals are "godless." For the "goddish" of the Coulter variety, as I previously said in this space, one deals with the “godless” by force. If Coulter has her way, the "traitorous" and "godless" "liberals" (as she defines them) would be going perhaps to the camps, going perhaps before the firing squads, perhaps becoming the targets of Death Squads (as advocated by the video game “Left Behind: Eternal Forces,” developed from Tim LaHaye’s best-selling “Left Behind” series, coming to a store near you this October just in time for Christmas), perhaps burning to death at the stake, which is what militant Christian Churches of a variety of stripes did to such persons who didn’t express their “goddishness” in quite the right way over a period of hundreds of years into the 17th century.

In this context it is interesting to note that what drives her is a version of what she thinks "Christianity" is. (In the book’s cover photo, presumably indicating her connection with Christianity, Coulter wears a black halter top with a gold cross on her chest, the staff pointing directly at her cleavage.)  As she has said, "Although my Christianity is somewhat more explicit in this book, Christianity fuels everything I write." Whatever else it is or is not, Coulter's version of Christianity is surely militant. As for foreign policy, remember when about the Muslim world she said: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" (although given her version of Christianity one wonders why anyone would want to convert)?  As for domestic policy and how her version of "Christianity" informs it, just consider the following quote: "The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet -- it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars -- that's the Biblical view."

The face of Ann Coulter: In no more than a few years, perhaps by 2008, all of the Republican veneer will be gone, with Coulterian rage, total intolerance of difference, rampant corporatism at center stage, and demonization of any opposition at the center of the message. The message will clearly be backed up by policy. And force, it is clear, is to be used against any and all opposition. At least the target will be clear and clearly out in the open.  It remains to be seen whether the leadership of the Democratic Party will be able to bring themselves to fire at it.

IDEAS FOR DEMOCRATS, VII: BIPARTISANSHIP ON IRAQ

Column No. 113 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - July 6, 2006

This is a column that may be outdated by the time you read it.  Events are moving quickly in Iraq.  On June 25 the Iraqi government announced a reconciliation initiative of its own intended to end most of the violence, put Iraqis back in full charge of their own country, and start the country down the road to true and full reconstruction.  As of June 26 the proposal was reported in only piecemeal fashion in the US.  One element that certain sources said was part of it was a call for the full withdrawal of US troops by a date certain. (What traitors those Iraqis are.  Imagine, like certain Congressional Democrats calling for the departure of foreign troops from their own country!)  The early response from certain Sunni groups was negative, although others had subscribed to the plan (The Sunday Times [London], “Key insurgents vow to reject Iraq peace plan,” Ali Rifat and Hala Jaber, Baghdad).  At any rate, with a plan on the table that looks much like what the Democrats (called traitors in the Senate) were offering in one form or another in the “debate” of the week of June 19, 2006, things, to say the least, may be considered to be in a state of flux.

Now, regardless of what position those Iraqi government traitors to US Iraq policy may say (and those folks, placed in power by the Georgite occupation may be considered traitors of the “US’s own” type) I agree with a variety of Senators that the time has come for the country to pull together and put forward a bipartisan policy towards Iraq, the war, and the American occupation.  As Sen. John Warner, Republican of Virginia, said during the that Senate “debate” on the President’s Iraq policy (Zernike, K., The New York Times, “Senators Begin Debate on Iraq,” June 22, 2006): “[T]he nation, the world, the men and women of the armed forces would like to see the Senate and the Congress stand behind them with strong bipartisanship.” Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Republican, oops I mean Democrat, of Connecticut, added: “The war to remove Saddam Hussein may have been a war of choice, but now it is a war of necessity. We must win it.”  Sen. Hillary Clinton (sort of) Democrat of New York weighed in with: “This is not a time for partisanship” (http://www.hillaryclinton.com/speech/view/?id=953.).

I have given this matter a good deal of consideration and I think that it is indeed time for us Democrats to get bipartisan and get behind the President to achieve the goals that he now states for the American occupation of Iraq. (One must recall that the presently stated goals are rather different from those he put forth in order to persuade the Congress and the American people to support the invasion, but how can we quibble at this point?) At any rate, the presently stated Georgite goals are to: “stay the course,” “fight them over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here,” and “defeat Islamofascism around the world.”

In the spirit of bipartisanship and showing that we Democrats know what really will be needed from our country in order to achieve these goals, I think that our party should offer the following multi-part Congressional resolution. All of its elements are designed to insure that the President’s goals will be fully achieved, over time.

1. The “Course” in “Stay the course” is to be defined: no anti-American or internecine Iraqi violence of any kind for a period of six months.

2. “Islamofascism” is defined, among other things, as a state in which there is an official state-sanctioned religion, the leaders of which will ultimately be in control of national policy; any personal behaviors and beliefs, religious or otherwise, contrary to those of the state religion will be criminalized; any opponents of the state religion are to be labeled as “godless” and “traitors,” subject to appropriate penalties. (Any similarities to those openly stated goals for US national policy, legislation, and Constitutional Amendments of the President’s core supporters on the Religious Right is purely coincidental.)

3. The achievement of the President’s stated goals obviously requires a long-term (many years) US presence in Iraq.  The financial support for the occupation needs to be stabilized and absolutely secure.  Thus to support it properly, the US needs to stop borrowing from major lenders like China (who could call in their chits on this one at any time). The nation must be unified in support of the war effort.  Sacrifices have to be made, especially among those who are the President’s principal supporters. Therefore, in the spirit of rallying behind the President there will be a “War Tax.” Fortunately, there will be no necessity to raise taxes on everyone.  The needed revenues will become available simply and primarily by the rescission of all the tax cuts for the wealthy that have been instituted since 2001, for the duration of the war.

4. Some people believe that the primary reasons the US invaded Iraq were, and are, oil and bases.  Of course, even though a few thoughtful Senators and Congressmen like Sen. Kerry and Rep. Murtha believe that there may be something to that speculation, the Bush Administration has assured us that nothing could be further from the truth.  To make it entirely clear to one and all that the US objectives in Iraq are not oil and bases, the US will renounce any interest in Iraqi oil by any US-owned or affiliated oil companies and will immediately turn any and all bases over to the Iraqi military as part of the ongoing US commitment to strengthen it.

5. Again in the spirit of unity and demonstrating the support for the war by all sectors of the American economy and society, henceforth all work in support of the occupation, either in Iraq or elsewhere, done by US corporations will be carried out on a not-for-profit basis.

6.  To demonstrate full Congressional support for the war effort and for paying for its ongoing costs on a cash basis, there will be no Congressional ”earmarks” (otherwise known as “pork”) added to any legislation for the duration of the US occupation.

7.  Further so as to show the full support of the war effort by those who made the decision top invade and drew up the specific plans for the invasion (like, for example, The Decider), shall publicly appeal to any and all of their off-spring and close family of military serving age to join the armed forces and ask for Iraq duty at the earliest possible convenience.  The President’s daughters, nieces, and nephews for some reason spring to mind as examples.  As a BuzzFlash petition of August 30, 2005 stated: “Sign the Petition of Redress. Either the Bush Kids Put Their Lives on the Line for George's ‘Noble War’ or the Troops Come Home: I demand that George W. Bush's daughters, and his eligible nieces and nephews, serve in Iraq to prove their support of Bush's 'noble war for a noble cause.' If the Bush family does not believe in 'sacrificing' for the war and is not willing to put their lives on the line, then Bush must bring the troops of middle class and poor Americans home now (http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/05/08/edi05061.html)."

8.  It is becoming increasingly clear that the present all-volunteer armed forces will not be able to support the achievement of the President’s goal of “staying the course” on their own.  Third and even fourth tours are becoming common.  A majority of US troops in Iraq believe that US forces should be withdrawn (I suppose that they are traitors too).  Thus in true spirit of bi-partisanship, it is proposed that a Presidential Commission be formed with the charge of developing a plan for the re-institution of the military draft.

And now, let’s hear it for bipartisanship!

_____

Note: This column is based in part on my column of June 23, 2006 entitled “Democratic Ideas, V: Bipartisanship on Iraq” that appeared on BuzzFlash (http://www.buzzflash.com/jonas/06/06/jon06010.htm).

* Please note that I most recently presented a detailed proposal for dealing with the war issue itself on The Political Junkies.net of 15 December, 2005, my Column No. 89 "AN IRAQ EXIT PROPOSAL."

IDEAS FOR DEMOCRATS, VI: ATTACK ON DEFENSE, II

Column No. 112 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - June 29, 2006

Last week I presented a series of defense/national security issues/positions intended to show how the Democrats can go over onto the offensive in this political and realm. In the interim it has become clear that doing so will be essential if the Democrats are going to have any chance at all to retake either House of Congress much less both.  Karl Rove has made it clear what he will have the Republicans running on so-called “national security” and “national strength” planks.  (Believe me, indicted or not, cooperating witness [and we won’t find out about that until the Libby trial next year] or not, Rove will running the national Republican campaign at least for this year.).  The Republican posture and posturing will not be on the war per se. Given the disaster that the war is for both Iraq and the US, to do so would be a disaster for them.  No, he will have the Republicans running on the “Democrats are wimps or worse,” the “Democrats are terrorist-sympathizers,” the “Democrats simply cannot be trusted with national security” themes.

Rove knows better than any other modern political consultant that, as I have said before here and elsewhere, there are two principal elements to the strategy for winning elections.  First is to control the agenda.  Second is “Always attack; never defend.”  In 2000, 2002, and 2004 Rove demonstrated his genius for arranging things his way and the Democrats demonstrated their genius for falling onto his trap every time.  Last week we discussed the DLC’s current strategy, essentially a re-run of theirs in the three previous national elections: “by golly, we’ll argue on your agenda.”  As we saw, they are doing it again.  If they control what the national Democratic Party does, losses in both 2006 and 2008 are all but assured (unless there is Deus Machina, like absolute proof that the Georgites arranged 9/11 or the next Great Depression arrives).  They want to be “muscular,” but being “muscular” in the Roveite way, “‘Staying the course’ equals ‘muscular’ and everything else doesn’t,” plays right into his hands.  They cannot win with that one.

The truly “muscular” Democratic position would be not “we can do these people one better.”  It would be to set our agenda, which means a) ignoring Rove’s and b) always attacking, never defending (a major part of which is indeed setting the agenda).  Here is summary of the attack points that I made last week, followed by a positive proposal for each.  By the way, some of these will be considered “tough.”  Yes, being tough would be unusual for Democrats, but when Republicans in the Congress make speeches saying the Democrats who do not support Bush’s open-ended Iraq policy are supporters of terrorist, well . . . .

1.                  9/11 happened on Bush’s watch, despite ample warnings.  Why should the nation trust him on security any longer?

2.                  They may have caught and killed al-Zarqawi but according to our own military, al-Qaeda is a very small factor in the Iraqi insurgency.

3.                  If the Georgites did not mis-lead about the reasons for going into Iraq, they were totally incompetent in handling the intelligence information about what the true situation was.

4.                  They have depleted and weakened our armed services in fighting a war for which it is ill-equipped and not properly trained.

5.                  They have turned the world against us (see the recent Pew Research international poll).

6.                  They have created large numbers of new terrorists, not reduced their ranks.

7.                  They have done virtually nothing to strengthen homeland security in the homeland.

8.                  They are totally incompetent in handling natural disasters.  They could be even worse in handling man-made ones.

9.                  They have depleted the national treasury by going to war on borrowed money while making the nation’s rich even richer with their ever-expanding tax cuts.

10.              They love military solutions to problems that cannot be solved using the military.

And so, here is a set of positive programs to deal with the listed massive deficiencies*:

1.                   Create a truly effective national counter-intelligence/counter-terrorism program, like the one proposed by Richard Clarke on the day Bush took office and rejected by Ashcroft the day before 9/11.  It would begin with the reorganization and depoliticization of both the FBI and the CIA.

2.                   Develop a world-wide program to find al Qaeda where it exists, which is not principally in Iraq, and eliminate it.  This would mean in part going back into Afghanistan, with a truly multi-national force, to truly put the Taliban out of business.  We must begin to reduce the number of terrorists in the world, not increase it as our current Iraq policy is doing.

3.                   To establish as policy to share as much information about military and intelligence operations with Congress and the American people as possible, not as little as they think they can get away with.

4.                   I have dealt with the subject of Iraq withdrawal previously in this space and will surely do so again.  Once it is completed, the US military must be completely rebuilt and redesigned, so as to focus on the kinds of missions it is likely to face in the future, not simply on arms packages principally designed to produce huge profits for the military industry.

5.                   We must re-establish a multi-lateral foreign policy, to develop the allies that we will increasingly be in need of in the future, and we must turn towards the UN, not turn our back on it at our peril as we are doing now.

6.                   We must develop a homeland security system that focuses first and foremost on the tasks at hand like strengthening port security, not at developing evermore sophisticated systems for spying on Americans and violating the basics premises and provisions of Constitutional Democracy.

7.                   We must develop an entirely Federal-state-local coordinated and properly funded system for predicting and reacting to natural disasters.

8.                   For as long as we remain in Iraq, our forces must be properly funded.  To do this, we will institute a special “war tax.”  It will be raised by rescinding the Bush tax cuts from 2001 forward, rescinding the tax rebates for the energy industry, and eliminating all Congressional “earmarks” from legislation for the duration of the War.

If our arguments are to be winning ones, they must be formulated on our agenda, not Rove’s. For starters, one simply does not respond to “cut and run,” unless one wants to say: “The only cutters and runners in this situation are the Republicans.  They cut the intelligence to fit their pre-ordained agenda and ran into a war they just had to have.”  But the primary argument must be that “all the way down the line, the Bush Administration has made our country not safer, but less safe, much less safe.  We Democrats can do better, much better.”

* Please note that I most recently presented a detailed proposal for dealing with the war issue itself on The Political Junkies.net of 15 December, 2005, my Column No. 89 "AN IRAQ EXIT PROPOSAL."

IDEAS FOR DEMOCRATS, V: ATTACK ON DEFENSE

Column No. 111 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - June 22, 2006

At the end of January last Karl Rove announced that the Republicans would/should be running on two issues in the November, 2006 Congressional elections: national defense/security and "values" (New York Times, January 21, 2006, Metropolitan Desk Late Edition – Sect. A, Page 1, Col. 1).   Rove does love to set the agenda for he knows well that virtually every time, he who sets the agenda wins the election.  We will be dealing with that electoral strategy issue in more than one future column. In this one I begin a two-part focus on the national defense/security issue, further developing the thinking that I presented briefly at the end of my TPJ column of February 9, 2006, entitled “A Comment on Democratic Alchemy; Appearing in The American Prospect.”

The Democratic Leadership Council Democrats, like Senators Hillary Clinton, Evan Bayh, and Joseph Lieberman present one approach to the conundrum.  It is encapsulated well by the title of one of the most well-known songs from Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun: “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.”  And so, they start from the falsity that in the War on Iraq “we are fighting them over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here.”  Now that strategy might be a good one if there were in Iraq large numbers of non-Iraqis (or Iraqis for that matter) dedicated to the use of flanking maneuvers (sorry, I mean “terrorism”) who we could fight and kill or capture in large numbers.  Unfortunately, that is not the case.  On many important issues the DLC seems to have the same level of dependence on facts that the Georgites do.  But, engaging in that alternate reality, the DLC and its minions are falling all over themselves countering with the "we can do the Georgite national security and values agendas even better than the Georgites have, so elect us" line.

First, this approach gives the game away on the facts before play starts.  It is well-known that the vast majority of Iraqi resisters to the US occupation are Iraqis and the best guess about them is that they would not have taken up arms against any successor Iraqi government if the US occupation were not ongoing.  It is also well-known that the overall security situation in Iraq is getting worse, not better.  Third, it is also well-known that among the tens of thousands of new Iraqi enemies of the US the invasion/occupation has produced; before the invasion many of them viewed the US as a country they could count on to help them when push came to shove in getting rid of the hated dictator.  It never occurred to them that the US way of replacing him would create a situation that an increasing number of Iraqis regard as worse, not better.

Second, the DLC approach gives the game away on what the correct electoral strategy is before play starts.  The Georgite policy in Iraq is based on the concept that military force can achieve the goals it has set as those of the invasion: “establishing Democracy.”  “We can do it better” means that the DLC supports using more force, which presumably means more money and more military manpower, both in short supply in the US, that is unless taxes are raised to support the war effort and the draft is resumed.  (Even then, “success,” however it might be defined, would be hardly guaranteed.) But one hears none of the latter.  Just “we have to be muscular,” “we cannot abandon the Iraqis, or the troops” “what will the world think,” and the like.

Third, the DLC strategy ignores the facts that a) the Georgites bold-facedly lied our country into the war, b) a majority of Americans now thinks that the US never should have gone in, and c) that the primary electoral base of the Democratic Party wants the US to leave as soon as possible.

Fourth, the strategy totally disregards Harry Truman’s dictum that if a voter wants to choose a Republican, they will go for the real one rather than some pale imitation every time.

In the face of this, what should Real Democrats do?  Well, first of all, they should be calling for withdrawal from Iraq at the earliest feasible time, just like Cong. Murtha and colleagues are in the House and just like Sen. Feingold and colleagues are in the Senate.  But to my mind even more importantly, they should be going onto the offensive against the Georgites.  They should not accept the position that the Georgites simply made a mistake and it is up to the Democrats to rectify it.  The premise should be that not only has the Iraq invasion weakened the national security of our country, not strengthened it, but that the whole Georgite national security policy and programs are totally flawed, and weaken our country, not strengthen it.

And so.  The indictment of the Georgites on defense/national security could go something like this.

1.       Protecting us from future 9/11s?  The first one happened to have happened on their

watch.   It happens that they received multiple warnings about some threatened dire terror event, from the famous 8/5/01 Presidential Daily Briefing paper to whatever warning was leaked to Judith Miller and The New York Times by a “top-level White House source” in the summer of 2001 (Daily News Attytood, http://www.pnionline.com. 5/18/06).  They didn’t protect us the first time.  Why should we count on them to protect us again?

2.       They may have caught and killed al-Zarqawi but it still not known a) just how much Power he had in the Iraq insurgency (some sources say”very little”), b) whether or not he was really “al Qaeda.”  In any case, the US has not caught Osama, and c) how his death (itself already shrouded in secrecy and charges of cover-up) will affect the facts on the ground, if it will at all.

3.       If the Georgites did not lie the US people and Congress, as well as the UN, into the War, they were totally incompetent in handling the intelligence information about what was the true situation in Iraq in relation both to WMD and relations with al Qaeda (both non-existent).  2500 American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars later why should the Georgites be trusted to do any better the next time around.

4.       They have depleted and weakened our armed services in fighting a war for which it is ill-equipped and not properly trained.  (There’s that competence issue again.)  In fact, they have taken the world’s mightiest military force and are on their way to rendering it incapable of doling anything except massive bombings (apparently on the Georgite agenda for Iran).

5.     They have created large numbers of new terrorists, not reduced their ranks.

6.    They have turned the world against us.

7.    They have done virtually nothing to strengthen homeland security in the homeland, e.g., the deplorable situation at our nation’s ports.  They use homeland security funds as much for bucking up their electoral prospects in certain states and districts as for proving true homeland security.   And of course, they have created a domestic spying operation that has no proven relationship to homeland security but has a clearly proven relation to the Georgite campaign to destroy Constitutional democracy in the United States.

8.       They have demonstrated clearly that they are totally incompetent when it comes to handling natural disasters, much less future man-made ones that could have even worse aftermaths.

9.       They have depleted the national treasury.

10.   Showing that they just love military solutions to problems that cannot be solved using the military (like hunting down and seriously weakening if not eliminating al Qaeda), they propose to send the National Guard to patrol our nation’s Southern border, a task for which they are neither equipped nor trained.

Next time we will discuss a positive program on developing a true and truly effective program for national defense and security.

IDEAS FOR DEMOCRATS, IV: THE TEN COMMITMENTS, RE-VISITED

Column No. 110 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - June 15, 2006

I have twice shared with you my proposed “Ten Commitments” for the Democratic Party (once on November 25, 2006, and more recently on February 9 of this year).  I must say that I still like them and I still think that they are a good candidate for that “list of ten” that many Democrats are searching for.  (They are substantive and thus stand in stark contrast to the ten of Gingrich’s infamous 1994 “Contract on America” almost all of which were about process: “we will introduce . . .” not necessarily implement. For the most part they did the former and did not do the latter.)  I am republishing them here in this “Ideas for Democrats” Series because our Party certainly is a long way from closure about what it is going to put at the center of our Campaign for both 2006 and 2008.

As I have noted previously, my primary list for the most part eschews specific legislative proposals.  I do remain convinced that first we need to find that new “overarching philosophy” that has been talked about for so many years.  (I presented my candidate for that position in the first column in this series).  Then, I think that a “top ten” list can be very useful, if it focuses on those principles of governance and governing that so distinguish the Democratic Party of Roosevelt, Kennedy, and the pre-Viet Nam Lyndon Johnson, from the Republican Party.  Democrats have been good with laundry lists of proposed legislative programs for decades.  They don’t win elections.  Principles do. (Viz. the Republicans’ “cut taxes,” “shrink government,” “end regulation,” “fight flanking maneuvers [oops, I mean “terrorism”], none true representations of their positions but presented as if they were nevertheless.)  With apologies to the wonderful Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun for the title of my list (http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/ten_commitments), once again I put forward for your consideration a slightly modified version of my proposed draft “Ten Commitments.”

Henceforth, the Democratic Party will be committed to:

I.  A full, planned withdrawal from all military activity in Iraq, including the construction and maintenance of all military bases, by a date certain.  This withdrawal is to be accompanied by a reactivation of the Israel/Palestine peace process along the lines of the proposed Geneva Accords.  It is further to be accompanied by a return to the multi-lateral foreign policy that worked so well for our country from the time we entered the Second World War until the advent of Georgitism, and a return to abiding by the UN Charter, which forbids “pre-emptive war” of the Georgite type.  (A specific plan for achieving the Iraq withdrawal can be found in my column of Dec. 15, 2005.)

II. A return to totally free and fair elections, and a full-scale assault on the Republican strategy of Grand Theft Elections.  (See: the recent GAO analysis, at http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/Documents/20051021122225-53143.pdf, the Report of the Carter-Baker election reform commission, http://usgovinfo.about.com/b/a/203832.htm, Mark Crispin Miller’s new book, Fooled Again, and now Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s  major article on Rolling Stone, http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen).

III. Making the protection and promotion of Constitutional Democracy, in accordance with the plain language of the Constitution including the Preamble, the center of the Party’s approach to governing.  A return to the Constitutional System of checks and balances and the requirement that the President fully abide by the Constitution is essential.

The Preamble to the Constitution states: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

IV. A vision of government that is defined by the Preamble, which understands that big problems require big solutions, that when necessary for the common economic good, government needs to be big, that the Norquist Doctrine of Bathtub Government needs to be flushed down the toilet.  On the other hand, in accord with the prescriptions of the Constitution, when it comes to such matters as belief as to when life begins, freedom of political, moral and ethical expression, and adult personal behavior, government needs to be small.  This is the exact opposite of the Republican, anti-Constitutional view, which wants government to be overwhelmingly big when it comes to said matters of personal belief, rights, liberties, and freedom, and overwhelmingly small when dealing with the economy.

V. In support of this Commitment, a taxation policy designed to share the burden, in accordance with ability to pay, of supporting those actions of government necessary for the full implementation of its responsibilities as set forth in the Preamble.

VI. Also in support of Commitment IV, regulation of the market for goods and services designed to insure that it is both free and fair.

VII. A Pledge of honesty, integrity, openness, and a return to the traditional arms-length relationship between government and the private sector for all elected and politically-appointed government officials.  A specific ethical pledge to which all Democratic candidates for elected office and Democratic nominees for political appointments will be asked to subscribe will be developed.

VIII. The broad and forward projection of the most important Values that define a civil society: pluralism in matters of religion in accordance with the First Amendment; tolerance of difference; the promotion of compassion and sharing the burden, leaving behind the Doctrine of Every Man for Himself and the Devil Take the Hindmost; the full promotion of human rights at home and abroad; the understanding that healthy sex is healthy and unhealthy sex is not and that for adults sex is a private matter; and the end to the promotion of the criminalization of personal belief in matters of morality and of adult sexual identity and behavior.

IX. The development of an Energy Policy that will deal with the potentially disastrous and very real problem of global warming, as well as ensuring that ample energy will be available to support modern human life after the petroleum runs out.

X. The establishment of nomination and hiring standards for political appointees designed to ensure competence in government.  A specific list of standards will be developed.

This is where I think the Democratic Party has to go.  If one tries to pick out “what issues can we win with?” first without examining and establishing principles, that is “why” we should win, one almost assures losing (as has been proven over and over again since the election of 1964).  Neither our country, nor indeed the world, nor indeed in my view the human species as we know it, could afford that.

IDEAS FOR DEMOCRATS, III: DEALING WITH THE DLC, II

Column No. 109 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - June 8, 2006

Last week I began my column by noting that common to left-wing Democrats, old-style New Deal Democrats, progressive Democrats, many traditional liberal Democrats, among all sorts of Democrats that is, except the so-called “New Democrats” lead by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), is the plaint “Why Don’t the Democrats?”  By that is commonly meant why don’t the Democrats come up with a new, progressive, overarching philosophy, and why don’t they consistently distinguish themselves from the Republicans in general and the Georgites in particular on the principal issues that face our country: the role of government, the preservation of Constitutional Democracy, the War on Iraq, the looming threat to the planet as a whole of the consequences of global warming, and the prevention of future acts of Grand Theft Election.

I pointed out that the principal reason that that does not happen is that there is no “THE Democratic Party.”  The best organized, best funded wing of the Party with the most regular access to the mass media is the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), considered by most observers to represent the right-wing of the Party.  Last week I presented a brief (and surely incomplete) history of the development of the DLC.  I pointed out that in the midst of the Reagan Presidency that was clearly taking the country to the Right, much-needed Democratic Party reform could have gone either to the Left (developing a New Deal-successor overarching public-service philosophy) or to the Right.  The DLC took it to the Right.  In a posture that it still holds to today, they stood for two principal principles: in order to get elected, in our public persona Democrats have to look as much like Republicans as possible, except that we’re nicer, and we have to play “small ball,” not in the sense that those hateful, single-issue, very loud identity groups do, but in the sense that we have to go with issues at the secondary and tertiary levels of importance, preferably ones that won’t offend very many people when we put them forth.  And so, the issue for us non-DLC Democrats of every non-DLC stripe becomes, “just how do we get our Party back?”  How do we deal with the DLC?

First, we have to consider what NOT to do.  In dealing with the DLC we do not want to do in return precisely what the DLC does: spending a lot more time attacking the rest of us in the Democratic Party than they spend attacking the Republicans.  For example, as our colleague Michael Carmichael has said of their new book on foreign policy With All Our Might. “Nowhere does the DLC volume present a serious critique of Bush administration foreign policy failures.”  According to Michael, the authors of the book spend a lot more time attacking fellow Democrats than they do attacking the Georgites. Not that we should never attack, as for instance in getting on Hillary Clinton’s case for sponsoring anti-flag burning legislation or Barack Obama’s case for omitting from his vocabulary to the extent possible two critical words, “Iraq” and “Constitution.” But for the most part for us doing so must be a no-no, and whenever we do it, we must present the positive reasons for making our criticisms.

Second, unlike the DLC which often tends to personalize issues just like the Republicans do, we need to stay way from so doing and stay focused on the issues themselves.  Unlike the DLC, we already recognize that all of the central Georgite polices, from the War on Iraq to the War on the Constitution to the War on The Environment to the War on the Rest of Us on Behalf of the Interests of the Rich, represent the most grave of threats to the future of our country as we have known it since the Civil War.  And so, we need to deal with the DLC by hammering away on our anti-Georgite themes, on these major issues facing the nation, which now resonate with an ever-increasing part of the electorate.  By so doing we will demonstrate their failings much better than openly attacking them will.  Of course, each time we criticize a Georgite policy we need to present a positive alternative to it.  The adoption of an over-arching philosophy, perhaps of the type I proposed in the first column of this series, will make doing so ever so much easier.

Third, we have to consider the fact that the DLC actually seems to like many of the Georgite polices, especially in the economic and military and even foreign policy arenas.  Why? As David Sirota says in his new book, Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--and How We Take It Back, (quoting here from the BuzzFlash promo for the book), “If the opposition party becomes part of the corporate consensus, in effect part of a hostile takeover, then you have an entire political system where ordinary people’s interests are not even being represented in the debate, much less in public policy. ... the middle and working class in America are being absolutely crushed everywhere they turn.”  There are two positive ways to deal with this problem.  One is to simply point out, without denigrating the DLC directly, how the corporate interests that they represent fly in the face of the interests of the country as a whole.  Second, we need to identify as many specific pro-DLC corporate interests as we can and show how their professed interests stand in contra-distinction to traditional Democratic Party interests and concerns.

Fourth, we need to begin to approach directly and personally pro-DLC corporate interests and show them how their continuing support for DLC policies, which too often mimic Georgite polices although they are perhaps milder in tone, is not in their own best interests.  An increasing number of traditional Republican voices are coming out against the Georgites, in the corporate sector, in the financial sector, in the military.  We need to find ways of bringing these voices together and help us approach other possibly sympathetic members of their sectors.  One organization that is already doing this is “Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities” (http://www.sensiblepriorities.org).  Their full-page ad in The New York Times of May 21, 2006 calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation cited issues that the DLC generally shies as far away from as it can, issues with which many branches of the Georgite regime can well be confronted: “Financial mismanagement and unaccountability; incompetent forecasting; mammoth waste; plummeting morale; squandered good will; intolerance of dissent.”  Folks, these are the words of worried business people, not traditional left-wing Democrats.  Let’s build upon them organizationally.

Fifth, the DLC seems to often focus on how the Democratic Party can win electorally by using this issue or that or not using that other issue or this.  We need to counter this by focusing first on why the Democratic Party should win, then going on to the “how.”  This again gets back to staying on issue-message, on developing that over-arching philosophy for the Party, on staying on the attack against the Georgites not the DLC per se, and on coupling every attack item with a positive program item for dealing with the issue raised.

Sixth, certain leading DLCers are actually saying “gee, maybe it would be better if we lost the mid-term elections so that we would have a better chance of winning (electorally) in 2008” (Adam Nagourney, “Hey Democrats, Why Win?” The New York Times, May 14, 2006).  By doing so they ignore totally what further substantive harms will come to our country, our Constitutional form of government, and the world as a whole under another two years of total control of the Federal government by the Georgites.  Our position must be we that have to win, we need to win now, in 2006, at least one House of Congress, to at least slow down the Georgite avalanche of reaction.  Then, once we get there, we need to have investigations, surely.  But during the next two years we have to be equally strong in putting forward positive legislative proposals, whether or not they actually make it into law.  If they don’t because we control only one House, that becomes the reason for campaigning to win both in 2008.  If we somehow win both and then elicit a series of Bush vetoes, that becomes the reason for winning the Presidency as well in 2008.

Finally (for this week at least, and I do have additional thoughts on this one, surprise, surprise), we have to recognize that the Democratic leadership in the Congress is not monolithic nor is it stuck in a time-warp.  We need to be patient while we continue to apply positive pressure.  And so, just as we need to deal with the DLC not by continually attacking it but by going forward, we need to deal with the Democratic Congressional leadership not by attacking its negative parts that support, openly or covertly, Georgite polices, but by defending, supporting and encouraging those who are gradually turning against them.  Who would have thunk it six months ago that as Hillary gradually moves to the Right and Nancy Pelosi gradually moves to the Left that the latter would be gradually replacing the former as O’RHannibaugh favorite whipping girl?  Who would have thunk it that one of the most pro-military-might Democratic Congressman, John Murtha, would at the same time have become their favorite whipping boy?  Times change and so do people.  We need to stay positive.

That’s it for this week.  More next.