The New Business-as-usual

When Bush I was running for president in 1988 one of the popular cries of the Republicans was that the People should elect a Republican president and a Republican Congress so that they could stop government gridlock and get business done. Of course the Republicans took Congress in 1994 during the Clinton administration, and blocked legislation and government business in a manner unseen in generations. As of 2008, because the Democratic majority of 2006 has been so slight and as to not be effective, the Republicans still keep a stranglehold on Congress and block any legislation for which the president has not requested a rubber stamp. When the Republicans held the majority they tried to ban filibusters, the last ditch minorities have to stop their oppression. Now that they’re in the minority again, the Republicans all for the filibuster. They’ve filibustered the Fair Pay Act. They filibustered legislation that would limit troop deployment cycles. They filibustered a bill that would reduce carbon emissions. As if they thought they would be the majority forever. Clearly they have no concern for any Americans but themselves.

Any notion that the inaction of the legislature on issues that matter to Americans is the fault of the Democrats seems a poorly based one. While I’d like to think it is partisanship that is the problem, the evidence in my eyes seems to point toward the Republicans, perhaps more specifically the new brand of Republicans who have a my-way-or-the-highway attitude about legislation. While I can appreciate the no-compromise-in-defense-of-whathaveyou approach to certain moral issues, that approach is not appropriate on most issues; it just seizes-up the engine of government. And, those who choose that path are decidedly un-American and un-democratic in my eyes. The new Republicans have pursued tyranny of the majority long considered an obstacle to good representative democracy, as if it was mandated by their elections--as if it was their right and their obligation to oppress those who disagree with them.

While the Republicans may have held a parliamentary majority, largely as a result of the election of many of these “new Republicans,” the new Republicans that made the parliamentary majority are actually representative of minorities (fundamentalist Xians being the major one). Christian grass roots organizations began taking over the Republican party in the 70s. They infiltrated local and state parties and displaced the old, moderate Republicans who thought of themselves as American first and Republicans second. Using anti-abortion, anti-gay, and anti-secular sentiments (it’s much easier to rally people against something than it is to rally them for something) this minority within the Republican party stirred evangelical Xians to go to the polls and vote for whomever towed the party line. Thus the Republican majority was established and the original Republican party was subverted, destroyed and replaced with a new party with an extremist agenda. They sought to replace our secular government with a religious one, and that was just the beginning. Luckily, once they got power, they failed to do much aside from rubber-stamp Dubya’s awful policies. It has seemed to me that they were just using their Xian agenda as a tool to mobilize voters in support of other hidden agendas such as free-market capitalism (economic libertarianism). Like Dubya's "Some people call you the elites; I call you my base" joke at an $800/plate charity dinner suggests, he sees himself as representing the economic elites despite his culture-based appeals to those at the other end of the economic spectrum. Surely, we'll find out who he's really fighting for about the same time as we find out why we really invaded Iraq. In the mean time, I hope those who supported Bush and the new Republicans take a closer look at who they're voting for and why.

Under the guise of freedom of religion, the new Republicans have infiltrated the government with Christian extremists and threatened to implement Christian law. They have derided populism abroad while employing it at home to build voter support for policies that actually go against the common man's own interests. They have stalled or subverted the government when it went against their values and tried to take away the ability of others to do the same. Everyone looks for reasoning that supports their opinions, but the incredible hypocrisy of the new Republicans and their failure to face up to it is unfathomable.