TIPPING WINDMILLS
by MALIK ISASIS


As the November 2006 election nears, the wheels have come off the Republican Party's propaganda machine; an accumulation of scandals has finally pulled back the curtains on the Republicans’ veneer of being the party of strength, security, and moral superiority. Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, Bob Ney, Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley, just to name a few, were involved in everything from bribery, money laundering to eliciting sexual solicitation from minors. These scandals involving Republicans and their conservative cabal are being reported as if they were developed in a vacuum, however, the shenanigans by the Republicans and their conservative cabal have been well documented over the past six years (see for yourself).
The accumulation of scandals is only a symptom of a much larger issue: absolute power. Absolute power has infected this Republican Party to the marrow. In spite of their virtues being compromised by hubristic corruption, they deflect fault and refuse to take responsibility for their wrongdoing, instead they play six degrees of Bill Clinton; the Republicans can connect Bill Clinton to any scandal. Since the Republicans’ leadership paradigm is top-down, it is very interesting to see them implode. They lash out like cornered cats, wanting to take everyone down with them; and because the Republican Party works from the top-down, that is, they lead from the top-down, lock-step, when one falls, many more of them will fall, like dominoes.

The Republican implosion is not new. Throughout the 20th century, there are examples of Republicans reaching the pinnacle of power and then collapsing from the weight of their incompetence and lack of compassion. It’s the Peter Principle, which theorizes that a person will be promoted to the highest level of his/or her competence and eventually advance to a level of incompetence. The modern Republican Party implodes every other generation under its own ineptitude and rises like the Phoenix, only to repeat the same mistakes.

The 1920s was an era of Republican dominance. During the 1920s there were three consecutive Republican Presidencies: Warren Harding (1920-1923), Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) and Herbert Hoover (1929-1933). Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, like President Bush, favored tax cuts and a hands-off approach toward corporate power. “Taxes and regulation [sic] were slashed dramatically, monopolies were allowed to form, and inequality of wealth and income reached record levels. The country was on the conservative's preferred gold standard, and the Federal Reserve was not allowed to significantly change the money supply (Kangas). The Laissez faire doctrine of unfettered capitalism “was most strictly applied during the Republican presidencies of Warren Harding (1920-1923) and Calvin Coolidge (1923-1928) (Kangas). President Bush's Administration and policies most resembles that of President Warren Harding’s Administration and polices.

"Once in office, Harding admitted to his close friends that the job was beyond him. The capable men that Harding appointed to his cabinet included Charles Evans Hughes as Secretary of State, Andrew Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury, and Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce. But he also surrounded himself with dishonest cheats, who came to be known as "the Ohio gang." Many of them were later charged with defrauding the government, and some of them went to jail. Though Harding knew of the limitations of men like Harry Dougherty, the slick friend he appointed attorney general, he liked to play poker with them, drink whiskey, smoke, tell jokes, play golf, and keep late hours."…
…Most historians regard Harding as the worst President in the nation's history. In the end, it was not his corrupt friends, but rather, Harding's own lack of vision that was most responsible for the tarnished legacy"
( Americanpresident.org).

President Warren Harding'’s hands-off approach of the investment class helped exacerbate and deepen the class divide. The richer were richer, and the poor were poorer and the small middle-class was on life support. Workers could not afford the products that they were manufacturing. In effect, America was an oligarchy. Eventually, this corporate governance caused the Great Depression.

I would like to take a moment to give a quick shout-out to the late Habeas Corpus (1679 – 2006). Habeas Corpus was laid to rest on October 17, 2006 with a few strokes of President Bush's pen. Let us just have a moment of silence. We can now hold foriegners and Americans in detentions, indefinitely.

Arlen Spector (R), Senator and Judiciary Committee Chairman from Pennsylvania stated that the Supreme Court is likely to invalidate the legislation that would create military commissions to try terrorist suspects and yet, he voted with the Republican Party to kill habeas corpus. Democrats are accomplices as they stood and stand by silently. What caused Arlen Spector to vote against his conscience? Was it the top-down management style of the Republican Party or was it fear of losing his Judiciary Committee Chairmanship? Senator Spector's cowardice to stand up to the Republican machine is a microcosm of the sickness within the Republican Party, and that is, personal gain over public responsibility, multiply this times the number of Republican politicians and you have what is wrong with this party and why they collapse when they attain power.

It may not be this election cycle, but the Republicans will fall spectacularly, they always do, it'’s in their political DNA. When they again rise from the ashes, they will have no synaptic connections to why they failed; they will only see it as their destiny.

Sources:

For more on the twin Presidencies of President Warren Harding and President George W. Bush, click here

Causes of the Great Depression: A Review of Keynesian Theory
by Steve Kangas

Salon
Americanpresident.org
U.S. History
Bartleby Encyclopedia

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