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The meme that seems to be developing over the past weeks is this: "Americans want the politicans to reach accross the partisan divide and work together." NPR is running a series on reaching accross such divides all this week.
Notice the persumption in that meme: that what brought us to the present political trainwreck was the failure of ALL politicans to reach accross the great divide and extend a hand of cooperation toward our common goal - the well being of the American people.
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If you make yourself a sheep, the wolves will eat you - B. Franklin and Democracy for Houston
Crossposted at Texas Kaos.
That is patent nonsense. Here is how I read the political history of the last quarter century. Democrats grew fat and sassy in their mandate. They lost contact with the ordinary people and causes that they were elected to serve. they forgot to talk the lanaguage of the common good and to govern from that high ground.
Along came the movement conservatives and St. Ronnie was their spokesman . He proclaimed a Great Awakening, a call to return to true Conserative American values. The Democrats were in no position to offer a compelling countervision. So St. Ronnie proclaimed the halycon days , the return of American Conservatism as the governing ideology, replacing that bad old New Deal Liberalism. He, of course added his own unique fabricated mythologies to the common discourse and these became holy writ. We can thank him for "welfare queens" and the for the deadly {think New Orleans) motto:"Government is not the solution, it is the problem..."
Fast forward to 1994. Newt Gringrich , after a decade of take no prisioners, leave no bomb unthrown political agitation , returns the Republicans to legislative ascendcy. He does so , not by trying to be bipartisan ( called date rape by our friend Grove Norquist), but by making sure that the governing process fails and that the Democrats get blamed.
Newt , with the aid of our lapdog MSM, establishes in the popular mind the meme that all politicans are evil. Only outsiders of pure , Conservative heart can be trusted. So, such luminaries as Sonny Bono (What does the Constitution have to do with it?) come to office for a season. They promise reform and that they will ride off into the sunset after that is accomlished. They fulfill neiher promise. They fail at reform in particular because they share a common disease - they hate government. The revolution was now compelete, at both ends of Capital Hill the "conservatives" were in control. Tom Delay , Newt's heir apparent, continues what Newt, caught in the net of his own greed and appetities, cannot . Tom's motto, as published in his manuel to the troops of the last Congress was this: "Politics is War continued by other means." No much bipartisan outreach in that sentiment, is there?
Now, fast forward again. The methods first developed by Newt are refined and taken to their logical conclusion by Karl Rove. As consequence, the Conservative governing ideology finds its ultimate expression in the Presidency of George W. Bush. We are treated to the soothing nihilisms of Grover Norquist (I want it [government] to be so small I could drown it in the bath tub) and the constant "bipartisan" drumbeat of Fox News.
Finally, under the triple blows of 9-11 and Katrina and Rita it soon becomes obvious that these guys , using this philopsohy, can't govern. They are really what they appear - political nihilist. Worse their revolution has been co-opted by the "Neo-Con" wing of thier party who now convince George and the boys government DOES have one purpose: making war, enabling self-appointed elitists to remake America, to remake the world in their image. This is war no only aboard, but also at home, waged upon our Constitution, our civil liberities , our traditional system of checks and balances.
The vision they pursue , of course, is drawn purely from their ivory tower wet dreams. But , in light of the increasing evidence of the inepetitude of the other wings of the ideology, these guys are now the only game in town. Even the older , more "responsible" conservatives are appalled. They are , however, impotent to stop the emerging disaster which their embrace of St. Ronnie's pleasant confabulations help set in motion.
Where , in any of that is a failure of bipartisanship on the part of the Democrats, of progressives in general, part of the problem? Was I off planet for such moments? In fact, it was the Democrats failure to understand that the rules of the political game had changed (there were now no rules) that turned a tyical cyclic reversal of political forutunes into the disaster we now face.
Which brings me to my final point. If , in our efforts to right the ship of state, we fail to remind, to brand upon the popular consciousness these simple truths of recent history, we will end up repeating this insantity within a generation. If we allow the Neo-Cons and all their enabling brethren including the "movement conseratives" to slip responsiblity for bloody diaster they have wrought then we deserve to have this all repeated again.
While Democrats must talk the soothing langauge of bipartisanship and make nice with these guys, we must make sure that the history of the past quarter century does not disappear down an Orwellian memory hole.
Our meme, our story as we struggle to right the ship of state has to include three elements, endlessly repeated:
Conservatives can't govern.
Government is a necessary tool of the common good.
Democrats (Progressives) can be trusted to wield the powers of govenment in pursuit of the common good.
The motto of TexasKaos sums up what really happened to Texas and the nation between 1980 and now:
A bunch of thieves, thugs, and nutcases took over Texas. Then they used it as a stepping stone to Washington, DC.
They raided our treasury, stripped our schools and handed it all to their corporate cronies.