The time is now.
For Howard Dean to Win, He'll Have to Beat Nixon
Thanks for the article. It accurately portrays Nixon's successful courting of what was then called the "Wallace vote" - after Alabama Governor George C. (Stand in the schoolhouse door) Wallace. Using a cynical, immoral calculus, Nixon both subverted the Republican Party, and won the election. The Republican Party has never recovered, because at its core are still "win at any cost" ideologues. No matter what "window dressing" is used, if the core is corrupt, all the apples in the barrel are associated with the rot.
Moreover, it is that rot caused by the lack of morals at the core, that has provoked me to warn against adopting Republican-like tactics in an attempt to beat them. It is the differences from the Republicans that are the strengths. At the core, there is no such thing as a little bit corrupt, or a little bit immoral. You either have a set of well thought out, guiding principles, or you don't. The corrupt have captured one party, and infected the other. If the expediently immoral get control of both major parties, a pall will descend over this country that may not lift in the lifetime of any now alive.
Unfortunately, the article stressed Nixon's '68 campaign, and omitted any mention of the '72 strategy - which I have touted as the most likely analogy to the forthcoming election. Not that Dean is McGovern, as many have tried to portray him, but that this Bush Admin is CREEP revisited - i.e. expect all means - legal and illegal - to be used by this Admin to retain their tenacious grip on the throat of this once fair nation. The youth will face an enslaving draft, and be forced into foreign wars of power and profit for a stupidly shortsighted, selfish oligarchy. To preserve their position of privilege, this oligarchy will continue to subvert the constitution and traditions of this country, to produce a hell-on-earth that will make the child labor of the Guilded Age seem like a paradise. Forget Social Security, Medicare or any other aspect of the social safety net. Instead of a net, anyone not born into the oligarchy, will face a black hole. In Hobbesian terms, life will be “nasty, brutish and short”. The American dream will be over.
When asked what kind of government America would have, Ben Franklin’s response was : “A republic, if you can keep it.” Until now every generation has, and passed it on to the next. It reached its highest flowering in the hands of the boomer’s parents – the Great Generation. Since that time, and starting with the Nixon elections, as a society, we have regressed. Soon we will be too far down the slope to ever recover. Now is the time of testing for the Boomers and their offspring. Will the people reclaim their country, their dreams, their very souls. We’ll soon know
JMO
lurqer |
