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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: The GOP Purge The War Party can't win the war in Iraq, so they're taking it out on the GOP The ongoing hara-kiri of the GOP proceeds apace, with the latest being a concerted effort by the party's neoconservative wing to oust sitting Republican members of Congress who oppose the war. The latest examples: Walter B. Jones of North Carolina and Wayne Gilchrest of Maryland. Rep. Jones attracted national attention when, at the height of the pre-invasion war hysteria, he led an effort (with now-jailed Rep. Bob Ney) to rename the French fries on the menu in the House cafeteria "Freedom Fries" – and then attracted more serious attention when he turned against the war he had championed, and began to denounce the president's war policies in no uncertain terms. Jones is quite a character, an old Southern gentleman who emanates sincerity and class: he has personally written to thousands of military families who have lost loved ones in this futile and apparently never-ending war. What's more, he has taken an enormous political risk in reversing course, not because it's now the popular thing to do – it wasn't when he began speaking out – but because he's a man of principle who puts his conscience and his constituency before partisan considerations. What I like about him is that his denunciations of the war are invariably fiery, and shot through with a white-hot anger directed at those who lied us into war: "At a local barbecue restaurant last week, he delivered a passionate speech defending his position – and slamming the administration's foreign policy. He approvingly read from Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold's 2006 Time editorial attacking the Bush administration for using '9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy.' "He accused the 'neocons' – he repeated the phrase twice – of manipulating intelligence to sell the Iraq war to the public. He said he was more concerned with terrorists coming from South America than from Iraq. "'Many people get their news from Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity,' Jones said after the speech, referring to the popular conservative radio talk show hosts. 'I get my news in classified briefings with military experts and CIA experts. I have to make my decision based on what the experts say.'" His primary opponent is one Joe McLaughlin, a financial planner, retired military man, and Onslow county commissioner who tends to ignore (and neglect) his constituents and has been accused of using his office to promote himself (no doubt a first for a politician!). McLaughlin stupidly accuses Jones of being a "leftist" – a charge that falls flat when confronted with the congressman's lifetime ACU rating of over 90 percent – and is making Jones' co-sponsorship of a congressional resolution condemning Rush Limbaugh for his "phony soldier" comment the main issue of the campaign. In McLaughlin's world, it's okay to diss a soldier who disagrees with him and Rush on the war, but it's not okay to criticize the pill-popping talk-radio icon who has never been anywhere near a battlefield. This is why, brays McLaughlin, Jones is a "phony Republican." On his Web site, McLaughlin proclaims he's a "family values conservative," and yet rumor has it that, uh, maybe not… At any rate, local Republican activist Jim Kouri reports "one member of the NCGOP told this writer that 'not a day goes by without Joe [ McLaughlin] smearing Congressman Jones.'" It's incredible that McLaughlin is trying to portray the staunchly conservative Jones as some sort of left-wing subversive, but the clear implication of his most recent radio ad – which proclaims McLaughlin "supports the troops" – is that Jones does not support the troops. This accusation is especially toxic in a district with one of the heaviest concentrations of military bases in the country. "His is a message of despair," says McLaughlin, "a message of defeat." Yet who is likely to arouse more despair, especially in the ranks of military families: those who say the five-year war in Iraq must stretch into 10 or more – or those who say it is time for the Iraqis to stand on their own legs and walk the walk? Walter Jones supported this war in the beginning: he was, indeed, one of its most fervent advocates. It takes character for him to admit he was wrong – and a real sense of responsibility to go as far out on a limb as he's gone in order to make up for what he now recognizes as a grievous mistake. Instead of appealing to the various signs and symbols of the fake Left-Right divide – Rush, Cindy Sheehan, and Dennis Kucinich (the latter two, McLaughlin unconvincingly avers, are Jones' good pals) – why doesn't McLaughlin engage Jones when it comes to the war issue, on its merits? I'll tell you why: because McLaughlin doesn't know the first thing about the war, Iraq, or foreign policy in general. He's just a political opportunist circling Jones' seat like a vulture seeks out carrion. Yet Jones is far from being dead meat: for one thing, McLaughlin has yet to raise much campaign cash – although that could change. Word is out that the Club for Growth – a right-wing neocon outfit rolling in dough – has met with McLaughlin and may be interested in funding his campaign. The Club is also bankrolling the campaign of another Republican primary challenger, state Sen. Andrew Harris, who is going up against antiwar Rep. Gilchrest. The Club purports to be for "limited government" and "economic freedom," yet their major concern, these days, seems to be going after any and all Republicans who so much as breathe a word of criticism of the neocons' war. Yet what has provoked the biggest orgy of spending since the New Deal – and promises to cost us as much as $2 trillion before it's over? This rotten war. I've even heard the Club described as "libertarian" – but this use of its resources as a battering ram against the real libertarian Republicans, such as Walter Jones, shows what these guys are really up to, which is to serve as the neocons' water boys. War trumps parsimony in the new GOP's hierarchy of political values, and the ongoing Republican purge is carving this principle in stone. There have been rumors that Jones – who started out a Democrat, like his father, who once represented the district – might return to the party of his youth, yet nothing has come of that so far. Local Republicans are rallying to his cause, and the veterans whom he has stood by so steadfastly – especially the wounded, who have been the worst victims of government incompetence in this war – have come to his aid, even as party officials have abandoned him. VoteVets is running pro-Jones ads in which retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste, former commander of the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, lauds Jones for his "moral courage." Says Batiste: "We are caught in the middle of a brutal civil war in Iraq without a focused national strategy. Congressman Jones is well-informed in challenging those politicians who are breaking our great Army and Marine Corps." In the fifth year of a long, grinding war, the appeal of McLaughlin's demagoguery is increasingly limited, especially where it concerns his key audience: military personnel and their families. He attacks Jones for appearing with Cindy Sheehan, but remember, Cindy is a military mom, too, and the grieving mothers of North Carolina's 3rd congressional district have a lot more in common with her than McLaughlin might imagine. Recent polls suggest that the "solid South," once solidly for the war, is now turning against it: a majority now say it was a "mistake," and – along with much of the rest of the country – Southerners now support a decrease in troop levels (56 percent). Nationally, Republicans are wavering in their support for the war, and that's why Ron Paul, the only antiwar candidate in the Republican presidential stable, is going from dark horse to a somewhat lighter hue. Jones has endorsed Paul's bid, and it is likely that the North Carolina congressman will benefit from the kind of dedicated nationwide support – from veterans as well as libertarians – that has come Dr. No's way. The effort to oust Jones demonstrates the essentially parasitic – and destructive – character of the neoconservative virus in the GOP. For these guys, it's rule or ruin: they don't care about regaining control of Congress (they gave up on that distant possibility a long time ago) or saving a conservative vote on fiscal and other matters. They care about one issue and one issue only: war and more war, as far as the eye can see. When they've run the GOP into the ground and reduced it to a mostly regional party, they'll abandon the dried-up husk and emigrate back to where they came from – the Scoop Jackson wing of the Democratic Party, where they can join Joe Lieberman, Joshua Muravchik, and Hillary Clinton's neoconservative fan club in ginning up a war with Iran.
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#1. To: Ada (#0)
The purging practices from Freerepublic is now being carried out throughout the party level.
"The desire to rule is the mother of heresies." -- St. John Chrysostom
When I first saw the Stalinist purges at Free Republic, I concluded it told us a lot about the mentality of the Republican Party. Looks like I was right.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
Looks like I was right. Stalinist is the correct comparison. Experiencing Freerepublic gave me a taste of what life for me would have been like during the Stalin era purges or to live in a world that began to mirror '1984'. I confronted a mod who herself was banned - the party always purges those that did the first round of purges - about the Stalin comparison and Orwell's 'Animal Farm' comparison and I could tell from her reaction she was not familiar with any of that - which is also a Stalin trait of placing uneducated hicks to carry out the purges because they would not be cognitive enough to ask questions. Freerepublic like the GOP has become the party of unthinking blind obedience - not that party members don't think or question the party line but those that do so are quickly pounced on and purged. Look at that attacks on Ron Paul - the so called small govt freerepublicans are attacking the very basis of Paul's small govt ideology as if it was alien or kooky to the GOP tradition! That is real 'double-think'. Orwell would be chilled by the freerepublic example.
"The desire to rule is the mother of heresies." -- St. John Chrysostom
Small government and decentralized power IS alien to the GOP tradition. That the GOP adopted such rhetoric in the post WWII era while they were the minority party and thus never had to deliver on any of it means little. Looking at the totality GOP history- it is one long line of support for federalization of power. That it tapped into anti federal government sentiment in the post WWII era means nothing. It was a cyncial move and one the puppet masters of the Beltway never believed in. The "conservative" movement in this country was all but set up and has been controlled by DC oligarchic interests from the beginning. With the death of the Soviet threat- a new threat had to be found to keep "conservatives" supporting the old compromise with "big government"- as long as the threat exists they would have to put up with a large federal government. With the death of the Soviet Union- many conservatives expected the GOP to deliver on their tacit promise to reverse the warfare/welfare state of DC- to abandon their support for it. They were betrayed as DC invented "Terrorism" and "Islam" as the new "threat" to justify their huge government, taxes, and power grabs. The only problem is that half of the "conservative movement" didn't buy it. Were not stupid enough to buy it- and were purged. Frankly- anyone still a member of the GOP- still a "believer" and still posting on FR doesn't need to be purged. They will buy anything- literally anything they are told. Only stupid sheep remain at sites like FR.
It is a position that I am forced to accept as true - since as soon as it came to power the GOP pretty much ditched this agenda - while the radio talk show flaks always kept talking about the GOP in those small govt terms. It was a bait and switch routine of the highest order.
"The desire to rule is the mother of heresies." -- St. John Chrysostom
Excellent piece.
The handbasket has landed.
We all saw this coming long ago. When FRetard City started smearing McCain and rallying around Smirky the Wonder Chimp (who RimJob had only six months earlier called a "socialist"), it was obvious the fix was in. For decades, the Republicans have outfunded Democrats by significant margins. Now it's turned around, and Democrats are getting the bulk of the money, often in small contributions, although now the money boys on Wall St. are coming on board. That leaves the GOP at the mercy of anyone who will give them money. And sadly, that appears to be crazy old billionaires like Scaife, who fund bogus front groups like Club for Growth. I hope Jones wins (and he probably will), even though I wanted to take a two by four to his head with that inane Freedom Fries crap. What's really scary is how the neocons, who numerically probably total about 500, have managed to worm their way into our power structure to such an extent that they really can't be fired. If you manage to bring down a Wolfowitz, he had a cushy job waiting at the American Enterprise Institute or one of the other neocon think tanks, and is ready and waiting the next time he's needed. These guys could be caught sleeping with dead babies, and six months later, they'll be named deputy secretary of defense. Now half of them are working for Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney (mainly the former), and God help us if either gets elected. They'll be running the entire federal government, even more than they are now. I disagree with virtually everything Ron Paul says, but if it comes down to it, I'd be happy to see him elected if only because I know that no neocon has a PRAYER of getting a job with him. Plus, it would be nice to see all those heads explode on TV.
Honi soit qui mal y pense
I attacked McCain as well because he wanted to attack Russia and Putin in defense of the Chechen cause.
"The desire to rule is the mother of heresies." -- St. John Chrysostom
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