So, the news breaks that Phil Gramm is "resigning" as John McCain’s economic advisor. And like all members of his Corruptionist Party he whines as he leaves the spotlight for the shadows.
In truth, he isn’t going anywhere. It is a play for the rubes in the cheep seats and the well-trained media sycophants who make up McCain’s "base". McCain can no more quit Gramm than he can quit Bush or quit his very long record of enabling and protecting corruption in politics. Despite a well crafted myth to the contrary, Curveball McCain is running to continue the policies of Gramm, Bush, Gingrich, DeLay, Norquist, Abramoff, Black and the long, long list of Republican grifters who have built their identity, careers and livelihood on the destruction of our Constitution and our Government.
Together, they are The Wrecking Crew and they must be stopped.
To the jump...
Since at least the 1960s, the correct word to describe the modern Republican Party and the Conservative Movement in the United States is Corruptionist and the roots of the corruptionist tendencies of the American Conservative movement go back at least to the war profiteers of the Civil War.
McCain likes to model himself after Teddy Roosevelt and according to legendary Muckracker Upton Sinclair (who was born in Baltimore where I live and sit tonight) there may be similarities between the two. In his 1927 book Money Writes Sinclair looked back on the TR era as one of hype wrapped in a patina of reform:
The "muckraking era" culminated in the efforts of the "progressives" to elect Theodore Roosevelt president in 1912. It wouldn’t have done any good, because Roosevelt, while he talked like a crusader, always acted as a "practical man"—so he described himself in a letter to Herriman, begging campaign funds from that super-corruptionist. But the idealists gathered in the convention, and sang hymes and went out to battle for the Lord. Their enemies laughed at them, for by the that time every great magazine that stood for the public welfare had been either bought up or driven into bankruptcy, and there was no longer any way to reach the great mass of people; there has not been from that day to this, and there never will be again until the workers and farmers have united to forge themselves a weapon of deliverance.
FDR and the depression would give the people a weapon to push back the Corruptionist Party and for a few decades in the last century Unions grew and so did a strong middle class. FDR called the best and the brightest to service. Through 1968 the Federal Government worked to serve the people with fairness and competence. There were successes and failures, but there was always movement towards a more just society. In time, this led to confronting the ugly legacies of our Nation: racism, sexism, poverty and environmental destruction.
This drove the Corruptionist Party crazy with anger and outrage. This Government "of the People, by the People and for the People" crap had to end. With their true goals so widely unpopular, they decided to cloak their attack on the progressive gains of the FDR era in populist rhetoric. They morphed themselves into the "champions" of the common man. They carefully crafted their rhetoric. They developed spin and myths to exploit wedge issues. And, as thereisnospoon points out in his excellent Diary, the Civil Rights movement provided them with the Mother of All Wedge Issues. Over the last forty years, they have exploited wedge after wedge to weaken and divide this Nation. In the process they have created an industry dedicated to the capture of the government of the United States and the destruction of all functions that do not serve the bottom line of their corporate masters.
This web of deceit, greed and corruption is exposed in the new book by Thomas Frank, "The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule".
It will come out on August 5 and this is one that you should have on pre-order. I have read an advance copy and I highly recommend it. (The August issue of Harper’s Magazine has an essay adapted from the book and it is a great read as well).
Some years ago, Thomas Frank wrote What’s the Matter with Kansas, a book that helped Democrats re-learn how to compete in those Red States and more than that, it exposed the blatant hypocrisy and lies of the modern Conservative movement.
In his new book, Frank digs deeper and exposes the Right as a gang of Corruptionists destroying America for fun and profit. They have turned scandal and incompetence into a profitable growth industry. They have captured every agency of the Federal Government and spent decades destroying them as agents of change for the common good. The orriginal purpose of every law, regulation and agency created since 1932 has been perverted. When Conservatives are in charge things break, incompetence is useful, debts skyrocket, fear is encouraged and cynicism is rewarded. Failure of government is the goal and a profit center for the weasels of the Right.
For more than forty years these Corruptionists have been selling a myth articulated by Ronald Reagan:
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
This has always been bullshit, but the GOP "populist" hype offensive has sold this idea to America. Now, it is almost a common wisdom that government always fails and is always incompetent. It is safe to say that many "progressives" who read the Reagan quote will nod in agreement with the old actor. I’ve read many Diaries on Daily Kos that seem to have bought the hype that the government is "the problem".
Shake it off.
The Government can help and we should expect it to do so.
A big part of our task in taking back this Country is restoring honor to public service and exposing the cynicism of the Republican Corruptionist Party and their sycophants in the media. The problem is not the government. The problem is that Conservatives have been in charge for most of the last forty years.
Here are the words that every American should fear and revile:
"I'm a Republican and I'm here to help."
Now that is scary. The conservative movement needs to be exposed as the elitist movement that it is. Does anybody really think that any member of George W. Bush’s Corruptionist Party has any interest in "helping" the "little guy"? Don’t make me laugh.
While New Orleans was flooding John McCain was eating cake with the worst President in American history (which would make Bush the Best President if you are a dedicated Corruptionist).
Let’s look at an example of the artificial "populism" of McCain’s Party. In his most recent column for the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Frank reviewed the "populism" of Phil Gramm:
When former Sen. Phil Gramm, who now serves as an economic adviser to John McCain, declared last week that Americans had become a "nation of whiners"—that we were scared of a recession that was only "mental"—what struck me was not so much the remark's meanness but its symbolic significance. This, historians will someday say, was the snarling end of an era in which our leaders believed that markets represented the very will of the people; that to serve one was to serve the other.
Although it seems hard to believe now, it once pleased the press to call Mr. Gramm a "populist." Long before he scolded the common man as a whiner, Mr. Gramm was widely thought to have the common touch himself. He was the sort of politician who could "connect with working people," he said in 1995, and he used to wax righteous about "the people who do the work and pay the taxes and pull the wagon." Mr. Gramm even came up with his own salt-of-the-earth everyman to champion: one Dickey Flatt, a printer in Texas, whose tax burden had to be weighed against the cost of any federal program before it won Sen. Gramm's judicious nod. [snip]
Mr. Gramm invoked the long-suffering family farmer to demand the repeal of the estate tax. He fought New Deal banking rules not in order to clear the way for lucrative corporate mergers, but just to "make things simpler for anyone who has a checking account, car insurance or a share of stock." Subprime lending itself he defended as "one of the blessings" of prosperity, which blessings he illustrated with the story of his own hardworking mother, who had to accept a higher rate for her mortgage but who still paid it off on time.
Since the age-old longing of dirt farmers everywhere was deregulated financial markets, Mr. Gramm gave the people what they wanted. His Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 allowed investment banks to merge with commercial banks and insurance companies. And he helped craft the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which allowed energy trading to go unregulated, making possible certain of Enron's amazing escapades the following year. It also sanctioned an unregulated market in credit default swaps, the financial derivatives that may be the next act in the ongoing credit-market tragedy. [snip]
His former constituents, meanwhile, strain to pull a heavier wagon than ever before. And as they struggle, they can hear their down-home pal crack the whip and curse them for their idiocy. Suck it up, whiners! Giddyap!
Phil Gramm is a Super-Corruptionist and has been one for decades, but I could have easily focused on any number of McCain’s other advisors and courtiers. He has surrounded himself with a gang of thugs. With McCain, we will only get more of the same. And that means more corruption and more fiddling and inaction until the damage is beyond repair.
It was earlier this year when I first saw the term super-corruptionist in Frank’s WSJ column. And it was in this same column that he offered a clear roadmap for Progressives who want to use the 2008 Elections as an opportunity to strike at the heart of the corruptionist beast:
The comfortable course of action for Democrats will be merely to pocket the coming windfall, to burble about how they have lifted the curse of ideology from the land, to replace the current gang of free-marketeers with their own gang of free-marketeers, and to resume the merry triangulations of eight years ago. The ins will give way to the outs, and they will rule happily ever after . . . until the next culture war takes them by surprise and sweeps them again from their contented perch.
Another route is possible, though. If they are willing to go beyond the regal rhetoric of post-partisanship, Democrats might find that they are, for the first time in decades, running against a philosophy of government that has utterly discredited itself. Should they choose to make 2008 a referendum on conservatism itself, they might deliver the knockout blow. They should start with the bad ideas that have delivered such disastrous consequences.
When I read that I smiled, because that is what we have to do.
We need to make the 2008 Election a Referendum on the Right—a Referendum on the effectiveness of conservatives controlling the levers of power. We need to call them out as the vile Corruptionist Party that they are.
It is time to take the fight to these bastards and force them to explain their corruption, their failure and the wide gap between the rhetoric and reality of their policies.
Only by exposing the myths, lies and intentional graft of the conservative movement can we deliver a well-deserved knock-out blow. The modern conservative movement is a failure and has earned a spot on the ash heap of history next to the other failed forms of tyranny.
This is a struggle. It is a fight and we have a lot at stake. The words of Upton Sinclair from 1927 could have easily been written in 2003 about us:
Their enemies laughed at them, for by the that time every great magazine that stood for the public welfare had been either bought up or driven into bankruptcy, and there was no longer any way to reach the great mass of people; there has not been from that day to this, and there never will be again until the workers and farmers have united to forge themselves a weapon of deliverance.
But, they may not be true now. Tonight, we are uniting to forge a weapon of deliverance. In Austin, the Netroots are gathering and those of us who can not be there stand with you. And all across the Nation people are fired up and ready to go. They are working, organizing and getting ready for November. They are excited, passionate and serious. A lot is at stake. We have a Nation and a planet to save. This election is a step towards that goal, and then the real work will begin.
It will take decades to repair the damage left in the wake of the last decade. Everything we can do to make "Republican" and "Conservative" and "Bush’ and McCain" an insult will help. The time has come to deliver a knock out blow. The time has come to attack and expose modern Conservative movement for what they are: the Corruptionist Party, a political movement dedicated to encouraging and protecting corrupt practices in all aspects of public life.
It is time to grab a big broom and sweep these bums out.
Cheers
(and if you are there, have a blast in Austin...)