RealCurrents

With all the criticism of George W. Bush and Republicans in general, I think we need to sort out a few basic aspects of our current mess so we can then, hopefully, make intelligent changes.

In my view, Republicans (in which I include myself, since I generally vote that way) have two basic problems:

1. Bush’s administration has been hijacked by war-hawk NeoCons, the first evidence of which appeared to be his picking Dick Cheney (seemingly out of nowhere, considering Wyoming isn’t a big state) to be his running mate.

As a result, early philosophical drivers of Bush policy, such as Marvin Olasky’s notion of “compassionate conservatism“, a foreign policy that refrained from “nation building”, and in general a more limited federal government, gradually gave in to the NeoCon urge to use power whenever possible, wherever possible.

Of course, the dam broke after 9/11, an event which may well have been given too much import in re-shaping U.S. foreign and domestic policy. In any case, the war-hawk NeoCons were firmly behind the wheel after that, and within a year were openly maneuvering to invade Iraq.

2. The near-complete failure of the rest of Republicans to make a serious effort to reclaim their party from the war-hawk NeoCons.

As I wrote before, despite Bush’s obvious failings, I put more blame on the Congress, for largely abdicating its responsibilities: “the Republican Congress … has failed to fulfill two of its primary duties: providing a check on the Executive Branch and controlling spending.”

So, two basic problems: the NeoCon takeover of the Bush administration, and the failure of the rest of us Republicans to counter it. With these in mind, it’s time for someone to finally state what’s plainly obvious, at least to any non-NeoCon in the Republican camp:

War-hawk NeoConservatives do NOT represent the views of all or anywhere near a majority of Republicans, nor are they legitimate heirs of Ronald Reagan’s legacy.

Through most of my teen years, I would hear Ronald Reagan in the morning, giving his radio address outlining his views, and no one’s going to convince me that his vision of personal responsibility and freedom, with limited government, has anything in common with the imperialist, police-state policies promoted by the war-hawk NeoCons.

The Republicans lost control of Congress for the simple reason that they failed to do their job. They completely failed to control spending, they failed to rein in government, and one by one those opposed to the invasion of Iraq knuckled under, I guess swayed by the argument, “We’re in a ‘war on terror‘, you just have to trust us.” Well, it’s amazing that the Bush administration still seems to be trying to use that argument. It shows how out of touch they really are.

As far as Bush’s failings go, I think Lee Iacocca hits the nail on the head in his new book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?. Iacocca gives 9 “C’s” of leadership, and notes that Bush dismally fails on the very first one: Curiosity.

George W. Bush has a lot of good, even great, qualities, and I’m sure most Republicans, including myself, want to continue supporting him, but he has GOT to develop both a much greater interest in what is going on, and multiple alternative channels of information. As someone once said, a leader must use the chain of command to issue orders, but can NEVER depend on the chain of command for information.

As for other Republican politicians and candidates, I hope they will not abandon Bush, but will finally begin to demand accountability (and fiscal responsibility) from his administration.

Obviously, the folks Republicans DO need to be abandoning, and driving from the party, are the war-hawk NeoCons, who haven’t got a clue what terms like “limited government”, “Constitution”, “separation of powers”, and “conservative” really mean.

Sadly, if this mess continues much longer, us conservatives will have to come up with a new name for ourselves, lest people think we’re in favor of torture, abolishing the Geneva Convention, pre-emptive war, and all the other nonsense (evil) that’s been foisted upon us by these “Neo-Conservatives”, who seem to think the solution to every problem is the exercise of more government power.

While folks are busy fretting about all the terrible things that might happen in Washington this year with a new Democrat-led Congress, Americans might need to keep a lot closer eye on their state and local politics as well. Is it just me, or does it seem that politicians are busier than usual proposing all kinds of odd-ball laws? I saw a report today that someone in New York was proposing a law banning listening to iPods while crossing the street! If legislators have this much time on their hands, they ought not meet so often.

Here in Texas, where the biennial legislative session is a notoriously short 140 days, this shouldn’t be a problem, yet I’m more concerned than usual this year. I must admit I don’t keep very close tabs on Texas state politics in Austin; the general news coverage is far from adequate and usually focusses on just a few bills. Back before the internet really caught on, there used to be an organization, the Texas Grassroots Coalition, run by Austin attorney/CPA Adrian van Zelfden, that did a great job of putting out information, especially during legislative sessions and before primaries. Perhaps nowadays with the many blogs there is something equivalent, but I have yet to discover it.

Despite the information gap, the maneuverings of the past few weeks have been enough to get the attention of even casual observers, whereas, I guess, even the astute were caught off guard by Governor Rick Perry’s draconian power grab last Friday, when he issued Executive Order RP65 mandating the HPV vaccination of all 11-12 year-old girls in the state.

There are so many things wrong with both the scientific/medical and political aspects of Perry’s action that I will leave this to others, or at least to another post. David Watts, Jr. has started a helpful blog, Overturn RP65, to track developments regarding this issue.

Besides that mess and its threats to our civil liberties, not to mention our constitutional form of government, there’s the general budget situation in Austin, and the huge surplus, which Perry, among others, hopes to spend, but ought to by and large be handed back to the citizens of Texas through tax cuts. This will be a huge fight, I’m sure, because all these billions of taxpayer dollars floating around are just asking for trouble.

In light of the very favorable budget situation, it seems awfully curious to me that Republicans are so busy trying to raise extra cash. Perry’s idea of selling the lottery, unsettling at best even for those of us who oppose state-sponsored gambling, is indefensible with so much surplus already floating around. As ususal there’s various efforts, that I haven’t managed to keep track of, to legalize additional gambling and “use the money for education”, a phrase which some political hack might as well convert to newspeak since we hear it so constantly.

Besides these, there’s the Republicans’ push to privatize new state highway construction. This is one of those ideas that sounds “conservative”, but really is just a different can of worms. Texas has had one of the best highway systems for a long time, especially considering the size of this state, and more public toll roads may well be worthwhile. Private toll roads, on the other hand, would turn the economics of highway construction and repair - and property taxation - on its head. Foreign-owned private toll roads, which have limited exits and which don’t convert to free roads once paid off, are a very bad idea.

In general, it seems state Republicans are increasingly looking for assets to sell, or otherwise mesmerized by big projects to fund, which is making a mockery of the term “conservative”. Since just about every candidate running in Texas these days boasts about how they are a conservative, a little fiscal discipline would sure be refreshing.

With their unbridled willingness to spend money and start new projects, the rush to start war in Iraq, and potentially elsewhere, even while threatening the rest of the world, I can’t help but wonder if many Republican office-holders who call themselves such even understand the meaning of the term “conservative”.

Considering how upset a lot of folks are over RP65, and the disappointments with the free-spending Republican Congress of recent years, I don’t know how much more of this Texas conservatives can take. If our legislators in Austin don’t think real hard before spending Texans’ money, they may well ensure that the 2008 primary gets very interesting.

When the clock radio goes off in the morning, the news occasionally brings something that shocks or surprises enough to make my mind race past all the fog and actually focus. Sometimes it’s something tragic, sometimes just stupid, but it’s generally bad news. Well, Tuesday was the latest instance of this, as I woke up hearing of Pat Robertson’s call to assassinate Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.

There’s so much wrong with this, both theologically and politically, that I immediately wanted to write about it, but after a while I figured most everything had been said. Marvin Olasky has a pretty good article, for example. As often happens, though, I realize after a while that there’s another side to the story that’s not really being told, but needs to so we can understand what’s truly going on. Of course, that’s the main reason I started this blog.

Because assassination is generally an act of war, the real issue here is the definition of war, and what it means to enter into and to end a state of war. Unfortunately, since the end of World War II and the formation of the U.N., the constitutional process of Congress’ declaring a war has been set aside. This has caused all sorts of problems, with various ill-defined “police actions”, both large and small, ensuing over the past 60 years.

Since 9/11, things have gotten even more muddled, as we fight a “war on terrorism”. I don’t use the quotes sarcastically, but simply to point out that nobody really knows what a “war on terrorism” is! This is a new kind of war, at least at the level of weaponry terrorists either have or are thought to be seeking. It’s understandable that things must be worked out somewhat as we go along.

On the other hand, there’s a tremendous danger here as we pursue such an ill-defined “war”, and Rev. Robertson’s unfortunate comments point right to it. The danger is, the longer we go without clearly defining what the war on terror is, the easier it will be to justify all sorts of mischief. Chavez supposedly is friendly to terrorist types, etc., so if we simply brand him a terrorist, then we can justify getting rid of him. Never mind that we’re not at war with Venezuela.

This is a serious problem. As we muddle along, ultimately we effectively risk putting the U.S. at war with potentially most everyone and everybody. Is there not really a point at which even the British would say we’ve gone too far? Would we then label them friends of terrorists for disagreeing with us? Obviously I’m exaggerating to make a point, but there’s a sort of open-ended logic that needs to be closed, the sooner the better. In other words, we can’t really define what a war on terror is until we clearly define what it is not. We need limits, and since we’ve chucked requiring a congressional declaration of war, we don’t have any except public opinion.

Indeed, we don’t really have enough political will to efficiently carry out a long war, yet we do have enough to start a lot of things. Surely, the goal behind requiring a congressional declaration of war was just the opposite of our present situation: to make it politically difficult to get into a war, but then easier, politically, to stay in it and carry it out properly once the line was passed. Now we cross the line back and forth and don’t even know where we are much of the time.

It doesn’t take a lot of reading between the lines to figure that the Bush administration is trying to strike a delicate balance between applying enough resources in Iraq to do the job, but not so much as to cause a political backlash. Unfortunately, this this kind of politics-driving-strategy will eventually break down. The longer a war goes (and they have indicated the overall war on terror will be long), the more resources (and lives) will be squandered, and the weaker our position will become.

Pat Robertson’s remarks beg the question, “Do you want to start a war with Venezuela?” Of course, this sounds preposterous, but without a clear structure for defining why and how we would decide to start a war, is it just a matter of time, or pressing circumstances, before the U.S. stumbles into a dumb call such as this?