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Repeat 'The BIG Lie' Propaganda Blitz follows the Supreme Court Decision Assume Citizens Too Stupid to Understand Complexities |
The stridency, the desperate urgency, the fanatical insistence of conservative columnists on a bizarrely-skewed view of how Bush achieved the White House, is itself evidence of their newfound smarts -- because it betrays a very real and very sensible fear. The terror that, having managed to get away with stealing the election, the real prize -- enacting the right-wing agenda into law -- will remain out of reach. One need only read the columns, and reading 'between the lines' is wholly unnecessary. The snide Suzanne Fields, with unblushing prevarication, demanded in print to know what all this talk of "national healing" is about. Nothing has harmed us for which we need healing, Fields expounded at length. So begins the Big Lie with which the right-wing foolishly hopes to bury doubts and questions of Bush's legitimacy. Rather than explain or advocate a reasoned position, the conservatives are simply going to deny that this was anything but just another free and fair election, no different from any other. The Big Lie is a strategy which assumes that most people are too stupid to understand a complex (and usually specious) argument. So instead of offering a complicated explanation, give the readers a simple lie. No thinking required. This is, of course, exactly the tactic which the right-wing has endlessly accused liberals and moderates of using with some voter groups. Forget Bush's absurd claim that he and his cronies "trust the people." They are proving already that they don't even trust "the people" to think for themselves. Getting away with stealing the election for Bush is one thing. Shoving an unpopular agenda through a sharply-divided, embittered Congress is another. And the right wing, having at last raised the cup of dubious victory to its bloodless lips, is justly terrified that the cup may turn out to be empty – or worse, laced with a generous dollop of vengeful political strychnine. Columnist Joseph Perkins, who endlessly praises the ideology of the ultraconservatives in spite of their barely-concealed contempt for those of his race, continued and expanded upon the Big Lie in a recent column. "The Democratic left simply will not accept that the nation's voters actually meant to elect George W. Bush," Perkins pontificated. Perhaps someone should acquaint Mr. Perkins with the fact that Bush lost the popular vote by some half-million ballots of the nation's voters. Any idiot can see that voters "actually meant" to elect Al Gore, in direct contradiction to Perkins' bare-faced lie.
Perkins' warning to George Bush is about as subtle as a sledgehammer: Abandoning the ultraconservative agenda in favor of bipartisanship, Perkins writes, "...means abandoning the constitutency that delivered both the White House and Congress to Republican hands." The Congress is only "in Republican hands" as weakly as is possible, and the GOP certainly has no veto-proof majority in either house -- a few votes in the House, an even 50-50 split in the Senate. But read Perkins' statement carefully -- he barely bothers to conceal the admission that a right-wing constituency, not the voters or the will of the people -- "delivered" the White House to Bush. Blatantly implicit is Perkins' warning that what the right-wing giveth, the right-wing can taketh away. And therein lies ample answer to those who derided Hillary Clinton's warnings of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" as so much manufactured paranoia. The conspiracy is real, and it has finally come out into the open. Cal Thomas, the rabid attack dog of the far right, shone a spotlight on the real panic of conservatives in one of his recent columns. "This could be the Republicans' last opportunity for some time to advance their ideas," Thomas fumed. Noting (with remarkable realism for a pie-in-the-sky evangelical) the "distinct possibility" that Democrats will win back the House and Senate in 2002, and the presidency in 2004, Thomas is frantic in his zeal for Bush to try and ram the right-wing agenda down America's throat as quickly as possible. "Bush's Democratic foes will try to undermine not only his tax cut proposal, but also his social policies," the columnist figuratively stamped his feet. Those social policies, of course, include "...self-control and making pro-life decisions in the midst of unplanned pregnancies," the usual right-wing euphemisms for replacing sex education with abstinence-only propaganda, and outlawing abortion. Conservatives are openly and desperately shrieking for Bush and his handlers to abandon any pretense of bipartisan cooperation, and try for a second coup d'etat -- forcing upon America a zealot-driven social and economic nightmare. And they want it done, as BuckcuB's Grammy would have put it, "Immediately, if not sooner." You would think that folks who just engineered the biggest scam of the century would give some thought to pushing their luck again so soon. Not this bunch! Perhaps they feel emboldened by their success in the con-game which installed Bush illegitimately as president, and the conservatives figure they'd better shoot again while the loaded dice are still hot.
The long boom is over. And George W. Bush is going to take the rap for it. Even though he achieved it by fraud, Bush is the guy in "The Buck Stops Here" chair. The GOP right-wing has tried for so long to claim credit for economic good times -- with little success -- that it will be unable to turn around and claim that it inherited bad times from the Clinton administration. Because, as British columnist William Keegan chortled in the London Observer, "The tactics the Bush clan resorted to in order to inherit fallout from the Clinton/Greenspan economic miracle would have done credit to Lady Macbeth." The Republicans tried to hitch their wagon to Clinton's star, only to have it go supernova and blow up in their faces on the eve of inauguration. This reversal of fortunes has the conservatives clamoring for Bush's promised stupendous supply-side tax cut. He will not get it, or anything remotely like it. The opposition party has no compelling interest in compromising with George W. and his handlers, and a wealth of reasonably-recent good arguments to defuse any accusations of political obstructionism. Democrats need only point to Ronald Reagan's similar supply-side, "trickle down" tax cut policies, and the gigantic national debt they fueled. Or remind citizens that it was George W.'s own daddy who rejected supply-side economics as "...blue smoke and mirrors." Or remind voters of the First Bush Recession, now being followed by the Second Bush Recession. So that particular juicy right-wing plum will remain firmly out of reach. There will be no appointment of ultraconservative Supreme Court justices to delight the withered, puritanical hearts of those who would like to replace the Bill of Rights with the Bible. Democrats have refused to budge on the appointments before, notably in the case of right-winger Robert Bork. And but for the fact that Clarence Thomas happens to be black, Democrats would have blocked his nomination as well, but caved in fearing spurious charges of racism. That trick won't work twice -- the Court already has a black Justice. The GOP doesn't have the votes to force approval of a conservative Bush appointee. Democrats can successfully block ANY nomination to the high court, until a jurist of whom they approve is suggested, and there's absolutely no reason or compulsion for them to do otherwise. Reactionaries who were hoping for another Scalia or Rhenquist will be bitterly disappointed, but they may as well start getting used to the idea now. The foaming anti-abortion crowd will get no satisfaction out of Bush, either. The Supreme Court, already smarting from a nosedive in public opinion polls, is not going to take that most-controversial of topics up again anytime soon. Certainly not during the next two years, after which a newly Democrat-controlled House and Senate will almost certainly render the subject moot. In the meantime, Republicans don't have enough votes to enact any Bush anti-abortion bills, especially as they cannot count on even a tiny majority on such a bill. Too many moderate Republicans represent districts which favor a woman's right to choose. Are you beginning to see where this is all going, dear reader? Having lawyered their way into an illegitimate occupation of the White House, conservatives are stuck with the result -- an outraged opposition party both hell-bent on revenge, and possessed of sufficient votes in Congress to wreak that revenge. BuckcuB is quite certain that neither those on the left nor the right are fooled in the least by the rather-weedy verbal bouquets of "bipartisan cooperation" being tossed to George W. by Democrats. Politics requires a certain amount of window-dressing, but that's all it is -- window-dressing. The GOP right-wing could not have more-firmly ensured their coming humiliation if they had actually set out to achieve that objective. And the more intelligent among them have already realized that fact, as witnessed by the sweaty-palmed panic of our conservative columnists quoted above. The damage done to our republic by a partisan Court and a pack of right-wing zealots determined to win at any cost -- even the rape of democracy -- will not soon, if ever, be repaired. BuckcuB is relieved to point out, however, that we may at least rest assured of repeated defeat for the conservative agenda, so the damage will not be further compounded by the moronic marionette about to occupy the Oval Office.. In the meantime, as we wait for this interlude of illegitimacy in the White House to end in 2004, we will spend the next four years listening to the wailing of frustrated conservatives, and the impotent gnashing of teeth by the right wing. It will all be sweet music to the ears of the majority of Americans. |
