Intro
Currently headlining RedState- DailyKos's closest analouge on the right -this picture shows perhaps more clearly than anything else how the Republican party is morgaging its future and is in danger of being shut out of power for the next 20 years.
Its boldness in insulting the Democratic Party has attracted some amusement in the blog-plugged parts of Washington. The uber-insider Hotline even had a post about about it. But rather than being insulted I shall argue that Democrats should welcome this new virluent strain of trash conservatisim.
This image's snarky confidence that average working people would respond favourably to an association between the party that 54% of the American people voted for in the last election and the spead of global communism isn't meerly ahistorical and anachronic to the degree of beging ludicrous.
It also reveals just how much it hasn't yet hit the Republican party that 2006 was not an abberation, but a turning point.
This diary will argue that this RedState image reflects a serious mistake in Republican strategy after thier losses in 2006. RedState- and many of its sympathizers- seem to believe that the American people want more partisanship, more millitaristic faux-patriotism, and more time to "win" in Iraq.
The American people want none of these things, as evidenced by the 2006 elections and countless opnion polls, and the more the Republican party introduces them into the national debate the more they will be punished at the the ballot box.
Republican leaders seem to believe that what worked in 2000, 2002, 2004 will work again in 2008. They couldn't be more wrong. 2006 marked a fundamental shift on many issues that have defined the Republicans election strategy. If they fail to adapt to the new reality- and this image suggests they are failing- they could face a defeat in 2008 more humilating and definiite than the one this image seeks to mock.
The Assertions
This image makes a number of cheap insults and assertions about the Democratic Party.
- The use of the word "Democrat" as opposed to "Democratic" is a minor disrespect that President Bush and Congressional leaders have taken to repeating. The party prefers to be called "The Democratic Party" and the phrase "Demorat Party" has always been considered an insult. According to Harold Stassen, one of its early adopters, it originated out of the idea that the party is in no way small-d democratic.
- The use of the word "socialist" to describe the Democrats is an attempt to link the Democratic Party with the ideas of Karl Marx,the decendent movement of socialism, and perhaps by extension (because "socialism" and "communisim" are often used interchangably in the United States) the advance of communism. The use of the Red Star and the Hammer and Sickle symbols reinforce the same assertion.
- The background picture upon which this all is pasted is the iconic photograph by Hubert Van Es of the Fall of Saigon.The assertaion here is that the Democratic Party is keen to surrender to our enemies and is all too willing to accept defeat in our current Vietnam, Iraq.
- The striped pattern of the image is clearly taken from the Ensign of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Puzzling as it is I believe the assertion is again that Democrats want to surrender to the enemy.
The Facts
None of these accusations stand up to even light scrutiny.
1- The term "Democrat Party" supposedly originated because in the early twentieth centuries the party was controlled by local political machines and party bosses. The party structure itself was undemocratic, and thus the argument went that the party shouldn't be called "Democratic" but "Democrat".
Even when this allegation has some truth to it, it was only true in regards to the party's internal process and not to its functioning within the constitutional system of the United States. Niether major party has ever been anti-democratic in the sense of opposing democracy, and besides the internal workings of the Democratic Party is today more democratic than the Republican Party, as the recent experience of Joe Lieberman can attest.
2- The linkage of the Democratic Party to socialist and communist themes has been a common intellectual fraud of the Republicans over the years.
Insofar as true socialists and communists have existed on the American politial spectrum they have always been outside of the Democratic Party.
Eugene Debs, the most succesful socialist politian in American history ran under the Socialist Party of America banner. Today American socialists find refuge in the Democratic Socialists of America Niether had or has any links to the Democratic Party, and socialist forces in America have declined preciptiously after World War Two to the point of being non-existant.
Some critics point to The New Deal of being Socialist-influenced. But although one may find isolated examples of socialists in the Roosevelt administration, the intelectual underpinnings of the New Deal was much more Keynesian Economics than Marxist thought.
The battle between the parties today on economic issues still remains largely a battle between Keynesian and Neo-Classical versions of capitalist economics, and even the Democratic Party bears the heavy influence of the Neo-Classicalists with the legacy of Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin.
Yes, yes the Democratic Senate majority hangs upon the vote of one self-desribed Socialist.
It also hangs on the vote of one deeply religious warmonger from Conn.
Niether are in the mainstream of the Demoratic Party.
3-
This photo is often said to be of Americans being evacuated from the American embassy in Saigon as Viet-Cong forces decended on the city.
In fact it is a picture of an apartment building. The people being evacuated are all Vietnamese, presumably linked to the South Vietnam's government in some way.
Disregarding this common misconception- that one can only assume the Republicans are all too eager to propagate -, the photo has come to represent something to many Americans: surrender.
According to many people- Henry Kissenger being foremost among them- the Vietnam War was lost not in Vietnam, but in the homes of middle America. These people would have us believe that if only Americans had prayed a little harder for their troops overseas a miraculous victory would have been won. In this version of history the heroic American soilder was perfectly poised for victory in Vietnam. But the American people called it quits.
Bullshit.
First, we lost in Vietnam because of the Vietnamese people who didn't support us being there, not becuase of the Americans back home. Although many South Vietnamese genuinely prefered an independent state, many others did not and most were indifferent. What the Vietnamese wanted most at that time was peace, and for many peace meant the American presence needed to go. The South Vietnamese population gradually came to accept the idea of peace equaling a unified Vietnam under Communist control and began to either aid the North or simply stop aiding America. Without local support our efforts there were doomed, which brgins us to our seond point.
Second, AMERICA CAN'T WIN EVERY WAR!. Yep sorry folks I said it. There are just some wars we don't have the capability of winning. A question to even the most hawkish of Republicans: Do you think that the United States would be able to invade and occupy China? India? Russia? Brazil? Do you really think its possible that an army of 1 million can defeat and occupy a country of 1.3 billion? If you don't than you admit to the reality that the United States cannot win EVERY war. And Vietnam was such a case of a war the United States COULD NOT WIN. Take away the protesters. Take away the fall of public support. It doesn't matter. There was no way the US could sucessfully prop up the loosing side in a civil war on the Asian mainland. Everything from the terrain to nationaist sentiment was against it.
The American people realized this sooner than their leaders, and many pointless deaths were avoided by leaving Vietnam.
Today Vietnam has the fastest growing major economy in the world after China. As its standard of living rises, more democratic freedoms will be demanded by the people. And as happend in South Korea, Taiwan, and Malaysia democracy will come not at the barrel of a gun buy through the bayonet of capitalism.
The lessons of Vietnam were many, but first and foremost was perhaps the Powell Doctrine, which essentially says "If you start a war, make sure you can win".
That advice was ignored by this Republican President Bush and THAT's why were stuck losing the war in Iraq. It has nothing to do with Democrats not being supportive enough.
Oh and must I add that it was two Republican presidents- Richard Nixion and Gerald Ford- that presided over the withdrawal from Vietnam.
4-
It goes perhaps without saying that the Second World War was faught under two Democratic Presidents and that the Republican Party at the time was isolationist and anti-war.
Why an Imperal Japanese War flag should be associated with insulting Democrats is beyond me. Perhaps it has something to do with Rick Santorum's patented "Islamo-Fascist" phrase, which is equally rediculous.
Adding intrique to the inexplicable is the fact that the flag still serves as the symbol of the modern Japanese Navy, and Japan is one of our closest allies in the world.
What All This Means
In the 2000 elections, when Americans were bored and distracted, and in the 2002 and 2004 elections, when Americans were scared shitless- cheap tactics like acusing Al Gore of claiming to have invented the Internet and acusing Max Cleland of advocating surrender to the terrorists worked.
In 2006 both the hangover from the booming 90's and the shock from 9/11 had worn off and the Americans had the courage to face for the first time the challenges and choices of the 21 century.
They chose the Democrats.
The Republican response so far seems to be to continue the smear and jeer campaign that lost them the Congress in 2006. Rather than move to the center, which is where they lost nearly all their support last time around, the Republicans seem to be sticking to the same base strategy that Karl Rove used the past six years. And rather than focus on the battle reagions of the West and the Midwest, Republicans seem to be just fine sticking with thier Southern base. Hell, they even brought Trent Lott back.
The prevailing wisdom on the opposite side seems to be that 2006 was an abberation, that the base theory of politics is sound, and that the next two years Republicans should spend doing be more of the same.
What they don't realize is that the American people know George Bush's Republican Party and they don't like it. Nothing- not even the dreaded Democrats- could be worse than them at this point.
The last Republican Congress left with an approval rating hovering around 20 percent. Thier standard bearer in the oval office stands at around 30.
In the past six years the Republicans have ruined the public finances, invited the worst strategic defeat in history by engaging America in a Middle Eastern war it will most likely lose, alienated and isolated diplomatic allies around the world, ignored the looming existental threat of climate change, done nothing about the most important national security issue of our generation- energy independence, allowed China to increase its influene abroad, allowed poverty to increase at home, failed to capture Osama Bin Laden, suceeded in taking away our civil liberties, increased the size of government more than anyone since Johnson while trying to decrease social security, reduced money for college tuition while giving away money to oil companies, and- lest we forget-accomplished all of this while working the fewest combined days of any president and congress in history.
If Republians think that after all this that tarring Democrats with poorly reserched Cold War era epithets (rather than moving to the center) will make them electable again, then more power to them.
Blaming the Democrats for what the electorate clearly views as Republican failures will only come off as avoiding responsibility. Taking the example of Iraq, if American citizens have to be airlifted off of rooftops in a complete withdrawal, this failure won't be because the Democrats who may or may not have hastened the day, but of Republican George Bush who decided to persecute this idiotic war in the first place.
Just like the phrase "stay the course" has turned from a Republican mantra to a Demoratic taunt so too will the cries of "Defeatocrats" and "Surrender Monkeys" which only serve to remind the public that "defeat" and "surrender" are options only because of the way the Republican Bush has handled the war.
57% of Americans want the troops out this year.
So go ahead you Red-State Republicans give us your worst.
I'd rather like to have a super-majority in the Senate.