Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
As many of my regular readers know, one of my favorite topics over time has been the contemporary Republican Party and where they are taking the country. I was about to do another one of my speculative columns on that subject when a friend supplied me with some apparently factual information about what the party is really up to in order to gain full power in the Federal government. Of course, they already have a hammerlock on most Federal government policy through: a) their control of the House of Representatives; b) their control of the Supreme Court, and c) their defacto control of the US Senate through the use of the filibuster (about which the Democratic majority appears willing to do virtually nothing). But they will not be satisfied until they gain full control of the Senate and of course the Presidency.
(What? Party control of the Supreme Court, you might say? Well, yes. Not just right-wing, but GOP. For example, the First Right-Wing vote, which never varies in support of Reaction, belongs to “Mr. Justice Silent,” Clarence Thomas. It so happens that his wife, Virginia [“Ginni” to her friends], is one of the full-time leaders of one of the main right-wing “think tanks” powering the current GOP, its policies, strategy, and tactics, the semi-secretive “Groundswell” [see David Corn of Mother Jones at: “Inside Groundswell” http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/groundswell-rightwing-group-ginni-thomas?slide=22; and “Groundswell’s Secret Crusade to Crush Karl Rove [too “centrist” {sic}” http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/groundswell-ginni-thomas-war-karl-rove.] It is hard to suppose that the pillow talk of the Justice and his wife approximates that of Doris Day and Rock Hudson. A bit more political, I should think. As to the other Four GOPers, well you know the drill.)
And so, I was going to lay out a series of (not-too-difficult-to-make) guesses about what their strategy would be heading into 2014 and then onto 2016, when a fascinating document fell into my lap. It purports to be the outline of what their real plan is. Lo and behold it happens to very similar to what one might guess, observing their actions since even before the 2012 elections. From their perspective, and based on how they are handling themselves at the Federal and State levels, it would seem to make total sense. And so, here ‘tis (with a few stylistic edits from the version that I have seen):
1. Retake the US Senate in 2014.
2. Demonize Obama to the point where he will be almost totally paralyzed and will thus become a serious deficit for the Dems in 2016, as the GOP will ever more vigorously be able to blame the failures of their own policies on “the government” and him.
3. Maneuver the 2016 Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton or her equivalent (so that there will not be any real, progressive alternatives to the GOP agenda in play).
4. Using (10) below, retake the White House in 2016.
5. Having done that, and thus having full control of all three branches of the Federal government, install a new and more predatory right-wing, operational military/industrial alliance in January 2017.
6. Fully reinstall/reinstate “Reagan-style” Economic policy, leading to:
7. Further massive tax cuts for the corporations and the “1 percent.”
8. Draconian “austerity” paradigm — savage cuts to Medicare/Social Security via “privatization,” and the virtual elimination of Medicaid.
9. Distraction of enough of the people from what they are really doing (a la what Bush/Cheney did) via new energy war(s) in the Middle East, Central Asia, and possibly elsewhere.
10. Since they are clearly the minority party, were everyone, or a reasonable sample thereof, to vote, they wouldn’t stand a chance of controlling any branches of government, they will achieve all of this through the continuing vigorous pursuit of their Voter Suppression/Gerrymandering strategy.
Now, you might ask, why does the Republican Party want to do this? They have consistently attacked the Obama Presidency. They have refused to deal with him except on their own terms (which began in December 2008, when Mitch McConnell announced that he was simply “going to filibuster anything that I don’t like”; see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/us/politics/17mcconnell.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 for a good summary of his strategy into 2010). Thus, for better or worse, in many areas they have already paralyzed the Obama Presidency. (Of course having a President who doesn’t like to do battle much does help them quite a bit, but that’s another story.) Thus we pretty much have GOP economic policy in force with the added benefit for them that they are able to blame Obama for its outcomes. Of course they do this over and over again, even while at the same time, whenever anyone brings up the disastrous Bush economic/regulatory policy, the GOP and its mouthpieces scream that their opponents are playing the “blame game.” (Would the Democrats just play it with much more vigor, but that’s another story too.)
So why not just leave well enough alone? Well, that would not bring them close to a central goal of their full government takeover plan. That is to the extent possible getting rid of government regulation of the environment, industry/workplaces, energy exploration/production, the (so-called) marketplace, and finance/banking. This is really what the Kochs, the Goldman-Sachs/JP Morgan Chases, the fossil fuel industry, the exporters of capital, the big hedge-fund managers, and etc. are after. As long as the Democratic Party controls the White House, even though in the main fiscal/economic policy (mainly under GOP or GOP-like control) suits them, there are those pesky regulators about. And with folks like Elizabeth Warren in the Senate, they are in the process of getting some spine-transplants. And that’s a real problem for the GOP. And so, they go for the gold.
And now, as far as Republican tactics and strategy are concerned, we now don’t have to make guesses as to what they are about. They are in the process of telling us. What we do have to do is organize a massive nation-wide campaign to aggressively take on Right-Wing Reaction, leading up to the 2016 election. (Yes indeed, I do believe in naming names. These people aren’t “conservative,” they are “reactionaries,” and so should they be called.) The first order of business? As I have said on a number of occasions (http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12362), create a Progressive Democratic Party out of what is clearly the wreckage of the present one.
Addendum: Anyone who seeks to take solace in the current GOP so-called “civil war,” between the likes of, say, Rand (Ayn) Paul and Chris Christie, fuhgeddaboudit, as they say in Noo Joisey. These squabbles are all about style, tactics, and strategy, not about desired ultimate outcomes. These folks all agree on policy a la Grover Norquist, “shrink the Federal government down to the size of a bath-tub and then drown it in the bathtub,” laid out in the above list. That’s it and that’s that.
Senior Contributing Editor Steven Jonas’ incisive analyses are published on many leading progressive venues, besides TGP, including OpedNews, BuzzFlash, and others. A protean writer, physician, and cultural observer, he remains profoundly concerned about the gradual slide of the American nation toward a masked brand of fascism. His futuristic novel, The 15% Solution, How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the US, has just been republished by Punto Press.
