Monday, March 2, 2009

CPAC AND THE 4 HORSEMEN OF CALAMITY

"Men love ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it."
- Edward Abbey -

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest excuses in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
- John Kenneth Galbraith -

"A conservative is a man who believes nothing should be done for the first time."
- Alfred E. Wiggam -

"I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to victory on the Four Horsemen of Calamity - Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear."
- Margaret Chase Smith -

Perhaps it is a good thing the late moderate Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine did not live to see the era of ultra-far-right neocon Republicanism we now have today. For these hard core zealots have hijacked the party and now control it lock, stock, and barrel. They have destroyed all its relevance and credibility. She is surely spinning in her grave at the unconstitutional antics of the Bush/Cheney years and now that vicious extremists Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have repectively become the de facto king and queen of that miserable party (with the impulsively irresponsible Sarah Palin as lady in waiting). For, ever since Chase Smith's death in 1995, the GOP has increasingly succumbed to extremism, just as it did when nominating Barry Goldwater for President in 1964 and subsequently losing that election in a landslide.

As evidenced by this past weekend's CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) gathering of 9,000 hard core ultra-rightists, the lunatic fringe of the GOP is alive and thriving, much like a malignant tumor. Malevolent and determined to have all power for itself, the CPAC crowd is well on its way toward destroying its Republican Party host. Unfortunately for the GOP, there is no cure in sight.

Senator Chase Smith was an intelligent and civil woman of high principle. Had I been a voter or Senator in her day, I would have undoubtedly voted against her positions many times, but I would have cultivated and valued her friendship. I would have liked her and respected her greatly for her integrity and moderate views. She was one of the first critics of the notorious red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy, courageously rising up early to denounce the irresponsible tactics and largely unfounded allegations he made against many innocent Americans. These poor accused souls suffered tremendously for years due to his wild rants about them, and she stood up to the bullying and accusatory tactics which the GOP soon adopted due to McCarthy's influence. Her June 1, 1950 "Declaration of Conscience" from which the quote above was taken, outlined her aversion and opposition to the kind of attack-dog actions McCarthy used then and which the CPAC crowd employs today. For a very interesting and relevant read, Google Margaret Chase Smith and read her declaration. It will help you see the obvious parallels between the McCarthyites of yesteryear and the neocons of today.

Ahhhhhh, CPAC! A summit of the meanest, most fearful, ignorant, and intolerant people on earth. A Mecca of the misguided and misinformed. An entire weekend of practitioners and advocates of failed economic theory and disastrous foreign policy all venting to each other while whipping the four horses of calamity to an absolute frenzy among all in attendance. A place in which those who wish to avoid truth and reality can escape to revel in their own fantasy and delusion for a time. There was fat, old, slobby, insecure, big-mouthed blowhard King Rush Limbaugh, once more doing his best to get attention through outrageous and preposterous claims. He tried to portray the President as an advocate of fear because Obama had honestly reported the unhealthy state of the economy. In reality, Limbaugh was attempting to scare the public at large into believing that Obama was out to destroy our free enterprise market system. He characterized Obama's noble effort to more fairly level the economic playing field, by taxing the very rich more heavily to ensure they would pay a more balanced share, as "punishing achievement and punishing earners." You can always count on Limbaugh to appeal to people's selfishness and ignore basic facts. By Rush's twisted rationale, it was evidently perfectly ok for the rich and major corporations to "punish" tradespersons and regular workers alike by destroying their unions, cutting their wages and benefits, and shipping their jobs overseas, all of which helped make the very wealthy far, far, FAR richer than ever before! THAT kind of punishment sits perfectly well with Limbaugh, I guess, so long as the exorbitant wealth created by Bush's unfair tax cuts for the rich remain in place. Next, ol' blabbermouth stated that Obama's proposed budget is "spending wealth that has not yet been created." Of course, Limbaugh conveniently neglected to realize or mention that is exactly what his hero, George W. Bush, and his neocon Republican Congresses did from 2001-2006 by cutting taxes on the wealthy and then starting a very costly and illegally imperialistic war in Iraq. But I guess Limbaugh finds THAT kind of spending to be ok, since it isn't being wasted on job creation or programs for suffering common people. He characterized liberals as being "psychotic" even though the facts clearly show HIM to be the delusional one. He referred to his formative years as being better days for our country and bemoaned how liberals and Obama were going to ruin it all. Funny, though: In Limbaugh's "formative years" the country was being run by LIBERALS and MODERATES, NOT conservatives! Poor Rush even has delusional memories! I guess it takes a conservative about 40 or 50 years to recognize liberal genius. I keep forgetting how slow and dull-witted these conservatives are, and that they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer! Limbaugh was only slotted to speak for roughly 20 minutes, but, naturally, once he started beating his chest and heard the sound of fanatical audience applause, he selfishly monopolized the podium for well over an hour. Amid frenzied cheers and unified, deafening chants of "USA! USA! USA!", Rush just couldn't give it up. It was a scene reminiscent of the 1936 Nuremberg Rally. Very scary!

Queen Ann Coulter was her usual cruel, snobby, and sarcastic self, ridiculing liberals, Obama, Democrats, and the mythical liberal news media in her typically low-brow, insulting manner. Other moronic liars - I mean, speakers - included South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint (Obama is "the world's best salesman of socialism"), Mike Huckabee ("the Union of American Socialist Republics is being born"), the ever-regressive Mitch McConnell, and Michele Bachmann, who always thinks and speaks like a deer caught in headlights and will soon require antifungal spray for her mouth, due to her foot always being firmly stuck in it. These people are hopeless.

Conservative Republicans Bush, Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld used fear to lie us into illegal and imperialistic war in Iraq, stripping us of constitutional rights and instituting kidnapping and torture as acceptable practices along the way. Limbaugh, Coulter, Romney, DeMint, Huckabee and all the rest of the CPAC crowd are now trying to sabotage Obama's Stimulus Plan with fear of socialism. There's your FEAR. All deny that THEIR type of economic theory caused our economic downturn and has failed time after time, in the 1920s, the 1980s, and during the Bush regime. Yet they are pushing for more of the same. There's your stubborn IGNORANCE. They ridicule and hate liberals and gays, and view lower-class whites, minorities, and those from other cultures with suspicion and distrust. There's your BIGOTRY. They constantly lie about political opponents and deliberately distort what their opponents say to turn the public against them and to reinforce their own misconceived notions. There's your SMEAR, which rhey employ all the time.

Margaret Chase Smith was very visionary and wise to recognize these types of threats to our democracy way back in 1950. She would be justifiably and profoundly horrified to see that a new and more militant form of McCarthyism has resurfaced via CPAC 59 years later to capture and control her party today. Her dreaded Four Horsemen of Calamity are galloping her beloved Republican Party right off the political cliff!

10 comments:

RGeorgeDunn said...

Wow, one extreme to another. One truth you hit on and that is how the GOP has been highjacked by the neocon, the big government one world order crowd, who incidentally are a ruling power behind both parties.

When Bush came out with the bailout in September, it was at a time when McCain was surging 6% ahead in the polls. Why did the NEOCONS not want McCain. It was not McCain they feared but the honesty and truthfulness of Palin coming into the President of the Senate.

Also, the international banking community had agreed in BASIL IV to all National banks having to reveal their books and become transparent by August 1st 2008. Everyone did but the USA so they gave America an one month extension to September 1st at which time the US National banks to include the Federal Reserve did not and still have not revealed their books to the public. The trading of money funds daily was in an average of at least once a week at the amount of 400 to 500 billion dollars and for Bush to say we needed the bailout now made it totally suspect.

And when the democrats agreed to go along if they received 20 billion for ACORN and the neocons agreed, that finished exposing the power in the shadow of Washington as being of big government one world order and if ACORN, an stealth civilian army of the left, was acceptable to their plans, you can bet that this collapse of our fiscal is also part of their plan to destroy the US Dollar. Why else would we have left in place the closed trade tax structure and not fixed it to a free trade tax structure when Reagan put the Free trade policy into effect?

Our current fiscal crisis is the end of the road brought on by the excise tax that our current product tax is on our domestic production. Corporate types like Romney eagerly bought up struggling companies and moved them off shore to get around our production taxes, thus the great exodus of jobs from this country over the years. We are now witnessing that last to go, the big 3 auto companies. If they remain a presence, it will be to assemble foreign parts as the other are doing now.

The cure? Change our tax structure to the consumption tax known as the Fair Tax. That will bring back our manufacturing jobs as it will take the tax out of our product costs and will make for an equal tax on imports as well as domestic products. There is a progressive part the sends everyone back the tax amount of poverty wage whether one works or not so the poor are not harmed and actually will be finding good paying jobs to sustain their families again, making the American Dream a reality again and the need for a Nanny Government diminished and taxes lowered.

Sound too good to be true? From what I see coming, there is not much to lose. And if the Fair Tax plan is spoken too and taken serious the stock market will come roaring back. It is your choice, to become a part of the monstrous one world order or to return to the true value of the Constitution and individual States sovereignty.

www.fairtax.org

Jack Jodell said...

Thank you for your comments, Mr. Dunn. You pose an interesting series of points. I won't argue with you.

Yellow Dog said...

Th Quote Master! Always unusual, always dead-on.

Bless you for unpacking CPAC; I can't stand to watch it.

SJ said...

@Jack Jodell,
Your post is an outstanding act of deconstruction of CPAC's actual postures and ethos, such as they are.
I really do still hope, now that the last election cycle eroded the GOPs collective self delusions, that Republicans, (real Republicans who've actually read the Federalist Papers for instance) take their party back from the establishment and big business shills who keep and force the GOP into being a party simply concerned with power grabs a generation at a time.
As you know I'm a Liberal voter, but we all desperately need strength and articulate dynamic opposition from all corners if this Republic is to make it another 100 years, much less the next ten.

Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh ain't what's needed, by anybody, in any way shape or form. Michael Steele is correct in pointing out that Limbaugh is an entertainer at best.
We need more thinking, not less, from everybody in government.

-SJ

Jack Jodell said...

Thank you for your comments, SJ. In light of your articulate, thorough, and always well-researched posts at Random Thoughts, I am humbled and honored by what you say here. I share your hope that "real" Republicans will soon re-emerge. The amount of anger and hatred the CPAC crowd embody worries me a great deal, though. This group is so militant and ignorant it is frightening. Even if the GOP is able to get back on track, where will these crazies go, and what will they do? Will they (I hope) just setlle down and simmer out, or will they become violent? They bear close watching, disgusting though the sight!

Anonymous said...

geesh... I guess my comments from my iphone don't go in! I've been try to leave this comment: Jack! You do a supreme job with the CPAC tell! Best one, hands down! Dang. Go Go Go! Well spoke, well writ. And I did try on 'country parson' piece too... have to say that reading you I learn something every time. Ta. Now, lets see if this one finds you... lol

Jack Jodell said...

Thanks for the nice comments, Gwendolyn! Sorry you've had difficulty "getting in"---I'll never be able to grasp all the intracacies of why some things work online and some don't. I learn things every time I post, too. Unlike Limbaugh and a lot of his ilk, I DO try to do some research (usually from a number of varied sources) before I make my case. So if you ever see anything in one of my posts that's inaccurate or incomplete, don't hesitate to sock it to me! :)

RGeorgeDunn said...

Be sure to not confuse passion with hate. A lot of people see our Constitution and future in a bleek view and such it is before revolution.

Anonymous said...

Jack--

Excellent analysis. I'm old enough to remember the day when there was actually a moderate wing of the GOP. Mostly from the Northeast...people like Jacob Javitz and Lowell Weicker and others...in addition to Margaret Chase Smith. What happened to these people? Can you imagine what they would make of the GOP today?

Jack Jodell said...

Thanks, Tim. The only major moderates left appear to be Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of PA and a tiny, tiny smattering of ineffectual House members. Even in the McGovern days of the Democratic Party, when the GOP loved to scream how out-of-the-mainstream the Dems had become, there was not such an overwhelmingly thorough shift to one side of the political spectrum as we see in today's GOP. They are in very, very real danger of never again winning another national election due to their extremism. And the real tragedy is the total delusion today's far-right GOP lives under, that most of the country shares their twisted values. It would seem a disintegration is in order here. We can only hope the residue will coalesce into something more sensible, pragmatic, moderate, and egalitarian!