Let's face it - the conservative agenda is not fairing well, the value of Republican stock seems to be tanking along with Bush's poll figures.
The Republicans seem to be in a bit of a sweat, and who could blame them? The last few years have seen a few too many scandals. Republican politicians and conservative pundits alike must wonder if they will stand in unemployment lines after the '09 elections, and that possibility has to be stressful in the lives of conservatives everywhere. It has been one thing after another for some time: the lucrative Abramoff K-Street scheme blew up in the face of the Republican Party; there was the Katriana fiasco; the Foley scandal broke; the war is not going well - to say the least; the profiteering fraud of corporate Bush cronies has become common knowledge along with a soaring deficit; a number of Republican politicians have been found guilty or are facing indictment, the Walter Reed scandal helped not a whit; Valerie Plame made a credible witness before congress; the U.S. attorney scandal grabbed the nation's attention; the D.C. madam named NAMES!; and lastly, nearly unforgiveably, there came the Wolfowitz scandal and his forced resignation. Time has come to circle the wagons.
Republican primary candidates are doing what they can to restore and preserve the Republican image. The candidates at last week's debate made so many echoing references to President Reagan because Republican voters still perceive Reagan as a man of integrity and so they burnished the now tarnished image of the GOP with old grease. (Reagan's memory remains inexplicitly unsullied in spite of the Iran-Contra fiasco, because Republican voters have: a.) forgotten it, or b.) never bothered to read anything about it, or c. I suppose it's possible they just didn't understand that the Iran-Contra scandal was primarily an undemocratic and unconstitutional infraction which skirted congress.)
We have seen that Republican candidates have harkened back to the Reagan era in order to distance themselves from the Bush Administration's somewhat sullied reputation; what however are the conservative pundits doing to help restore luster to the muddied old elephant's hide?
I think Sarah Baxter in yesterday's (May 20th) Sunday Times wrote an exceptionally moving piece in defense of poor victimized Wolfowitz: "Decline and fall of the neocons". In Sarah's opinion piece she made a valiant effort to come to the defense of Wolfie. Just read how he has been maligned - it's enough to make even the most hard hearted and partisan Democrat weep:
Paul Wolfowitz's departure from the World Bank signals the end of an ideological era in Washington....his ousting can also be read as a tale in which the vaunted international community would prefer the World Bank to allow rampant corruption to flourish in developing nations than see a reviled neocon succeed as its president – just as there are plenty of opponents of the Iraq war who would rather let a murderous civil war rip than give Bush the satisfaction of seeing democracy take root in place of a dreaded tyranny. In their own way they are both uncomfortable versions of the truth....
... Wolfowitz regarded the bank as a bloated bureaucracy whose financial loans to developing nations were being undermined by chronic corruption and graft. But he felt genuinely motivated to help countries to lift themselves out of poverty.
You can see why reading Sarah's article managed to tweek my conscience. I confess, after reading Sarah's article, I hung my head in sorrow and remorse. I had obviously been too gleeful in watching poor Wolfie'S fall from grace. The poor, it seems, were welcome at this Wolf's door - not just his mistress - and his mercies were entirely tender towards both. I might have retained a new appreciation for Wolfowitz as a defender and a crusader for the poor people of the world - IF there wasn't another very interesting news article which I came across yesterday. A Project Censored article presented a somewhat different picture of how Wolfowitz tenure at the World Bank directly impacted the poor of at least one country - Palsestine. Wolfowitz found a creative means by which to fund the wall's check points in spite of the fact that the International Court of Justice has determined that the wall is illegal. That might be why the World Bank had never before helped Israel deal with the cost of security points along the wall - not that is until Wolfowitz became president previous constraints were thrown to the winds. I may be the only one who has managed to miss this story, but just in case I'm not here's what I discovered at Project Censored
The World Bank has meanwhile outlined the framework for a Palestinian Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) policy in their most recent report on Palestine published in December of 2004, "Stagnation or Revival: Israeli Disengagement and Palestinian Economic Prospects."...
Central to World Bank proposals are the construction of massive industrial zones to be financed by the World Bank and other donors and controlled by the Israeli Occupation. Built on Palestinian land around the Wall, these industrial zones are envisaged as forming the basis of export-orientated economic development. Palestinians imprisoned by the Wall and dispossessed of land can be put to work for low wages....
The post-Wall MEFTA vision includes complete control over Palestinian movement. The report proposes high-tech military gates and checkpoints along the Wall, through which Palestinians and exports can be conveniently transported and controlled. A supplemental "transfer system" of walled roads and tunnels will allow Palestinian workers to be funneled to their jobs, while being simultaneously denied access to their land. Sweatshops will be one of very few possibilities of earning a living for Palestinians confined to disparate ghettos throughout the West Bank. The World Bank .... The World Bank explicitly states that current wages of Palestinians are too high for the region and "compromise the international competitiveness" even though wages are only a quarter of the average in Israel....Israel is not eligible for World Bank lending because of its high per capita income, but Palestine is.