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The Party of Brownshirts
By Paul Craig Roberts
04/16/07 "ICH"
-- -- Neoconservatives have turned the Republican Party into
a Brownshirt Party.
Look at the evidence. While real patriots flee the party, the
remaining supporters cling to power by asserting dictatorial
dominance for President Bush. The Republican Attorney General
denies that the US Constitution provides habeas corpus
protection to American citizens. Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney,
Republican candidates for the 2008 presidential campaign,
believe the president has the power to imprison US citizens
indefinitely without warrants or trials. The “conservative”
Federalist Society favors concentrating more power in the
executive. Neoconservative ideologues claim the right to impose
American hegemony over all others--especially over Muslims.
All of these Republican tyrants and budding tyrants claim to be
protecting liberty and democracy.
Polls show that the percentage of Americans who tilt Republican
has declined to 35 percent. Republican recruits are refusing to
run for Congress. Ken Mehlman, until recently the party’s
chairman, says many voters have lost confidence in Republicans.
To win back people’s confidence, Mehlman says the party will
have to become less reliant on white males and expand its
support among Hispanics and blacks.
Decency and intelligence have departed Republican ranks. The
party’s shrunken base consists of ignorant and fearful people
who believe Muslim jihadists are going to murder them in their
beds, rapture evangelicals who believe that war in the Middle
East is the prelude to their being wafted up to heaven, the
military-security complex reveling in power and fortune, and
resentful and frustrated people who can freely vent their anger
and hate on “terrorists.”
This collection of fear, delusion, greed, and resentment
comprises the 30 percent of Americans who constitute Bush’s
base. The Republican Party has made itself so unattractive that
Democrats believe that it is now possible for a woman or a black
to win the presidency.
The Republican Party lost its majority for the following
reasons:
Greedy transnational corporations offshored US manufacturing
jobs and destroyed the hopes and livelihoods of blue-collar
Reagan Democrats. The gains from offshoring are diffused, but
the costs are concentrated.
The same greedy and short-sighted corporations have spent the
first years of the 21st century destroying the prospects of
American middle class university graduates by offshoring jobs in
professional services and by importing foreigners on work visas
who work for less.
Neoconservatives captured conservative philanthropies, cut off
funding to true conservatives, and used the captured
conservative foundations to entrench themselves as advisors to
the Republican party. The same neoconsertives that Reagan fired
as a result of the Iran-Contra scandal occupy important policy
positions in the Bush administration and dominate the National
Security Council.
Republican “law and order” apathy to civil liberties easily
transferred to the “war on terror.” Republicans regard civil
liberties as protective devices for criminals and terrorists.
Republicans mistakenly believe that the law can be cut down
selectively so that only certain despised groups are deprived of
its protection.
The Bush administration lied to the American people and invaded
two countries on false pretenses for indefensible reasons that
the administration has never acknowledged. The war has had
catastrophic consequences that are now apparent to a majority of
Americans, but the Republican Party still supports the
continuation of the war.
The Bush administration has destroyed American prestige and
moral aura with torture scandals and disregard for Iraqi,
Afghani, Palestinian and Lebanese civilian lives.
The Bush administration’s budget and trade deficits have
undermined the dollar. The Bush administration is calling for
currency realignments that will lower the real incomes of
import-dependent Americans.
The Bush administration’s determination to exercise American
hegemony through warfare, and its assaults on civil liberties,
the separation of powers, American prestige and on good
American jobs and the value of the dollar have destroyed the
party’s support.
America’s virtue is its Constitution. An administration that
attacks the Constitution attacks America’s virtue. The true
dangers that Americans face come from George W. Bush and Richard
Cheney and their neoconservative Brownshirt Party.
Paul
Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was
Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial
page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is
author or coauthor of eight books, including
The Supply-Side Revolution
(Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic
appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political
Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies,
Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover
Institution, Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous
scholarly journals and testified before Congress on 30
occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious
Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer
for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert
Mundell.
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