UPDATED: AUG 16, 2007

“THE PERMANENT REPUBLICAN PRESIDENCY, PART 1: WHAT IT IS”                                         

When Karl Rove took over as George W. Bush’s political brain, manager, and indeed independent executive in many matters political, he established creating a “Permanent Republican Majority” as his primary goal.  This is one of the few of his goals that he actually announced openly. Well, even with his constant use of personal prejudices and fears as political weapons and with them the mobilization of the Christian right behind his party, the creation of Fear of the Foreign (Mexican, Muslim, anything that is not Us and also not white), the manipulation of the “terrorist threat,” massive electoral cheating, and the labeling of all critics of the President’s foreign policy as “traitors,” he has not been able to achieve that.  The principal reason is that the Permanent War that BushCheney have been so intent on creating in Iraq is highly unpopular with the American people.  This is true even if most of them, as well as most political observers and commentators, don’t realize that that is what the War on Iraq is all about. 

And so, without announcing it, it is becoming increasingly clear that Rove, in concert with Cheney and Bush of course, has established a new goal: the creation of the Permanent Republican Presidency.  This is something that they can achieve without ever getting a majority of the voters to support Republicans overall.  In fact, they are well on their way to doing that, as I intend to show in a three-part series of which this is the first.  If the Democrats don’t wake up to this reality soon, it will be all over come January 20, 2009.  And when I say “the Democrats” here, I don’t mean just either the Congressional Democrats or the Democratic candidates for the Presidential nomination.  I mean all of us.   

As I will show in the next part next week, the Permanent Republican Presidency is an achievable goal for them, whether the next Congress is still Democratic or not.  (In fact, for the existence of the Permanent Republican Presidency, the way they construe the office, it would be politically better for them if the Congress remains in Democratic hands.  But more on that next week too.)  This is why the number one political goal of both Democrats and the Democratic Party must be to win the presidential election in 2008.  Anything else will lead to disaster for the nation and for the world, as well as for all of us who are dedicated to the Rule of Law and Constitutional government.   

We have to now recognize the weakness of our party in the Federal government.  It is a weakness that is created not by lousy leadership.  The leadership is not perfect, but they are not dumb and Harry Reid for one has become relatively radicalized since the beginning of the current Congress.  But they are Constitutionally and practically weak as a result of: how the Bush Administration treats the Congress (no “checks and balances” for him; see Unchecked and Unbalanced by F.A.O. Schwarz Jr. [not talking about toys] and Aziz Z. Huq) about which it can do little or nothing; the “Joe Lieberman factor” in the Senate about which I have previously written; and the combination of the “veto proof/filibuster-secure” voting base they have in the Senate.   

Our side must realize that we simply do not have the luxury of railing away at the Democratic Congressional leadership for not doing what they cannot do anyway, whether they want to or not.  The only solution to our nation’s Constitutional crisis and the specter of that Permanent Republican Presidency is to take back the office in 2008.  I will offer my ideas on what the Democrats need to do to win in part three of this series.  Since I have dealt with the subject of “what should/must the Democrats do now?” so many times in this space and others, for those of you who might be thinking “is he going to offer anything new?” the answer is, in part, “yes.”  For the balance of this column, I will review the principal characteristics of what a Permanent Republican Presidency would look like.  Most of you know them, but I am putting them here all in one place.  Talk about promoting fear! 

Underlying the Permanent Republican Presidency is the Cheney Theory of the “Unitary Executive,” a polite term for Presidential Dictatorship.  To a very significant extent, they have already achieved the latter.  They have done it in a way not previously seen in history.  Even in Nazi Germany, Hitler got a law through the Reichstag (with certain voting members either excluded or totally intimidated to be sure) that amended the Constitution to give him dictatorial powers.  Most other dictatorships have been established by the use of force, to a great or lesser extent.  But the CheneyBushRove Republicans have just changed the Constitution on their own authority, without either going through the amendment process or using force (so far).  They did have the benefit of a lock-step Republican majority in the Congress for most of the first six years of their reign, but many of their changes have been made without legislative action, much less Constitutional amendment.  These people just believe, as Bush has been famously quoted as saying, that the Constitution is just a scrap of paper. 

And so we have, in terms of actions that clearly violate either the Constitution or specific Federal statute (not necessarily in order of importance), for example: 

1.   A highly secretive Administration, according to the National Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office (just illegally ignored by Cheney since 2002) which uses “classified” to conceal all sorts of actions from both the public and the Congress.  (See “Government Secrecy: Decisions Without Democracy 2007” by OpentheGovernment.org and People for the American Way.) 

2.   The well-known use of Presidential Signing Statements to let everyone know that the President will be violating Federal statute.  (In this case they are at least open about it.)  Bush claims that he is doing this when he finds a bill passed by Congress “to be in violation of the Constitution.”  Under the latter, Bush has only one means for doing this: the veto.  He has made up another one out of whole cloth.  As a result, Bush has on his authority has simply nullified Congressionally passed legislation (B. Beutler, www.alterent.org/story/54543/, June 18, 2007). 

3.   The open violation of Article VI of the Constitution concerning signed treaties and the place they have as the “Supreme Law of the land,” when he authorizes the violation of the Geneva Conventions in the matter of torture. 

4.   The liberal (sic) use of Executive Orders to expand executive power in areas of the law that would ordinarily require the passage of legislation.  The most recent (and one of the most outrageous) examples of this the Executive Order of July 17, 2007, “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq.”  In National Security Presidential Directive 51 of May 15, 2007, Bush arrogated to himself  the power to declare a “Catastrophic Emergency” under which declaration he could than take over the functions of the whole of the Federal government, including the courts and the Congress. 

5.   Bush has adopted a very broad definition of “Executive Privilege,” much broader than that adopted by any previous President, even Nixon (see, for example, D. Eggen and A. Goldstein, “Broader Privilege Claimed in Firings,” Washington Post, July 20, 2007).  This is a major element of the “F___ You” Presidency that I have discussed previously.  (In his famous response to a private question from Sen. Patrick Leahy on the floor of the US Senate, using the same language, Cheney first established this as a governing principle for the Administration.)  A prime example this approach to the office was the recent exchange before the Senate Judiciary Committee in which Gonzales simply refused to answer one of Sen. Schumer's questions --- he didn't say he didn't remember, he didn't invoke a privilege.  He just said, “F___ You. No. I’m not going to discuss that with you. Move on to the next question.”  And Schumer had no choice but to do so. In other words, “regardless of the Constitutional principle of checks and balances and balance of powers, we are not going to tell you anything we don’t want to --- and that covers most of our actions.” 

6.   In gradually saturating the Federal Courts with like-minded Right-wing Republicans,  through the means of the six-year Republican control of that body (and now with the help of certain Democratic Senators like Diane Feinstein), BushCheney are well on their way to co-opting the whole of the Federal court system.  The results of that were made clear by the spate of pro-corporate, anti-civil liberties, pro-institutional racism decisions handed down by the Supreme Court and several other high Federal courts this past spring. 

7.    Finally, and this is key to establishing the Permanent Republican Presidency and thus the Unitary Executive, as has become abundantly clear in the last three months, BushCheney have totally politicized the Department of Justice. 

As I said, most of us know all of this stuff, but when you put it one place it becomes particularly frightening, doesn’t it?  Next week I shall discuss the Republican plans for winning the Presidency in 2008.  The plan does not necessarily include manufacturing a “terrorist attack” in October of that year, although they might have to go that way.

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This Column is based in part on my Commentaries “Deranged, Delusional, NOT” of 07/24/2007 (http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/070) and “Will the Real George Bush Be Made to Stand Up?” of 07/31/2007 (http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/071).

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