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by Paul R. Hollrah, Lincoln Heritage Institute Senior Fellow
There was a time when Democrats were seen primarily as populists, declaring their allegiance to the “common man” and to the “general welfare,” but those days are long past. Now, in the early days of the 21st century, the Democratic Party has become little more than a noisy propaganda machine, open and available to any and all special interests that come to the table with enough cash and/or “reliable” votes to make it worth their while.
They’ve captured the construction trades, public school teachers, public employees, minorities, illegal aliens, radical environmentalists, radical feminists, trial lawyers, gays, lesbians, a sizable chunk of the subsidy-addicted agricultural community, and, of course, the surrender monkeys of the peace-at-any-price movement…all special interests wanting something from an increasingly-intrusive government bureaucracy.
Name any issue – energy, education, national defense, the economy – and it can be shown, conclusively, that Democrats are on the wrong side of the issue, invariably siding with special interests against the general welfare.
For example, many Americans regularly drive 100 miles or more to and from their jobs each day. Those who are accustomed to spending as much as $2,000 a year for gasoline are now forced to spend more than $4,600. Meanwhile, Democrats are so beholden to radical environmentalists that they continue to block oil and gas exploration in ANWR, in our remote wilderness areas, and in offshore waters; they continue to block construction of new refineries; and they continue to block construction of nuclear power plants. To divert attention from their own culpability they blame the oil companies for high prices, threatening to pile punitive windfall profits taxes on an industry which earns a modest 7 cents on each dollar of sales.
In education, while the public schools continue to produce students who can’t read, who can’t spell, who can’t do simple arithmetic, and who know little or nothing of the history of their own country, Democrats pander shamelessly to the powerful teachers’ unions. To cover themselves, politically, they complain that we are not spending enough on education. Spending more money on public education makes about as much sense as contributing a case of booze for an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting…it only encourages more counter-productive behavior.
But what is most telling about the current turmoil in the “count-every-vote” party, as it hurtles toward a devastating convention fight over seating the Florida and Michigan delegates, is what party leaders find to be the single most important consideration of all. The New York Times put it all in perspective in an April 23, 2008, editorial. They wrote, “Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.”
Translation: What Democrats and the editors of the Times apparently find to be of paramount importance is not what might be best for the country, but what is best for the Democratic Party. In truth, nothing could be more beneficial for the country than to break the Democratic Party’s obscene stranglehold on the black vote.
On the Republican side, the party’s 2008 decision has been made. Senator John McCain, of Arizona, will be the party’s nominee in the fall. Absent the primary system, it is not a decision that would otherwise have been made. Any candidate who has stuck his thumb in the eye of conservatives as often as John McCain has could never hope to win the party’s nomination in a caucus and convention system.
But the primary system is not the principal reason for the dearth of strong Republican candidates in the Goldwater/Reagan tradition. That blame falls squarely on the shoulders of George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole. As the last of their generation of national Republican leaders, they had an obligation to showcase the next generation of national Republican leaders…but they didn’t do that.
In retrospect, their protégé lists were short ones. Dole gave us Jack Kemp and his wife, Liddy, and Bush gave us Dan Quayle and two of his four sons, both of whom were apparently looking for something useful to do. The failure of Bush/Dole leadership hit the party at precisely the time that all of the efforts of generations of party activists had resulted in control of both houses of Congress. That advantage has now been lost through sheer incompetence.
As an example of how politically brain-dead Republican leaders are, former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), a principal architect of the Republican demise, is now a frequent guest on Fox News, offering his advice on Republican political affairs. This is much like asking O.J. Simpson to give us his best advice on maintaining marital bliss. Hastert’s tenure as House Speaker did more damage to the Republican Party than all of the Democrats in America combined.
So it appears that the Bush/Clinton era in American politics is finally, mercifully, at an end. It is unlikely that the Democrats will stage a quick recovery because they are now owned lock-stock-and-barrel by George Soros and the radicals of Moveon.org and the DailyKos…who insist upon nominating unelectable far-left candidates. They have apparently learned little from their Kerry, Gore, Dukakis, Mondale, and McGovern fiascos and are now poised to nominate the most unelectable liberal of all, Senator Barack Hussein Obama.
Republicans, on the other hand, will have an easier time recovering from the Bush era…but only if they find a way to solve their leadership deficit and if fiscal and foreign policy conservatives of the Goldwater/Reagan mold will reassert their authority over the party in a forceful way.
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