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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (67464)	11/19/2004 6:20:51 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

'The Republican Party's risky leap of faith' ____________________________________________ By Brian Derdowski, Seattle Times The Republican Party should be worried. Very worried. The Bush administration and its congressional majority won't deliver what their base expects, and even if they did, the consequences could sweep the GOP from power for a generation. Take Roe v. Wade. The current Supreme Court is believed to support that landmark abortion-rights case 6-3. Most informed observers wonder if the Bush administration will really be able to change the court enough to overturn that decision, especially when you consider that the ailing chief justice, William Rehnquist, is one of the three opponents. The Bush administration has a relatively brief window to appoint and confirm new justices before its eventual lame-duck status puts a damper on its political capital. But what if the Supreme Court were to reverse Roe v. Wade? I had a candid conversation with a well-connected Republican political strategist about the abortion debate in this country. An anti-choice activist himself, he nevertheless observed that the last thing Republican political strategists want is to overturn Roe v Wade. Such an event would spark 50 battles on this issue in 50 states, lasting at least a generation. As states each adopted their own abortion laws, the red-blue map would likely change dramatically, and the party responsible for creating that mess would truly "inherit the wind," along with minority status. President Bush has promised to appoint strict-constructionist judges to the federal judiciary, but will he? The framers of the Constitution put strict limits on the powers of the federal government and particularly on the executive branch. Strict-constructionist federal judges would presumably give states more power to regulate commerce, set educational standards, control immigration and determine their own moral climate. They would probably also frown on intrusions by the executive branch into our libraries, medical records and bedrooms. Strict-constructionist judges aren't the panacea that cultural conservatives, laissez-faire corporatists and anti-terrorism hawks think they are. In fact, much of the current Republican public-policy agenda is in direct conflict with the strict-constructionist legal tradition. The last thing corporate backers of the GOP want is a profound change in the nation's moral climate and values, or a power shift to the states that a strict-constructionist judiciary would create. After all, Norman Rockwell's virtuous society doesn't spend a lot of money on fancy cars, vacations to exotic places and other luxuries. Global corporate oligarchies don't appreciate red-state notions of local economic power and states' rights. There are historic and obvious conflicts between religious and family values and our consumer society of excess. The Republican Party may claim to be America's moral compass, but it is financed by interests with a very different agenda. When the corporate elite isn't figuring out how to mislead investors or scam the marketplace, it is peddling its bare-midriff teenybopper fashions and one-idea-fits-all media monopolies. The real power base of the Republican Party isn't all those well-intentioned people in the nation's conservative pews; the real power brokers are the corporate and financial interests that have supported the party for a hundred years. Religious cultural conservatives, flush with a sense of victory, should be cautious about their political entanglements. The foundation of religious freedom is its transcendence over secular governments. The danger to religion of being allied too closely to a particular political power is that it may lose its moral authority and ultimately be corrupted, or discredited, by the political process. Anyone who has witnessed firsthand the corrosive influence of indiscriminate fund raising, sound bites, power-brokering and Faustian compromise can attest to the corrupting potential of politics. History instructs that religious/political orders are more likely to succumb to these temptations than to set the body politic onto the path of righteousness. Even more worrisome to religious/political activists should be the potential of weakening their greatest mission by aligning themselves too closely with a particular set of politicians or policies. What if the sincere prayers of millions of faithful for a Bush victory are answered with some scandal or profound policy setback? Talk about voter alienation! And what of the concern that many people who disagree with what they perceive as the politics of the church may harden their hearts to the church's fundamental spiritual message? Over the next four years, we may well experience a political earthquake caused by a collision of two tectonic plates of the Republican Party. For its part, the "Moral Majority" may soon discover that the "Party of Principle" has misused its faith to promote a political and economic agenda instead of the locally empowered, spiritual society that it so fervently desires. And for their part, the neocons and global laissez-faire corporatists may finally be forced to answer to the long-term moral implications of their pursuit of wealth and power. Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company