archived: 2 - 8 Dec, 2007         Back                 Next

UPDATED: DEC 5, 2007 

“THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2008: REPUBLICAN CONSIDERATIONS”        

George H.W. Bush was famously quoted (and re-quoted and re-quoted) as saying that he was not good at “the vision thing.”  He may have really meant it or he may have been just engaging in the cover-up activities that Republicans are so fond of and so good at.  Nevertheless, since the days of Goldwater the Republican Right (which now is entirely synonymous with the Republican Party, Susan Collins and Ahnold to the contrary notwithstanding) the Republican Party as a whole has had a grand vision.  That they just never bother to share it with the electorate at election time and the Democrats just never bother to point out what it really is, besides the point. 

As I have said more than once on these pages, in summary, it is: to the greatest extent possible, get the Federal government out of all activities other than foreign wars as needed, supporting the oil and armaments industries, and converting the criminal justice system into one aimed at oppression and repression; creating an Executive Branch dominated government while in the process making the Constitution inoperative to the greatest extent possible; making the rich richer while increasing the income and wealth gap between them and everyone else; facilitating to the greatest extent possible the export of capital; diminishing to the greatest extent possible economic regulation so as to tilt the playing field in the direction of their corporate and other wealthy supporters; creating an environmental policy designed to increase corporate profits and maximize the exploitation of natural resources without consideration of any of the consequences of such policies; privatizing as many Federal government functions as possible, both for the sake of increasing profits and reducing Congressional and Judicial oversight; demonizing all opponents as, as in the words of Ann Coulter, “godless, soul-less, clueless, and traitorous”; and so on and so forth. 

As I said, they don’t routinely announce what their true vision is.  For 2008, they will be running on a platform of hate, fear, and race (viz. the Republican Presidential Debate of 11/28/07).  Interestingly enough, these are not core values for most political Republicans and do not form part of their true grand vision.  However, they are core values for that part of the electorate the Republicans count on as their “base,” that is their voting base, not their financial base.  (As GW Bush once famously said in addressing a roomful of wealthy supporters, “they call you the rich; I call you my base.”) 

Because of the supremely talented “issues framers” they have had since Lee Atwater, Frank Luntz and Karl Rove being the most important contemporary ones, they of course don’t use those three words at all.  They use substitutes.  So “hate” becomes “Values” and the haters become “Values Voters.”  I always have to laugh at this one.  What are those values, exactly?  Well, the two primary ones are: hate homosexuals (signified by the “gay marriage” issue) and hate women who want to make their own choices about pregnancy (signified by the anti-choice and anti-sex education issues.  Domestically the fear factor is epitomized by the gunners, who give as their principal reasons for consistently mis-interpreting the Second Amendment “defending yourself, your family, and your home against all enemies,” with no faith in the law and law enforcement and with not even as much control over ownership, even of hand guns, as we have for owning and driving automobiles.

The foreign fear factor is epitomized by Rudy Giuliani.  On April 24, 2007, he gave his famous New Hampshire speech in which he said that if Americans elected a Democrat President in 2008 they should be afraid, very afraid.  He invoked the specters of 9/11, of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, of the terrorists coming out of Iraq (forget that they are being generated there by the American occupation), of the necessity of “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here,” of terrorist attacks sprouting like weeds in the US should the Democrats take office, and so on and so forth.  “Only Republicans can keep America safe,” he averred.  That his positions on the question are not fact-based is totally irrelevant to the core voters that the Republicans are attempting to mobilize.  Repeated often enough may well become fact to enough others who are not part of their base so that they can win.

Anti-African-American race and racism has been a staple of American politics since the first African slave was landed on these shores by Dutch slave traders in 1620.  It became a major part of modern Republicanism with the adoption of Nixon’s southern Strategy in 1968.  It still is, as for example, the GW Bush Civil Rights Division has become a “Civil Rights” Division, concerned primarily with how to keep the black vote down across the country.  But presently no party can directly campaign on a racist platform.  So “anti-illegal immigrant” has become the substitute.  And boy, do they use it.  More than one quarter of that 11/228/07 debate concerned “anti-illegal” immigration with each candidate trying to out-do the rest on their “toughness” (with no regard either to reality on the ground or potential costs, both financial and social, of course).

 These are the three legs of the modern Republican stool, and they will go in battle with them in 2008.  So who might best serve for the Republicans, given their strategy for winning?  I said last Spring (TPJ 148) that I thought it would be Giuliani.  Nothing has happened to change my mind.  First he is running on Foreign Fear, as noted above.  Second, he will very cleverly be able to run on “values” (otherwise known as hate).  And not only because he has got Pat Robertson’s endorsement.  He is hammering away on the theme that his private views on gay rights, abortion rights and gun control are his private, or New York City, views:  “Those are my private views, and they will not influence me on policy.  I know what is right (Right indeed) when it comes to policy.”  Also, “nobody’s perfect; you’ve got to look at the whole picture.”  That one is used to deal with everything from his three marriages to Bernie Kerek.  He uses the proper right-wing code words on the gay rights and abortion issues: “strict constructionist” for his projected Supreme Court nominees.  He will also be able to say that, unlike Romney and McCain, in holding to his personal views he has been consistent. 

As for race, he is rapidly moving to the Right on illegal immigration, but much more important is how is using the “New York City crime” issue as a signal for “I’m with you on race.”  The overall crime rate was going down in New York City before he became Mayor.  He did hire a police commissioner who knew a lot about modern urban crime fighting, but crime always goes down as the economy improves and it did just that in the Clinton years when Giuliani was Mayor.  As for the “Times Square clean-up,” that was begun 10 years before Giuliani became Mayor, under the Administration of Ed Koch.  Giuliani was very effective in getting off the streets the “squeegee men” (unemployed, usually black) who volunteered to clean your car windows at major intersections.  He was also very effective at driving prostitution totally indoors (and street prostitutes were much more likely to be black than white).  But very importantly for him and the point he is trying to make, he “did away with welfare.”  We all know what that is code for (except that Bill Clinton did that, at the Federal level, but why confuse anyone with facts).  Further, he does not have to remind people that when on his watch white cops killed an unarmed black man, which they did on occasion, Giuliani never did anything but defend the cops, and he absolutely refused to have any dialogue with the New York City black community on any issues at all.

And so, more and more it is looking like Giuliani.  While certain Democratic candidates for some reason can be knocked out by a loss in Iowa or New Hampshire or both, that doesn’t apply as much to Republicans.  In 2000, McCain won big in New Hampshire, but Bush blew him away in South Carolina (Rove spreading the rumor that he fathered a black baby out of wedlock).  Giuliani will likely come in third or fourth in Iowa and may do the same in New Hampshire.  But, as he has been saying he will, he will win big on Super Tuesday (Feb. 5) on which many of the Southern states vote.  For his true platform corresponds most closely to the modern Republican Big Three: Fear, Hate and Race (F-H-R).  And Southern Republicans just love them, don’t you know.

As for his principal rivals, McCain has cast himself as the “I’m Bush but better” candidate.  Romney has cast himself as the “I’m going beyond Bush” candidate.  But McCain has always tried to cast himself as the “nice guy” (which when you look at his long-time far-Right Congressional record he certainly is not), but F-H-R doesn’t have room for nice guys and anyway, McCain has truly flip-flopped on the so-called “core values” issues.  Further, he happens to think that the United States must comply with the Geneva Conventions and that means an absolute ban on the use of torture.  Oh my!  Even though he has Sam “The United States is a Christian Nation” Brownback on board, he will not cut it in the South.  As for Romney, he will not get past being a Mormon (and don’t you know, as a Huckabee state regional staffer once emailed to her list, “his Jesus is not your Jesus”).  As for Huckabee, it looks like he will “do well” in Iowa, “doing well” meaning maybe getting 25% of the vote.  That will not be enough to get this fundamentalist Baptist Minister (can you say merger of Church and State?), who believes in home schooling, the flat tax (can you say “Bush deficits would look miniscule?”), that the Theory of Evolution doesn’t hold water but that Noah’s Ark really did float, that abortion should be outlawed nationally, and that homosexuality is a matter of choice into the lead permanently.  But he did lose 100 pounds, has a sense of humor about some things, and comes across as a nice guy.  Not only because Giuliani isn’t a nice guy and doesn’t come across that way despite his current constant smiling, look for a Giuliani-Huckabee ticket.

Can the Democrats beat it?  Not if they nominate Hillary Clinton, of whom Giuliani would make mincemeat.  But more on that one anon.

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