The spiral of fanaticism in the Republican Party, fueled by big money

I don't know who said it first, but I got it from Digby. "It" is that when Republicans lose elections, they respond by trying to become more Republican. When the Democrats lose elections, they respond the same way - by trying to become more Republican.

Those related phenemena have created a destructive cycle that will not be broken in any way that our Pod Pundit worshipers of Holy Centrism are willing to imagine. Charlie Pierce today writes in What Happened In Texas Is a Running Off the Rails Esquire Politics Blog 08/01/2012, including a clever reference to Jack Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech:

There are those innocent souls who believe that the current raging extremism that is driving the Republican party will run its course, like a fever, and then the party will take to its bed and return to cool reason, and to its role as an honest partner in the business of governing the Republic. Well, lass' sie nach Texas kommen, kids. They are going to continue to slake their thirst with salt water, and the rest of us are going to have to live with the delusions that follow. What happened in Texas was in every sense a "runoff." Something's gotten into the water supply for all of us.

Pierce writes of the Tea Party, which is really just the current marketing branding of the Republican voting base, "The Tea Party now has morphed into a movement made up solely of three elements: corporate money, television hucksters, and suckers."

And speaking of Digby, she recently posted about one big piece of how that "corporate money" factor works in Institutionalizing the buying of elections Hullabaloo 07/30/2012. She links to the cover story of the current Bloomberg Businessweek by Paul Barrett, Karl Rove: He's Back, Big Time 07/26/2012.

Digby includes a brief Jane Mayer video clarifying a point about our current campaign-finance mess and Digby explains:

I don't think most people know that Super PACs must disclose their donors. Perhaps what's more interesting is that Super PAC donors don't seem to mind having their names associated with the Super PAC. It's as if they want people to know they are buying political influence. Those people are a different breed of millionaire.

But they aren't alone, they are just the most obvious. The 501c4s that Jane Mayer talks about really are secretive and they are powerful.

The Barrett article is largely a Karl Rove puff piece, and is a good example of the problem with the current incarnation of Businessweek. Their quality has improved since the first months of Bloomberg's ownership. This issue contains some really good articles. But the Barrett piece is more along the lines of the stock business articles praising the brilliant CEO, largely using the company's own spin. In this case, Rove standing in for the CEO, and the company being his unofficial shadow "holding company" operation (my words, not Barrett's) for his legally independent political financing operations.

But I agree with Digby that this one is particularly interesting, not least because it gives so much of Rove's preferred spin. And Barrett does include some more substantial reporting as well. On the spin side, Barrett gives prominent play to Rove's the-Democrats-started-it message on the origin of the legal vehicles on which Rove is currently relying in his campaign-financing operation. As Digby explains - and Barrett doesn't:

Rove explains that Democrats were the first to seriously use this vehicle, which is true, but liberal donors lost interest after 2004 and the 2008 Obama campaign actively discouraged them. The Republicans are nothing if not quick studies in the art of pumping vast sums of money into the system and they always know how to institutionalize it.

Would it have been too much for Barrett to contact someone who knows about this stuff and get a straightforward explanation like that?

I don't mean to imply that Barrett is doing hack work, he's not. After first noting Rove's the-mean-Democrats-started-it whine, Barrett writes:

[Rove's] Crossroads operation is way out in front this election cycle. Along with the billionaire Koch brothers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and other conservative allies, the Crossroads-led offensive is collectively poised to spend more than $1 billion on the 2012 elections, according to Republican operatives. That’s roughly twice—repeat: twice — what Democrats expect to spend by means of their super PACs and social welfare groups.

Social welfare groups, you say? Well, yes, as Barrett explains:

In the strange realm of campaign finance, the Internal Revenue Service classifies [Rove's] Crossroads GPS as a nonprofit, nonpolitical "social welfare" organization — a 501(c)(4) in tax code parlance — that does not have to identify its backers. Crossroads GPS channels money into "issue" advertisements, which implicitly, but not very subtly, attack Obama and other Democrats. Perhaps you’ve seen one on cable television: "It wasn't supposed to be this way," a mournful-sounding female narrator intoned in one weeklong, $8 million campaign GPS ran in mid-July in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and six other hotly contested states. "Over three years with crushing unemployment; American manufacturing shrinking again," the ad continued. "President Obama’s plan: spend more. He’s added over $4 billion in debt every day. The economy is slowing, but our debt keeps growing."

To maintain its supporters' anonymity, a social welfare group like GPS must not have a "primary purpose" of a political nature, and it cannot coordinate strategy with candidates. In an election season, however, only a very naïve or obtuse viewer would miss the point of the organization’s prolific ads. [my emphasis]

Barret also discusses ways in which the independence that SuperPACs and "social welfare organizations" are legally required to keep from the formal campaign is largely a fiction. Instead of money being dropped off in public places in discreet paper bags, the campaigns now just have to quietly pass signals to the unofficial campaign organizations on what to do, maintaining only the most formal plausible deniability. (And anyone like me and like most of us not steeped in the details of campaign law could easily wonder whether the campaigns are even making that much effort to pretend that they are following the law.)

These trends are stronger in the Republican Party, but are also dominant among the Democrats. These financing vehicles could potentially be used to turn the formal Party organizations into little more that shell organizations. When Andrew Jackson and his supporters talked about the Money Power, they were referring in particular to the Bank of the United States of that time, though the Jacksonians were happy to be "uncivil" enough to use it in more general class terms as well. Barrett's articles shows a large example of how today's Money Power, aka, the One Percent, are currently going about purchasing the Congress, the Presidency and (less directly) the federal courts.

Tags: 2012 election, karl rove

Unconditional surrender in the Second World War

The Big Three: it wasn't such an easy alliance, but it won the Second World War

I've written before about how dysfunctional the prevailing Republican notion of "victory" in warfare seems to be. The US initially achieved that kind of Victory in Iraq: the enemy government was completely overthrown and the enemy country made completely subject to American occupation.

Given the aftermath of that Victory, an aftermath for which there is no end in sight, it's certainly worth asking just what we actually win with a Victory like that.

One of the most important influences on that notion was the policy of "unconditional surrender" that the United Nations insisted upon. The "United Nations" side was Our Side, with the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain being the heaviest hitters of the alliance.

John Chase took a lot back at that policy in Unconditional Surrender Reconsidered Political Science Quarterly June 1955 (behind subscription, except for the first page; some public libraries make access available to patrons online).

Diplomacy of unconditional surrender

Chase traces the actual development of the concept. It was US President Franklin Roosevelt who insisted on the formula, which was eventually agreed upon by Britain's Winston Churchill and the USSR's Josef Stalin. American psychological-warfare specialists were concerned that the unconditional-surrender policy might prolong the war by making the main enemies fight more desperately. Chase writes:

Since the President insisted on retention of the policy over so much opposition, it seems clear that in his own mind it must have served some very basic function, or have entailed some very definite advantages. Careful analysis of the available records indicates that the slogan did, in fact, have such a basic function in the over-all development of American policy, and there were very considerable advantages in it from the President's point of view. The main function, briefly stated, was to impose a damper on premature discussion of the post-war settlement, and the advantages related to three areas, the existing German government and the German people, the policy of the Soviet government, and the attitude of the American people toward the winning of the war.

On the one hand, Roosevelt wanted to avoid proposals like Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points in the First World War. Roosevelt's assessment was that such a thing might lead enemies to expect an overly conciliatory attitude on the part of the Allies. He didn't want a policy which offered "any magnanimous gesture in advance of unconditional surrender "that "the Germans would misconstrue as a sign of weakness", writes Chase.

Yet Chase argues that, at the same time, Roosevelt intended for the policy to convey a strong possibility of generous treatment for the defeated populations. He told his Secretary of State Cordell Hull:

In our uncompromising policy we mean no harm to the common people of the Axis nations. But we do mean to impose punishment and retribution in full upon their guilty, barbaric leaders.

Chase sums up Roosevelt's concept of the effect of the unconditional surrender policy on Germany this way:

It seems clear, then, that so far as Germany was concerned the unconditional surrender policy was intended to inform the world - Germans, Americans, and everyone else - that the Allies would accept nothing less than the complete defeat of existing enemy governments, and would not bargain or compromise with them. Both the President and Mr. Churchill agreed on this, and both went out of their way to explain that this did not mean a policy of unnecessary harshness or vindictiveness toward the common people of the Axis nations.

Although I think the policy of unconditional surrender was the right one in that situation, the fact that it was appropriate in that situation does not make it into some general principle that the US should look to apply every time that US forces are engaged in hostile action. The Second World War was an historical experience, from which we can hopefully learn some constructive things. It was not a grand template drawn by a "Greatest Generation" for all American wars for all times and situations.

Chase makes an important point in connection with the effect of the policy on the German public, which is that the massive bombing of German cities (which occurred in Japan, as well) indicated to enemy civilians that they could expect rough treatment indeed from a victorious foe. He quotes Allen Dulles on the point:

Our propaganda consisted of the slogan "unconditional surrender," and was coupled with the bombing of German cities, high civilian casualties and the destruction of thousands of workers' dwellings. That this type of bombing came only from the west made a deep impression on the German masses who ascribed it to a deliberate difference in policy between East and West. They overlooked the fact that Russian aviation was not adapted to that type of bombing. (my emphasis)

Although it's not directly relevant to the unconditional surrender policy, I would note that by destroying not only civilian houses but civilian businesses, the bombing policy freed up large labor resources for use in the armaments industry, heavily offsetting the effects of one of the main aims of the "strategic bombing".

And whatever Churchill's reservations may have been about the unconditional surrender policy, he wound up concluding, "It is false to suggest that it prolonged the war. Negotiation with Hitler was impossible. He was a maniac with supreme power to play his hand out to the end, which he did; and so did we."

But agreeing with Churchill's judgment in that case, which I do, does not mean that every enemy is Hitler with the "supreme power to play his hand out to the end". Or that unconditional surrender is always and everywhere valid for all wars in which the United States participates.

In relation to the Soviet Union, the unconditional surrender policy served to keep the USSR in general and their leader Stalin in particular, reassured about the intentions of his Western allies to see through the war against Germany to a mutually acceptable end. Two matters made this especially necessary: Poland and the Second Front.

Churchill, the idol of the neoconservatives, actually was prepared in 1942 to agree that the Soviet Union could keep the portions of Poland it had divided with Germany in the secret protocols to the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939. Roosevelt, who the neocons regard as a vacillating compromiser in comparison to the Great Winston, blocked the deal.

Roosevelt did commit a blunder in rashly promising the Soviets that Britain and the US would open the Second Front in the West during 1943. Stalin was understandably disappointed to hear in 1943 that the Second Front would have to wait until 1944. Regardless of the nature of the Soviet regime, their country was bearing by far the brunt of the fighting against Germany with the related human costs.

Both issues were potential sources of distrust on the part of the Soviets. The policy of unconditional surrender functioned to reassure them and to keep the US-Britain-Soviet alliance intact, even to the point of the USSR joining the war against Japan. He does mention an interesting twist, which is that the Soviets raised questions about the unconditional surrender policy at the Teheran Conference in December, 1943:

Stalin endorsed the policy in his Order of the Day of May 1, 1943. Soviet objections to it were not voiced until the Teheran Conference. By that time, however, the Western Allies were fully committed to the opening of the western front, so that the Russians may well have figured that the policy had served its main immediate purpose. It is a notable fact that even at Teheran the Russian objections were based upon tactical considerations, and that their situation was in this respect less happy than that of the Western Allies, whose tactical problem was to convince the Germans of their deadly seriousness, not of their humaneness50 On the whole it can be said that at the time it was announced, and until the tactical, propaganda argument could seem more important, the Soviets accepted unconditional surrender as the President apparently hoped and felt they would. In this respect the policy was clearly successful, and achieved what it was designed to do. (my emphasis)

Unconditional surrender and national unity at home

Chase argues that the role Roosevelt saw for unconditional surrender in bolstering the US public's support for the war was intimately bound up with its purpose of cementing the alliance with Russia:

In the President's mind, unquestionably, preservation of American unity of opinion was an indispensable condition both of victory and of success in the peace to follow. The two major threats to this unity, as the President saw it, were: domestic indifference, arising from a failure to grasp the nature of the issues in this total war; and international resentment and hostility arising from a conflict of aims between the United States and, above all other Allies, the Soviet Union. In his address the President tried to deal with both these threats, explicitly and directly. He emphasized "our determination to fight this war through to the finish," and he stressed the preservation of unity between all the Allies as the indispensable condition of victory. Of course the two objectives were intimately related. Any relaxation of effort short of victory, on the home front, would result in disunity between the Allies; and any evidence of disunity - such as might arise from putting forward conflicting post-war aims - might well produce a relaxation of effort short of victory. (my emphasis)

That connection between the two major considerations should not be seen as simply a truism. The United Nations' prospects for victory against Germany and Japan was heavily dependent on an Allied effort. And, however Soviet policy before and after the war is evaluated, the Soviets did carry the heaviest burden among the Allies. The withdrawal or neutralization of the Soviet Union would have changed the military situation in a fundamental way.

It's worth noting that Roosevelt saw the chief danger to domestic support as public indifference, not treason by the opposition party. At the risk of mucking up my narrative on the historical experience, the current approach is so very different that it may require extra effort for Americans today to grasp that aspect of Roosevelt's view.

Joe Conason recently focused on the Karl Rove strategy of using the 9/11 attacks to promote partisan divisiveness, in A Master of Division Truthdig.com 08/16/07:

In the aftermath of 9/11, the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, Bush quickly abandoned the example of past wartime presidents who struggled to bring the entire nation together against the enemy. With astronomical approval ratings and extraordinary unity, the president could have accomplished almost anything. But following his political guru’s direction, Bush used war as a partisan instrument—which meant dividing, not uniting, America.

Within months after Democrats and Republicans joined arms on the Capitol steps, standing with the president against the jihadists, Rove told the Republican National Committee that the “war on terror” would become, in effect, an assault on the loyal opposition.

To win the midterm election, the White House would turn on the Democrats who had faithfully supported the invasion of Afghanistan and the USA Patriot Act. "We can go to the country on this issue," predicted Rove in January 2002, "because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America’s military might and thereby protecting America." That bland description scarcely did justice to the campaign that ensued. The viciousness on the Republican side was typified by an ad campaign that led to the defeat of Sen. Max Cleland, a triple-amputee Army veteran and Bronze and Silver Star winner, by painting him as a stooge of terrorism.

The only unity Rove cared about was unity of 51% of the voters behind the Republican Party's policies.

In his fortuitously timed article "The Rove Presidency" in the September 2007 Atlantic Monthly, Joshua Green mainly focuses on the Rove target of long-term partisan "realignment", which to the authoritarian Republicans meant effectively establishing a one-party state. But his report on Rove is also relevant in some respects more specifically to public opinion on current wars. After the 2002 election, writes Green, the one in which the Congressional authorization for the Iraq War became the most important issue with which the Republicans based Democrats for being soft on national security, Rove's popularity in the Party soared due to "his strategy of aggressive divisiveness on the issues of war and terrorism." And he writes:

After 9/11, any pretense of shared sacrifice or of reaching across the aisle was abandoned. The administration could demand - and get - almost anything it wanted, easily flattening Democratic opposition, which it did with increasing frequency on issues like the PATRIOT Act and the right of Department of Homeland Security workers to unionize. The crisis atmosphere allowed the White House to ignore what normally would have been some of its most basic duties -working with Republicans in Congress (let alone Democrats) and laying the groundwork in Congress and with the American public for what it hoped to achieve. At the time, however, this didn't seem to matter.

... "What Bush went out and did in 2002," a former administration official told me, "clearly at Karl's behest, with an eye toward the permanent Republican majority, was very aggressively attack those Democrats who voted with him and were for him. There's no question that the president helped pick up seats. But all of that goodwill was squandered." (my emphasis)

Now, I'm always happy to contrast Republicans unfavorably with Franklin Roosevelt. But my point here is to emphasize the put Roosevelt's desire for national unity during the Second World War into its own context, which was different than today's. Comparisons between Roosevelt's strategy of generating support for that war have to take full account of the very different situations in the parties in those days.

Roosevelt famously said that for the war, Dr. Win-the-War would have to take the place of Dr. New Deal. His New Deal coalition in Congress was also of necessity significantly bipartisan. The now-extinct and nearly-forgotten species called "liberal Republicans" was still thriving in those days. There were liberal Republicans who supported much of the New Deal and conservative Democrats who opposed it. Although the isolationists prior to the war including some pro-New Deal Republicans, it tended to be conservative. Still, Roosevelt judged that the votes he needed to secure his preparedness program and war policies included conservative Southern Democrats. The two parties today are far more consistently aligned on both domestic and foreign policies.

Based on American historical experience, "national unity" is a greatly overrated state, even during wars. National unity is only constructive if people are unifying behind a sound and constructive policy. Unifying behind a bad policy like Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq or an overt attack on Iran now just enables the bad policy to produce its bad results.

(I don't want to encourage sloppy revisionism, so I should add that I'm referring to the Iraq invasion more as an example of bad policy than of unity behind it. In fac, there was very significant dissent against going to war. And it was not from some isolated minority like the "anti-imperialist" intellectual dissenters in the Spanish-American War; there was great public skepticism about the Iraq War up until the invasion.)

The Roosevelt administration imprisonment in camps of Japanese-American citizens for no good reason was a decision which largely united white Democrats and white Republicans. A vigorous dissent from one party or a bipartisan alliance would have been far healthier for both democracy and the war effort in that situation.

As a factual matter, the very common notion that broad unity behind a war policy is necessary can also be questioned. Support for the Iraq War had plummeted to a restricted minority by 2006. But the current administration has been able to carry out its military policies in Iraq, including a significant escalation in The Surge, in the face of public opposition to the war and even a hostile Congressional majority.

Abraham Lincoln had great difficulty in maintaining sufficient political support among the public for the Union war effort. He faced organized, vocal, active and even sometimes violent opposition from Democratic Copperheads. Within the Republican Party itself, there was substantial support for candidacy in 1864 by John Charles Fremont. And the 1964 Presidential election against a Democratic candidate, George McClellan, who was rightly regarded as a defeatist, was a hard-fought and close one. But the Union won the war.

But whatever role the unconditional surrender policy played in unity over the war effort during the Second World War, that unity was maintained. The war retained major public support until the end.

Chase points to one historical factor that apparently still goes generally unremarked. During the Iraq War, we've sometimes seen a quote from Franklin's cousin Theodore Roosevelt about the necessity for patriotic dissent during war. The earlier Roosevelt agitated publicly for a tougher war policy than Woodrow Wilson seemed to be pursuing. Including insisting on a policy of "unconditional surrender". Chase writes:

In this connection it seems somewhat strange to this writer that no mention has been made ... of the controversial rôle played by "unconditional surrender" in World War I, and especially in the anti-Wilson speeches of Theodore Roosevelt. But the President's own memory was apparently not so short and, as Sherwood observes, the ghost of Woodrow Wilson was often at his shoulder. Indeed, in retrospect it may well be asked, what better device could be imagined to serve the President's purpose than the very slogan popularized by the "bitter-enders" in the previous war? Surely the President's political genius never burned more brightly than when he rescued this phrase from oblivion, and made it serve American purposes.

One part about Chase's description of Roosevelt's presentation of the war to the public that I find puzzling is this:

Wallace Carroll mentions the President's well-known aversion to stating positively any war aims at all, and the fact that the President gave the war the uninspiring name, "The Survival War". According to Carroll the President believed that "if he attemptedto give the war a social purpose, he would arouse the hostility of the same groups which had opposed his domestic policies."

"Survival War" doesn't have a real snappy sound to it, does it?

But it's misleading to say in isolation that Roosevelt didn't "give the war a social purpose". It's true he didn't try to tie any major New Deal type domestic programs to the war effort. But he did enunciate goals like the Four Freedoms in connection with the war that had definite social content; one of the Four Freedoms was "freedom from want". And he also proposed measures like the Economic Bill of Rights, which although it wasn't linked directly to war measures, did hold out the promise of a more fair shake for labor after the war. He also fought unsuccessfully against Republican opposition to allowing soldiers overseas vote absentee.

Chase points out that if we really look closely at the policy pursued with the German "satellite" nations, "unconditional surrender" wasn't always applied in its pure form. But Roosevelt still insisted upon it, even after additional attempts by the Soviets and the British to drop the formula. He calls attention to why this insistence needs to be explained after the Soviets were satisfied that the opening of the Second Front was firmly decided upon:

Had this been his only purpose, however, no reason would have existed for retaining the policy once the United States was fully committed to the Western European invasion. Hence the President's continued opposition, after this point had been reached, must be understood as indicating his belief that there were still advantages to be gained from it, in spite of its tactical disadvantages which, incidentally, the President never denied the existence of. The question then is, what were these continuing advantages?

Here again, the sad postwar experience of Woodrow Wilson provided a major caution to Roosevelt:

The President was well aware ... of the danger that the United States might return to a policy of isolationism after the war. He was also well aware of the vital importance attached by the Soviet government to a solution of the German problem; and of the necessity for ending the threat to the United States of recurring European wars caused by Germany. The danger of a return to isolationism could be averted, and the basis for Allied cooperation in Germany could be laid, only if the United States were fully committed not only to immediate victory but also to whatever measures of intervention in Germany were necessary after the war to keep the peace.

Conclusion

It's easy to see why a war aim of unconditional surrender would be especially appealing to those of an authoritarian turn of mind. The idea of total victory for Our Side and total defeat of The Enemy meshes well with their tendency to see issues in black-or-white, all-or-nothing, good-vs.-evil terms.

But whatever lessons the Second World War provides on the value of an unconditional surrender policy, that policy in that war needs to be understood in a realistic context. The nature of the enemy, the exigencies of the wartime alliance and coalition warfare and a judgment of the state of public opinion after two decades of an "isolationist" international posture all drove the US insistence on unconditional surrender.

Taking it as some kind of general principle or trying to apply it automatically to every war is impractical and potentially very destructive.

It's worth noting that in 1955, at the time of Chase's article, the results of the policy were being subjected to serious questioning. The criticism was largely based on the fact that insisting on unconditional surrender implied major postwar obligations:

It does seem, therefore, that although the President successfully avoided the Wilsonian error (as the President and Mr. Churchill considered it) of giving the Germans a semi-legal basis for asserting their rights, he nevertheless involved the Allies, and particularly the United States, in a moral obligation of a very far-reaching extent. This was, at any rate, the feeling of some, and was to be voiced later by some critics of the policy.

Yes, taking over an entire country does involve postwar responsibilities that may not be entirely easy to fulfill. It's tempting to draw a contemporary lesson or two from that. But I'll refrain for now.

Tags: churchill, fdr, franklin roosevelt, john chase, karl rove, second world war, stalin, unconditional surrender, world war II

More Rove retrospectives

The September Atlantic Monthly article, "The Rove Presidency" by Joshua Green about Rove isn't online yet except for subscribers (and also not at the newsstand I visited this morning). But the Mahablog has excerpts.

Exit, Karl Rove, Stage Right by Matthew Rothschild The Progressive Online:

By relying on the rightwing base, and by feeding its reactionary appetites, Rove made the Republican Party barely recognizable to old, main line, main street, or libertarian party members. That is why, even today, the candidates for the Republican nomination take turns genuflecting before such idols as creationism and spewing bile at immigrants, gays and lesbians, and women who need abortions.

Rove also was there, in the White House, when Bush and Cheney wheeled out their propaganda apparatus, almost five years ago to the day, to bamboozle the Congress and the American people into the Iraq War.

So spare me the buddy-buddy farewell of boy George and pudgy Karl.

Karl Rove: The Machiavelli Who Failed by John Nichols The Nation blog 08/13/07:

In the end, Rove has done his party no more favors than he has done his nation. And that is the part of his legacy that will be most damaging to the man who may have been able to manipulate a few elections but who will not succeed in manipulating history. ...

Karl Rove leaves another Bush campaign - and, make no mistake, the last eight years have been about campaigning, not governing - as he has left them before: under the twin clouds of scandal and failure.

What Really Brought Rove Down? by Adele Stan American Prospect Online 08/14/07 speculates on the backstory of Rove's departure.

As does Marcy Wheeler in What is Karl Rove hiding? The Guardian 08/14/07 and (as Emptywheel) in My Guesses on Why Rove Resigned The Next Hurrah blog 08/13/07.

And Michael Winship in The Jaundiced Rove of Texas Truthout.org 08/14/07. He also reminds us not to get into too much of a "ding-dong, the witch is dead" mood over his departure:

We see the Rove (and Cheney) legacy of using terrorism and fear as a wedge continued in the way Democrats folded like a cheap suitcase a week and a half ago, when the White House rammed through legislation authorizing warrantless searches and surveillance of phone calls and emails. As Senator Russ Feingold noted, "They have figured out that all they have to do is start talking about an imminent terrorist threat, back it up against a Congressional recess, and they know the Democrats will cave."

We see it, too, perhaps most frighteningly, in the growing neo-con clamor for military action against Iran.

Andre Banks at the RaceWire blog takes a bemused look at an unlikely speculation on his decision to leave: Karl Rove Resigns... In the Name of Racial Justice? 08/13/07. He writes:

Rove has been the "strategist" (head thug) for some of the most notoriously racist U.S. policymaking in recent history: immigration reform, the war in Iraq, and don't even get me started on the response to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. It seems he's been pretty keen on appeasing the "nativist instincts" of the far-right of his party for some time now.

There has always been a struggle within the Republican party about how to manage the less savvy racists within the party. I would argue that since 2000 (maybe I need to go all the way back to Nixon) that strategy has morphed into something like, "put them in the White House and surround them with them with great press people and just enough colored folks (who won't rock the boat)."

Tags: karl rove

Rove goes away

Everyone's understandably puzzling over what it means that Karl Rove is resigning now. There probably is some dark back story to it. Although, as Freud once famously said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

But there have been some intriguing analyses of the results of Rove's sordid career. Two of the best I've seen have appeared in Salon: We'll no more go a-Rove-ing by Sidney Blumenthal 08/13/07 and The collapse of Karl Rove by Lou Dubose 08/14/07. Rove biographer James Moore weighs in with The Rove Goes on Forever Huffington Post 08/13/07.

Blumental turns some memorable phrases, like, "Rove's saga is a rags-to-riches success story of a political serial killer." But his article's greatest value is in its description of the political strategy Rove followed and its consequences. He writes, "Rove's merger of politics and policy was an effort to forge a total one-party state." He also points out a possible dark side to Rove's departure, as strange a thought as that may be. With Rove out, "President Bush will be left with the unalloyed counsel of Vice President Dick Cheney, whose endgame transcends Rove's machinations."

Dubose gives us a glimpse of the toxic soup of Texas fundamentalist Republicanism out of which Rove's national political strategy came. "Social conservatives [i.e., Christian fundamentalists] had already joined together with economic conservatives when Ronald Reagan got into bed with the Rev. Jerry Falwell. But it was Rove who consecrated the union."

The generally uninteresting conservative columnist Debra Saunders, who uses most of her columns to whine about some real or imagined hypocrisy of the Democrats, interviewed Rove on Monday for Rove - Decider or divider? San Francisco Chronicle 08/14/07.

Talk about "projection"! Rove accuses the Democrats of being the ones that applied the most rigid attitudes that he himself promoted for the Republican Party in recent years. For example, Rove told her:

"I think a number of Democrats never accepted (Bush) as legitimate and instead adopted a strategy of blind obstructionism," he answered.

Moreover, some Democrats "hated" Bush, and they were joined by a group of Democrats who "for tactical reasons, said that we can never give (Bush) a political victory, and anything that passes any part of his agenda is a political victory for him and we can't tolerate that."

Can anyone who was not in a coma the last seven years actually believe that the Democrats "adopted a strategy of blind obstructionism"? I wish they would adopt a strategy of obstructionism on starting a war on Iran!

How can even Karl Rove say nonsense like this without choking with laughter? Maybe he was choking with laughter, but Saunders doesn't say that. This comes just days after a significant minority of Democrats caved in on the appalling FISA bill to give Attorney General Abu Gonzales the Torture Guy sweeping discretion to authorize warrantless wiretaps on American citizens.

Rove also told the apparently highly credulous Saunders, ""You know, you'd be shocked and surprised to learn how much the president reached out to Democrats." Yes, we would all be surprised.

David Neiwert at his Orcinus blog frequently talks about the phenomenon of psychological projection, e.g., The projection strategy 07/16/06. He argues that looking carefully at what rightwingers accuse The Liberals of doing is often a good indicator of what they themselves are doing or want to do. To borrow a phrase from Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby, try to imagine he said it!

"I challenge you - take a look at any one of the president's remarks," Rove noted. "Take a look at what was routinely said by the Clinton White House and the Clinton press secretary and what was routinely said by Republicans on the Hill." Their tone was "deeply personal."

"Now the Democrats have continued that. You know, (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid - you'd think it was George L. Bush, with L standing for liar. (Reid) routinely uses the word liar about the president. The president would never think about using such an appellation for Sen. Reid."

Of course, Bush routinely accuses the Democrats of treason by saying that their criticisms of his failed Iraq War policies are aiding the enemy and risk getting American soldiers killed by undermining their morale. But, again, anyone who hasn't been in a deep coma for at least the last seven years can see the problem in such a statement.

I guess we have to give Rove credit for, what? Bald-faced shamelessness?

Saunders displays her own muddled thinking by first treating us to this:

Should Bush take off the gloves? That's what many conservatives think.

[Rove replied,] "Well, maybe, maybe."

Then she makes this remarkable piece of analysis:

Nonetheless, this White House gave up too easily. At time of war, the Bushies should have worked harder to include Democrats when the military was winning plaudits in Iraq. Also, Bush should have tried to enlist Democratic support on Social Security reform, just as he worked with Democrats on No Child Left Behind. That's what voters sent Bush to Washington for - to get the job done.

It's amazing what an abundance of cluelessness can be crammed into two sentences.

The "Bushies", operating on that gentle soul Karl Rove's political strategy, never had any intention of including Democrats in any other sense than to first bully them into giving Bush blank checks to do what he wanted, to be followed by trashing them for being sympathizers of The Terrorists and traitors and defeatists. Joe Lieberman was a bit of an exception: they use him as a Trojan Horse in the Democratic caucus. Fortunately, his rejection by Democratic primary voters in Connecticut in 2006 reduced his value in that regard, because much of the public is now aware that Lieberman is not really a Democrat.

Bush's famous compromise with the Democrats, led on that issue by Sen. Ted Kennedy, is a classic example of the Bush/Cheney/Rove notion of bipartisanship. The heart of the compromise was that Bush got the mandatory testing he wanted and the Democrats got an agreement to increase funding for school programs. The tests were mandated and went into effect. Then Bush and the Republicans refused to provide the additional funding.

It seems to me that there are still Democrats in Congress who don't really understand how pitifully little Bush cares about "bipartisanship".

Blumenthal also reminds us in his Rove article what kind of "press corp" we have, citing David Broder, The Dean Of All The Pundits:

After the Republican victories in 2002, an enraptured press corps celebrated Rove. "Let me disclose my own bias in this matter. I like Karl Rove," wrote David Broder, the lead political columnist for the Washington Post, on May 18, 2003. "In the days when he was operating from Austin, we had many long and rewarding conversations. I have eaten quail at his table and admired the splendid Hill Country landscape from the porch of the historic cabin Karl and his wife Darby found miles away and had carted to its present site on their land."

And it's that seriously flawed institution, the American Establishment press, that makes me unwilling to embrace the widespread assumption that the White House will be a relatively easy prize for the Democrats to win in 2008. Because we're already being treated to a barrage of fool stories about John Edwards' hair style and Hillary Clinton's flip-flopping and general un-womanliness, while we hear simultaneously about those manly men like Benito Giulani and Fred Thompson, who are ready to lead the Daddy Party to triumph over The Terrorists.

Whether Karl Rove is in the political picture or not, we have a corporate press that is seriously, major-league dysfunctional. And that dysfunction works far more against the Democrats than it does the Republicans. The Democratic candidate for President will have to fight the malfunctions of the Establishment press as much as the Republican candidate.

Tags: christian fundamentalism, christian fundamentalism, karl rove, republican party

James Moore on Karl Rove's legacy

James Moore, author of Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, writes the following about the soon-to-depart Karl Rove in The Rove Goes on Forever Huffington Post 08/13/07

Although he has thus far managed to avoid charges, Rove will always be connected with the treasonous act of leaking the name of a CIA agent. People who buy into the notion that it was an accidental slip by Richard Armitage in a conversation with Novak are perpetuating the kind of naiveté that makes Rove's work easier. Armitage had the expertise, political convictions, connections to Novak, and the separation from the White House to make him the perfect person to deliver the information about Ms. Plame. Rove developed the plan and used the zealousness of Vice President Dick Cheney, his myopic attorney David Addington, and Scooter Libby to execute the scheme. While our nation is in a war that is largely a product of Rove-designed deceptions, he leaked the name of an agent who has put her life at risk to protect our country from weapons of mass destruction and he did so for no other reason than silence future critics of the administration and exact revenge. The fact that Karl Rove has not been tried for sedition and treason ought to trouble every American who still believes in those things that have long been held to be good and right and true about our country.

Rove's great mind might have been put to great use. Instead, he has decided to view as an enemy any fellow citizen who doesn't think like him and his party. ...

People wonder what his future will be and I'd like to think there will be a moment of atonement for Karl but he has not shown a shadow of conscience. He will command great fees for public speaking and is likely to be on retainers to dozens of corporations seeking his influence and insights. Of course, he will write a book and offer his perspective on the Bush administration; he cannot stop himself from spinning. I, however, still believe in the truth and its survivability and am confident history will condemn Rove and view him as a man who divided his own country to win and cared not a scintilla about the consequences of his actions beyond political victory. I have been accused for more than 25 years of overstating Karl's importance and his influence but I am certain history will judge him the most profoundly disturbing political force our country has seen in almost 100 years.

The image I see of Karl Rove as he leaves Washington is of a man carrying a gas can and a box of matches as the city burns behind him and yet no one has thought to blame him for the great blaze sundering our democracy. In his parting news conference with the president, Rove readily invoked the name of an Almighty but even this act was hypocritical. He told his friend Bill Israel years ago that he was agnostic and that "he wished he could believe, but he cannot." Karl Rove, though, can turn even religious agnosticism into a political advantage. Were he to eventually confront a judgmental deity, that may be the one place where he will finally discover the justice he has long managed to avoid. (my emphasis)

Tags: james moore, karl rove

Meanwhile, back in Mayberry...

Sidney Blumenthal's weekly Salon column this time is about Upending the Mayberry Machiavellis 04/12/07. The title comes from the famous comment of former White House staffer John Dilulio describing the Bush White House invoking the mythical small town of the Andy Griffith Show:

There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything - and I mean everything - being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.

Blumenthal writes about some of the more notorious recent members of the administration:

[Laurita Alexis] Doan [head of the General Services Agency]and [Michael] Brown [former head of FEMA, aka, "Heckuva Job" Brownie] are on a continuum of officialdom that runs to Monica Goodling - until recently the No. 3 official in the Department of Justice, an evangelical graduate of Messiah College and Pat Robertson's Regent Law School, and a true believer in Bush as political messiah. Doan and Brown are cronies, but Goodling is a cadre. Within the Bush administration, there are hundreds of Monica Goodlings, and she was their ideal. A zealot for the cause, she apparently divides the world into good and evil, sacred and profane. She interprets criticism and debate as a mortal threat to all that is good and holy. She sees any institution of American life that is not devoted to the flag and cross to which she pledges and worships as twisted, biased and infernal. (To Goodling, CNN is "a force of the left.") She cannot distinguish between her absolute beliefs and their political instrumentality. She considers objective and professional analysis a ruse, an ideology in itself, a false faith. She sees those who adhere to standards of professionalism as agents of deception, hiding their real agendas. She was enthusiastic in weeding out Justice Department employees and replacing them with true believers like herself. Goodling's refusal to testify before the Senate investigation into the firing of U.S. attorneys and her assertion of the Fifth Amendment because the Senate operates in "bad faith" casts her as martyr and saint, warrior and crusader. (my emphasis)

Christian zealots not restrained by maturity, sound consciences and a healthy sense of self-reflection can be very destructive.

Blumenthal describes Rove's aim as being to construct a one-party Republican government, and a federal government completely subordinated to the Republican Party rather than the law and the Constitution:

On the one hand, Rove has sought to forge a permanent Republican majority. On the other hand, that project might not be completed in just two Bush terms. In either case, Rove's strategy has depended on subjecting the federal government to political objectives. He is not trying to achieve any abstract goal, such as reaching the conservative nirvana of limited government. The endless scandals revealed are not a random compendium of corruption and incompetence, though they are that, too. They are evidence of Rove's - and Bush's - larger strategy of hollowing out the federal government in the interest of building a political state. (my emphasis)

Tags: authoritarianism, bush administration, karl rove, sidney blumenthal

A passionate view on how Democrats should deal with Karl Rove trash politics

Steve Gilliard has some good comments on how the Democrats could stand to show considerably more passion:

It isn't that Rove's arguments make sense, but that Dems refuse to call him a traitor and a liar every time he opens his mouth, afraid that they will be attacked by the media.