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Particide In Six Easy
Steps
Diligent
Democrats Demonstrate Dumbness Daily
By David
Michael Green
08/02/08 "ICH"
-- -- Suppose you had a political party you were trying to
get rid of. How would you do it?
Would you give it some cement shoes and toss it into the bay?
Would you roll it up in a carpet and drag it into the trunk of
your car in the middle of the night? Would you put out a
contract on it?
If
the latter sounds appealing, no need to get your hands dirty
messing with any nasty mob guys from Jersey. I know some very
upstanding establishment folks who’ve perfected a killer formula
(pun intended) for particide. They’re called Democrats, and
they know how to get the job done right.
In
fact, they’ve demonstrated it again for the umpteenth time just
as I’m writing these words. Yesterday, that tough guy Harry
Reid laid down the law for congressional Republicans thinking he
wouldn’t play hardball on the much-needed economic stimulus
package now working its way through Congress. He told them:
“Well, I think that if they think this is a bluff, wait until we
have this vote and they’ll find out if it’s a bluff. I’m not
much of a bluffer.” Then, today, he completely caved into their
pressure on the bill, proving – though perhaps not quite in the
manner he intended – that he is in fact not much of a bluffer,
after all, even if he is from Nevada. Nor, as it turns out, is
he much of a negotiator either.
Yep, ladies and gentlemen, if it’s particide you’re after, Reid
and his fellow Democrats would be happy to show you how it’s
done. It’s pretty simple, really. There are just six easy
steps that you need to follow to take out a political party
that’s grown a bit, shall we say, inconvenient.
First of all, make sure it does nothing. If you’re looking for
a good way to anger voters, here’s the best. Have them send you
to Congress to address a host of their urgent concerns. Let
them invest their full faith in you to rescue them from all the
effects of a country gone completely off the rails. Let them
believe and let them hope. Then do nothing. Crush their
pedestrian little dreams in your blood-soaked hands by
protecting corporate interests instead. Spend two years racking
up not a single notable legislative accomplishment, and then go
before the voters asking for another term. They’ll remember
your name.
A
second excellent technique is to fail to block the worst
tendencies of the worst president ever, the very mission you
were most entrusted with by the voters. If they hate this
president’s stinking war, make sure you give him the money for
it every time he asks. Send all his reactionary nominees to the
Supreme Court after they mock you in bullshit hearings. Yeah,
go ahead. Allow a supporter of torture and
Constitution-shredding to become the highest law enforcement
officer in the land. Etc., etc. Get it? Sure, you can go
through the motions of opposition, but at the end of the day, be
sure to bungle it so badly that you leave everybody scratching
their heads and wondering which party actually controls
Congress.
Next, while you’re at it, don’t do anything to make this hated
president and his administration accountable for their manifold
crimes of the century. Treat them as though they’ve got
pictures of you in some airport men’s room somewhere that
they’re threatening to release if you dare do anything remotely
resembling oversight (or patriotism). Let these guys absolutely
run rampant thrashing the republic in every imaginable way,
while you sit on top of your congressional majority abdicating
any responsibility for protecting the people who sent you there
to protect them. Show the public how tough you can be by
investigating the use of steroids in baseball, while lies about
war and illegal phone-tapping and torture and suspension of
habeas corpus go ignored. Keep your priorities straight and
you’re guaranteed to score points with the voters, for sure.
Of
course, not only must you fail to oppose an insane kleptocratic
dictator, but it’s crucial that you also have absolutely no
program or ideas of your own to offer. I mean, who can’t never
not get no excitement going about nothing? Er, something like
that... Anyhow, the point is that a political party without
ideas is like a car without wheels. And it will go just about
as far, too. If you want to get rid of your party, be sure to
be about nothing whatsoever.
And
yet, even while trying to be the Seinfeld of political parties,
you will no doubt sometimes accidentally advance some sort of
popular idea or another, despite yourself. You know, like a
million monkeys at a keyboard... When these inadvertently
beneficial bills are immediately destroyed by the obstructionist
minority party – who continually overuse and abuse parliamentary
tactics you (of course) never dreamed of all those years when
you were in the minority – make sure that nobody in the voting
public knows about it. You could run around screaming about
them continually blocking you from doing the people’s business,
but that would only increase public sympathy for you. And since
you’re trying to kill your party, you surely won’t want to do
that. No, like a good Democrat, you want to make sure the other
guys never have to pay for their crimes.
Finally, one of the very best things you can do to destroy a
political party is to avoid at all costs articulating an
alternative narrative. Play ball on their turf! Let the other
guys define the issues, frame the discussion, and paint you in
the worst possible light – as deviants, traitors, cowards and
haters of your own country! Now you’re talkin’, my friend. You
want your house robbed right? Hand the door key to the
thieves! You want your car crashed properly? Park it on
railroad tracks! You want your party rubbed out completely?
Let the other guys make the rules, fool! Heck, if you really
want to make sure of your party’s demise, you can even encourage
them steal elections you’ve actually won! It worked in Florida
and Ohio!
If
these six steps seem like a ridiculously reliable way to destroy
a political party, that’s because they are. Still, they may not
be entirely infallible. This year will be the acid test.
The
good folks running the Democratic Party have assiduously
followed the above formula to the letter, carefully dotting
every ‘i’ and crossing every ‘t’. But damned if the
recalcitrant right isn’t failing to play ball! What’s up with
that? Have Republicans become so intractable nowadays that
they’re even blocking the Democrats’ own self-induced demise?
Is destruction obstruction the latest GOP game?
Or
are Republicans just following their own particide formula,
which – needless to say, like everything they do – is more
disciplined and effective than even this fine blueprint
belonging to Dumb Dems’? It kinda looks like it, after all.
Consider their prescription: Take the biggest surplus in the
history of the federal government and turn it into the biggest
deficit. Fight a hugely unpopular war. Get caught lying about
the rationale for it. Block efforts to save the planet from a
looming environmental crisis, while pretending it isn’t real.
Allow religious crazies to deny effective medical treatment to
suffering humans in order to protect about-to-be-destroyed
blastocysts. Get caught in all manner of corruption and sexual
‘deviancy’ while interminably preaching your own
holier-than-thou sanctimonious purity. Shred the Constitution
in every way imaginable. Load the government up with every
incompetent low-wattage political hack you can find stuck behind
a church pew somewhere. Make the whole world hate us. Use the
federal government to prosecute people on the basis of their
party affiliation. Stand by and watch one of the country’s
major cities drown. Destroy a foreign country. Destroy the
middle class of your own country. Be asleep at the wheel (at
best) when the country is attacked. Fail to come even close to
winning a war against the people you blame for that attack. And
so on...
Quite a litany, eh? Yet, for all their best efforts,
Republicans still can’t seem to get the Democrats to put the GOP
out of its stinking misery. Still can’t get them to
investigate. Still can’t get them to impeach. Still can’t get
them to win. So now Republicans have brought out the big guns,
engineering what looks like a massive economic recession on top
of everything else. And they’re throwing people out of their
homes in droves so that Wall Street can profit even more. Right
before an election, too!
Yes, indeed. These guys aren’t messing around. Democrats
seeking to kill their party are going to have to work extra hard
in 2008, that’s for sure! Six steps may not be enough. If
Democrats want to rub themselves out this year, they may need a
seventh.
Get
on their knees and beg the public not to vote for them? Nah.
Too subtle.
Change their name to the Socialist Party? Nah. It might
actually increase their share of votes.
Have their own sex scandals? Nah. Been there, done that.
Something else is going to be required to kill the party off for
sure this year.
Oh,
I know! They could nominate Hillary Clinton!
David
Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra
University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers'
reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net),
but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to
respond. More of his work can be found at his website,
www.regressiveantidote.net.
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