For decades, Republicans have successfully mass-marketed a core fallacy: that so-called "liberal" values and government policies are the root cause of America's problems, and that replacing them with so-called "conservative" values and government policies is the cure.
Their strategy influenced millions of swing voters and has sustaining right-wing poltical gains for two decades. With Foleygate, that core assertion has reached a tipping point and triggered a nuclear meltdown.
It finally is being exposed as a nothing more than an insidious cover-up strategy to conceal the corrupt, venal and depraved group of sociopaths who comprise today's right-wing Republican Party. If we do our part, we'll win in November and reclaim American political discourse for a generation.
The GOP Morality Meltdown
It has been the Republican Right's core argument: if an individual ascribes to so-called "conservative" beliefs, he will behave more honestly, ethically, and morally; if the individual ascribes to so-called "liberal" values, he will behave dishonestly, unethically and immorally. Similarly, they claimed, if America elects "conservative" politicians who enact "conservative" policies, we will cure all the social ills caused by decades of "liberal" policies from "liberal" politicians.
Divorce on the rise? That's because "liberal" ideas like feminism and birth control taught women to leave their husbands and children for careers and carousing. Teen pregnancy increasing? That's becuase "liberal" welfare programs and TV shows like Murphy Brown encourage girls to get pregnant for the welfare checks. Husbands cheating on their wives? Blame the "liberal" sexual revolution & sex education classes that preach "if it feels good do it." Youth gang killings? Blame "liberal" tolerance of drugs and laziness among affirmative-action-dependent minorities.
The Right's media campaign to turn "liberalism" into a dirty word has included blaming so-called "liberal" policies and individuals for everything from the high school drop-out rate to the AIDS epidemic to losing the Vietnam War. Their mass-marketing of this worldview has been relentless, tribalistic, and freakishly devoid of facts, to wit:
● When Susan Smith drowned her two children, Newt Gingrich made it a partisan campaign issue saying, "I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things... The only way you get change is to vote Republican. That's the message for the last three days.''
● When conservative Catholic officials and priests around the world were exposed in a child rape cover-up scandal, Rick Santorum blamed "academic, political and cultural liberalism."
● Rush Limbaugh responded to a report on obesity in America claiming, "I think you might then say that the obesity crisis could be the fault of government, liberal government. Food stamps, all those... It's sort of a textbook case of what happens when we let liberals have their way.
● Even after right-wing fundamentalists attacked America on 9/11, Jerry Falwell & Pat Robertson blamed liberal groups and policies, saying America "deserved" to be attacked.
Examples like these over the past 20 years are innumerable and ubiquitous because the Republicans made a systematic effort to place this liberal-conservative fallacy at the center of their political strategy (Newt Gingrich summarized The Right's goal to portray Democrats as "the enemy of normal Americans.").
The Right-Wing Noise Machine has so thoroughly saturated the media stream with these grotesque tribal caricatures for so long that many Americans have passively come to accept them without question. Many Republican TV & radio ads over the past fifteen years have had to say little more than, "Democrat Smith --too liberal on welfare cheats. Democrat Smith --too liberal for Kansas..."
But Foleygate is a tipping point, not just for this election cycle but for the legitimacy of the entire premise upon which post-sixties Republican Right conservatism was built.
After Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, Bob Ney, Tommy Noe, Tom DeLay, Conrad Burns, Bernie Kerik, Randy Kuhl, Ron Sherwood, Claude Allen, Dr. W. David Hager, Ralph Reed, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Armstrong Williams, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Bennett, Bill Janklow, Scooter Libby, Phil Giordano, Michael Brown, John Rowland, Kenny Boy Lay, the Corrupt Bastards Club, George Ryan, etc, even the casual observer of politics can see that right-wing conservatives in general --Republicans in particular-- are demonstrably as or more corrupt, dishonest, perverted, unethical, immoral and sociopathic than any other segment of society.
Republicans and conservatives who now try claiming moral superiority come-off like the Soviet media while Communism collapsed --their grandiose claims of imminent global triumph over capitalism were simply ignored by average people standing in cues and walking through crumbling neighborhoods.
Not since the days of Nixon has the public image of conservatism been so completely overhwlemed by pervasive corruption, scandal and sleaze.
Seize the Moment
Most of us who follow poltics have been well-aware of the rank phoniness of The Right's claim to moral superiority --and shocked by Democrats' and the corporate media's longstanding unwillingness to call bullshit on it. But the parade of Bush-era scandals present an historic opportunity to speak truth to power, free the larger citizenry from The Right's bogus liberal-conservatve stereotypes, and reform our political discourse.
If we don't, Republicans' superior Noise Machine will quickly re-impose Newt's enemy-of-normal-Americans frame, within which it is nearly impossible to win national elections. Key Recommendations:
1. It's The Right-Wing Conservatism, Stupid -- desperate to protect the illusion of conservative moral superiority, Republicans already are using the "Bad Apple" and "Everybody Does It" defense, blaming Foley's behavior on his individual defects that are supposedly unique to Foley and atypical of conservative Republicans. They're also careful to note that Democrats like Mel Reynolds have had sex scandals with minors too.
Our task is to remind people that the problem isn't Foley, the problem is the right-Wing conservative values of the Bush-Abramoff-Foley Republican Party.
Foley is neither atypical nor an isolated incident. Indeed, he is just another symptom of the Republican Culture of Corruption, conservative arrogance, and right-wing hypocrisy cultivated by Tom DeLay, Dennis Hastert, Karl Rove, Duke Cunningham, Dick Cheney and the Religious Right. If we let the Republicans define Foleygate as an individual problem (which they're already doing), they can claim it has been fixed simply by eliminating Foley.
...And that's what makes them objectively more hypocritcal, more dishonest and sleazier than progressives: unlike Democrats, they claim to be the exclusive political incarnation of morality and "Family Values" in America (don't even get me started on the hypocrisy of Clinton Impeachment Nazis like Henry Hyde, Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, Helen Chenoweth, and Strom Thurmond).
2. Conservative Republicans are Worse than Progressives & Democrats -- Aware that their illusion of moral superiority is evaporating, Republicans already are frantically trying to spin the public from concluding they are more corrupt than Democrats. Newt Gingrich is insisting that Democratic sex scandals are worse; Rep. Cole of Oklahama asserted that Democrats who "defended Gerry Studds and Bill Clinton" are hypocrites if they criticize the GOP for Foley.
We must stop them in their tracks, and we have the facts on our side to do it.
Apart from the criminal nature of Foley's actions and the age of his victims, there is one key distinction we must highlght above all others: Republicans, not Democrats are the ones who claim to be morally superior.
It's right-wing Republicans who claim that their so-called "conservative values" and political ideology place them above this sort of sleazy behavior. It is right-wing Republicans who say, "vote for us morally superior conservatives or Democrats and their liberal values will foster corruption and perversion among our youth."
Democrats and progressives hold individuals reposnsible for their actions; they don't go around saying that membership in a poltical tribe determines your morality.
Of course, any honest journalist should ask Newt why he has any credibility on this subject given his his extra-marital affair with a Congressional aide 23 years his junior during the Clinton Impeachment...
3. Hit 'em with the List -- As Republicans try to deflect attention from Foley by citing Barney Frank, Bill Clinton and Gerry Studds, we must neutralize them with The List. The List is a run-down of all the conservatives and Republicans who have been busted for criminal acts, corruption, and sex scandals over the past decade (such as those I cited above).
When reviewing The List, it is critical to tell note that:
Conservative Republicans simply engage in more corruption and sexual misdeeds than Democrats. Whether you count the sheer number of cases, or look at the extent of their abuse Republicans have reached new lows in sleaze...
and the thing about these Republicans is, they attack other people with their moral superiority while they engage in the same or worse criminal behavior themselves.
Then review the list, starting with the most egregious offenders like Foley, child rapist Philip Giordano, abuser Ron Sherwood, convicts Duke Cunningham & Jack Abramoff, sodomist Dr. David Hagar, racist Strom Thurmond, and the incestuous George Roche.
Where possible, note when these miscreants broke records or achieved new lows, such as Cunningham's bribery menu and record criminal sentence, Thurmond's segregationist campaigns while hiding a mixed-race daughter, Brian Doyle soliciting a minor for sex from his DHS computer, Kerik using a ground zero apartment for secret trysts, etc.
4. Depraved Repubicans are Hiding Behind Moral Attacks -- There is one final point to make as we set the record straight, and it should neutralize The Right's ability to attack the morality of Democrats: We must call-out Republican moralizing as nothing more than a calculated cover-up for conservatives to commit corrupt, immoral and criminal acts. Example:
Foley and all these Republican scandals prove that all these Republican attacks on other people's morality, especially Democrats, is nothing but BS. It's a con job and a cover-up strategy to conceal all their own sleaze that is as bad or worse than what they accuse their enemies of doing.
The Republicans are a bunch of Jimmy Swaggerts, making a career of sermonizing about other people's perversions in between visitis to the brothel.
We're fighting an uphill battle today because progressives failed to challenge right-wing propaganda and spin two decades ago. Now we have a rare, brief window of opportunity to set things right. All hands on deck!