"Save The Elephant!"
A 7 Step Reboot for a Grand New Party
(And Other Dreams for a Summer Day)…
I open by saying the unmentionable: I think the GOP as a party is facing extinction if some changes aren't made and soon. This is going to be pretty hard to sell,
especially in view of the fact that Republicans have a little run of good news
lately. The first one, of course, has to do with the latest polls showing
Barack Obama having stumbled to a 38% approval rating. And the other obscure
poll that has him nosing out George W. Bush as the worst U.S. President in
history. (The Bush who created the most bloated bureaucracy since the Great
Society of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Yes that Bush!)
The
GOP also had some rather fascinating if confusing outcomes to recent state and
local elections in what is amounting to the power struggle going on inside the
party between the “old guard” Republicans and the morally aggressive Tea Party,
along with some bold predictions of a Senate majority for 2014, which means
they might soon be running both Houses of what is proving to be the most
dysfunctional Congress on record.
All
of these are wins in an off year election cycle and what I can almost assure
you is a False Spring for Republican hopes in 2016.
I
say this because The United States of America has now officially entered the Era
of the Demagogue. It is an arena now replete with “haters” on both sides of the
political spectrum and is supported by political cannibalism on a scale never
before seen in the history of this young Republic. I will back up all this
seeming hyperbole with hard cold facts. But, before I do, let me hit you with a
statistic:
40%
of the voting American public now lists its political affiliation as
“Independent.” That is not a majority, but it is a plurality. That means there
are more of them than anyone else—31% of the population now registers as
Democrat followed by an anemic 27% that list themselves as Republican [with 2% docking-in
as Libertarian].
That
would prompt even the most cynical political hack to sense the opportunity
here. But let’s speak frankly shall we? Most independents have declared
themselves to be so because they’re embarrassed to be affiliated with the bankrupt
credibility of our major political parties. And the one that has suffered the
most from this has been the GOP, mainly because it has impaled itself on its
own archaic sense of the public will and an almost suicidal refusal to adapt to
modern times.
As
a lifelong Republican I have to ask why? And yet even as I do so I know the
question is rhetorical, because anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knows
that the Grand Old Party is currently on its own crash vector set by the Christian
conservatives, talk-show hosts, big money corporate sponsors, old Guard
Republicans (who seem to have garnered the contempt of anyone with a pulse) and
the well intended Constitutional Constructionists of the Tea Party.
One
may argue the validity of former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s statesmanship
for the next century, but even his most severe critics would agree that he was
a savvy politician. At least he knew how to interpret a public opinion poll,
and was dead right in his observation that “America is a centrist nation.” It
may tilt center left or center right, depending upon the shifting political
winds of the time…assuming those times may be described as ordinary.
Unfortunately, these times in 2014 have moved
to extremes. We are a world locked in an undeclared war with Radical Jihad
(compounded by ISIS latest incursions), caught in an environmental crisis—not
from climate change, but from something approaching a critical mass food-shortage—and
we are sitting on an economic bubble that is destined to burst once the $2 Trillion
in quantum-eased currencies now held captive by the Fed are unleashed into
world markets.
Political
implosion always collapses from the middle. So, it is the measured but emphatic
responses of reasonable people that these times cry out for in silent
desperation. If they are silent it is because of the vocal extremism and the
blog blizzard of half-truths leaves them without either source or counsel among
either political party.
The philosopher Edmund Burke once
said: “Always remember, that the only thing
necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
I maintain that in today’s political
climate that “good man,” were he to stand in the center of the Republican
Party, especially when trying to run for the highest office of the land, would
be stricken down and devoured by a kind of incestuous anthropophagism that is
unprecedented in conservative politics.
Case in point: Florida Senator Marco
Rubio. Young, dynamic, articulate and seemingly fearless, Rubio rose to power
on what amounted to the (overstated) “Tea
Party Sweep” of the 2010 Congressional Races. While doing so, he passed every
conservative checklist for being a political comer with an eye to the 2016
Presidential Election clearly in his sights. (He was even of Cuban-American
descent. And how safely cross-cultural can you get?)
Then Rubio did a terrible thing. He
had an original thought—about Immigration Reform, of all topics!
In the first place, Immigration
Reform defines the term, political conundrum.
It is an unwinnable argument. As such, it is death to any serious conservative
Republican candidate for any major office who might actually be trying to forge
a reasoned “compromise” to deal with it. (This is especially true since
we have over 200 major urban hubs in the United States— including New York,
Denver, Dallas, Miami and the entire State of California—that are self-declared
“Sanctuary Cities” and, as such, have spat in the face of federal law, our
Constitution and our requirements for citizenship.)
And, as usual, this kind of moral/political Rubix
twists into the perfect mosaic for Democrats who are willing to suck up all the
social detritus of any partisan position, the vast army of the disenfranchised and every
cause celébre of the non-minority minorities, bringing them all in to suckle at
the warm milky nipple of the Nanny State.
This
single issue alone defines the Republican dilemma. Because anyone with half a
mind knows that, where immigration is concerned, you simply cannot put the Genie
back into the bottle. It is not news to announce that we have somewhere between
11 million and 14 million “undocumented workers” in the United States. And all rhetorical railing to the contrary, it would be impossible and even economically disastrous in some areas to send all of them packing.
Attempting
to deal with this political hand-grenade as far back as 2006, George W. Bush
had in place a viable Guest-worker
program (after the Canadian model). But hey! It was “W!” And everything he
tried to do in his last two years in office became a mandate from the Leper
Colony. Besides, the Bush initiative required that the “guest workers” actually
earn citizenship on a capital payback system, while the Democrats just wanted
to give it away. So the entire bill languished in Committee and ultimately died
there. Apparently, Barack Obama thought it was a pretty good idea though,
because five years later he adapted it, repackaged it, renamed it his Immigration Reform Initiative, and claimed
it as his own. Republican Senators, led by Rubio, actually admitted it was
something they could work with.
That,
in this gridlock of a Congress and the vernacular of the vocal extremists, was
tantamount to sedition. And the political Harpies from the right wing descended
upon Rubio with a vengeance. In an age when working across the aisles of the
U.S. Senate to accomplish anything is
walking a metaphorical tightrope across the Grand Canyon, Marco Rubio quickly
found himself being labeled a turncoat, a sellout, and that political hemlock
of all descriptions, a RINO, Republican
In Name Only!
Being
the adroit politico that he is, Rubio immediately trotted out his well-honed
conservative credentials, making assurances to one and all that he met all the
other criteria on the Tea Party Checklist, and promised to emphasize “security
first” in any new carefully-staged immigration reform package…if one were
viable at all.
In
the wake of recent events, we can now put that entire contretemps on the back
burner, since Barack Obama publically announced a broad-sweeping, open-gate Amnesty
to all “children” in 2012, virtually offering Carte Blanche to the imperiled youth
South of the Border to come flooding into America—to the tune of more than 250,000
in the last 6 months. And, typical of this Zeitgeist of the new national
detriment, Obama refuses to take one scintilla of responsibility for this
debacle he has helped create.
Now,
as usual, it is left for the Republicans in Congress to hold up their hands and
say: “Stop! We are a nation of Laws! We must enforce these laws.” An honest, if
simplistic, approach to the dilemma that the Dems are more than willing to
portray as knee-jerk, draconian measures so characteristic of the GOP.
This
goes far to define the naïveté of the Republican political psyche because, in
trying to do the right thing you, dying Pachyderm, are talking to a generation
of über-entitled, TMZ trained Gen-Y Millennials who have only glanced up
from their iPads long enough to determine that these children, escaping the
tentacles of drug lords and sexual slavers in their own countries are political
refugees and therefore a “humanitarian issue.” And if something isn’t done to
help them, we are ignoring our responsibilities as the most compassionate
nation on earth. So, sending these tiny vulnerable creatures back—in terms of
Government policy shapeshifting and mainstream media spin— would be akin to
drowning puppies.
Of
course the volume on all this is being turned up on the Left by the unvetted
demagoguery of Nancy Peolosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who have
been depicting this as some kind of Children’s Crusade, while the GOP’s
strategy for rebuttal is a steadfast insistence that “We must obey our immigration
laws,” and send them all back. Meanwhile, Governors like Rick Perry call a token
National Guard down to the Texas border that is so anemic it couldn’t blockade the
parking lot at Disneyland, and California’s Jerry Brown blatantly declares that
California no longer has borders or immigration restrictions: Bienvenidos a todo el mundo.
Therein
lies your dilemma, dear Elephant. You are politicians without a true
understanding of politics, because at the moment, your sole application of
strategy is “preaching to the choir.” By standing firm in principle and
wrapping yourself in the Constitution cloaked in the “dolma” of fiscal
responsibility, you have become a big, fat, slow-moving doctrinaire target—perceived
as old white guy mouthpieces for the Military/Industrial complex, Bible-thumping
fundamentalists and international Food and Pharma cartels.
You
may also forget about the “Big Tent” approach to any Republican campaign
because you are competing against Shockley’s
Law. By definition, Shockley’s Law (also known as the Law of Dysgenics) states
that, “Problem causers reproduce in far greater numbers than problem solvers.” And
since Democratic Party is the Circus Barker for the social slag of this nation,
anyone with an agenda or an axe that needs grinding is welcome under its roof. Gay,
lesbian, transgender, ethnic minorities (particularly those persecuted in the
past), political radicals, “undocumented” workers, single mothers and anyone on
welfare, Medicaid or unemployment benefits, owners of Obama-phones, super
entitled celebrities who know it’s “cool” to be liberal (and a career-killer not to be), the AARP, every labor
union, the medically uninsured, environmental activists, any government
employee, anyone who hates success, socialists, anarchists, nihilists, Green-party
dropouts, and anyone needing a grant for anything—all these and more will be
seductively guided under the golden dome of the Democratic Big Top. It is a
party that is quick to embrace, quick to forgive, and one—by the way— that enjoys
a reputation for taking care of its own.
Then
there is the Republican Party with its innate sense of Constitutional clarity,
Christian principles and moral superiority—“the few, the proud, the brave...”
the vanishing. That laudable description works if you are a U.S. Marine or
happen to have been with Henry V at Agincourt.
By now, it should be obvious to all but the
most die-hard ideologue that the modern GOP is a party that has lost all sense
of itself. The Tea Party (with some pretty solid ideas really) has openly
declared its disgust with the “sold-out” Republican Establishment that has shown
no ability to repackage its tarnished crony capitalist image. So there is
literally a mad scramble for the Republican Soul that no one inside the party
elite can seem to find with a GPS, mainly because it long ago made a Faustian
pact with the Religious Right that has finally come to a reckoning. We have
reached a Tipping Point, and the situation has become critical…but not terminal,
yet!
Some
fresh new thinking about our country and our role in its stewardship could prove
to be the panacea. The challenge will be getting the GOP itself to swallow the
medicine. So it is here that I offer my somewhat outspoken 7 Step Reboot for a
GNP (Grand New Party)…for the 2016
Presidential Race, when it really counts.
Step 1: Embrace a positive political Buzzword that defines the who we are… like
“Realists.” About 100 years ago, the Democrats rather cunningly coopted the
term, “Progressive,” and have since proudly displayed that progressive banner to define their liberal agenda … even though it
is code for “Anything, for anyone, anytime: Let’s make a deal.” And that’s
where they have seized the advantage, Elephant, because the term, progressive, when used to describe most
forms of human endeavor immediately evokes an image of being an agent for advancement,
growth and improvement, implying something that is always “ahead of the curve.”
Francis
I is a progressive Pope. Seattle
Seahawk’s Pete Carroll is a progressive
football coach. Apple is a progressive tech
company. Progressive jazz offers new
and innovative music forms. Progressive
architecture is something that challenges the stolid norm with daring new
structures. (Then there is Progressive
insurance.)
So what’s the antonym of “progressive?” Regressive (been accused of it)? Traditional
(fine if you’re a Brooks Brothers sweater or a dorm at Princeton)?
Constitutional (which is now synonymous with rigid)? So, how about being the
party of Realists? Your credo could
be “Get Real!” Realism is also synonymous with acknowledging the truth when you
see it/hear it, recognizing changing times when you encounter them, and
exerting some innovation when it is
required… without being dubbed “a traitor to the cause.” It’s called modernizing.
Step 2: Have just one creative thought
about the environment. First of all, The Year 2014 underscores the climatic
conundrum. The Polar Vortex just created the coldest winter in a century. And
yet NASA photos revealed last week that Greenland—the largest non-polar
ice-mass—just melted. The truth is, no one has conclusive proof that “climate
change” is a reality. Studies that show
the planet is heating up are, more often than not, skewed by the sponsors. (And
junk science does prevail here because CO2 is plant food, and CO2 concentrations
in controlled studies have consistently done nothing more than make larger
plants.) Besides, most harmful industrial emissions come from sulfur dioxide
and mixed emission cocktails like the deadly “China Gas” that comes wafting
over from Asia to pollute our West Coast every 48 hours.
Just
a thought though Conservatives: How about
acting as if you actually gave a damn about air and water pollution and do
something about controlling them? Start with slaughterhouse waste,
spilloffs from the rapaciously invasive coal industry (that have already
destroyed Lake Erie and parts of West Virginia), and water cleanups in our
rivers and off our coastlines that are wiping out things like our entire salmon
industry? Finally, why not completely dismantle and restructure the EPA (now
engaged in rogue mandates and secret seizures without Congressional approval)? Establish
instead a new Environmental Development
Administration (EDA)? Empower the private sector to repair our ecology by promoting
something called Environmental
Commercialism. How about offering tax incentives to industries that
effectively go green? Environmental Commercialism, intelligently developed, is a
trillion dollar industry in the making. Young, innovative environmental
companies are springing up everywhere. What about a little venture capital for
these guys? Isn’t what the GOP has been known for: promoting business and
industry?
Finally,
we’re supposed to be conservatives. Conserve
something…anything! How about becoming the spearhead in planning for and
preventing the imminent global food shortage—one that will see about 1/5th
of this planet hit starvation proportions by 2016? Did you know that the world
wastes 30% of the food it produces; and America wastes 40%? Why not lead a food
conservation, farm-to-market program? Then you could actually beat the Dems to
the punch on positive environmental activism that would reflect some fiscal
responsibility where it matters—in feeding people, making America the world
leader in conservation, and lowering the cost of our food bills without churning
out more GMO garbage?
Step 3: Stop Crony Capitalism…and start applying
The Inca Factor. The terminal
Tipping Point that laid waste what remained of Republican credibility came with
the trillion dollar financial meltdown of 2008. Triggered by the critical mass
of financial giants such as Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Chase and
others, this crisis was brought on by an intricate set of financial
speculations, interest hogging, stock manipulation and lowered credit horizons
with virtually no effective oversight…and both political parties were guilty of
complicity and looking the other way until it was too late.
The
problem was that it happened on the Republican watch…and virtually no financial
institution was held accountable. Make
them accountable. Stop defending these felons in pinstripes.
If
corporations are going to lobby to be treated as individual citizens, then the
knife should cut both ways. By job description, CEOs are criminally liable for the
illegal conduct of the companies they run, but the law is seldom enforced. If
only Nixon could go to China, and only Teddy Roosevelt (the progenitor of 20th
century Capitalism) could “bust the trusts” and end US Corporate monopolies, then be those guys. If CEOs like Lloyd
Blankfein of Goldman Sachs break every law of stock fraud and financial double-dealing
and are still walking the streets of America, bust them! If General Motors and
Toyota build cars that kill people and knowingly hide the findings from the
public, their CEOs should be prosecuted. And fining them a billion dollars is pocket
change and an insult to an American public silently screaming for justice. It’s
time to start making corporate heads criminally liable. Your predecessors did.
It worked In Iceland. And it works anywhere where heads of financial megaliths
are held to the highest account.
I
call it The Inca Factor. In the
Empire of Peru when the Inca nobles, gifted with wealth and privilege from
birth, committed a crime, their punishment was far more severe than the peasant
who committed the same crime. (In this case, “From those to whom much is given,
much is required.”) The Inca Factor.
Apply it. It would restore credibility to our Government and our Party as
someone who actually walks its talk.
Step 4:
Please! Please! Please! Loosen the
stranglehold the Religious Right has on the GOP. Upon these points hang the
true paradox of modern Republicanism, because this low antigen virus once
called “Christian Conservatism” has so insidiously, yet so entirely insinuated
itself into the political cellular structure of America that the host body no
longer realizes how deeply it has become infected.
Frankly, I knew the GOP was in trouble during
the 2012 Republican primaries when all 6 of its leading candidates—from Mitt
Romney and Newt Gingrich to Rick Santorum and Rick Perry—conveniently expressed
the religious conviction that the world was created 6500 years ago. (I love my
God as much as any man, so the thought of placing such limitations on the
creator of the Universe never occurred to me. But fundamentalists feel very
differently.) Of course, there’s really nothing wrong with having a
fundamentalist belief system except for the fact that it is, by its very nature,
dictatorial and repressive. It demands
narrow archaic creationist logic and punishes deviation from the norm. That
“norm” includes a party platform that, in its 2012, has 10 references to God,
19 references to faith and an “attack upon faith,” and no references to human
rights, except the right to religious freedom, opposition to “non-traditional”
marriage and condemnation of abortion.
This
may not seem unusual, except when compared to the Republican Platform of 1972,
which had one reference to God and 24 different references to human rights, it
is safe to say the heart an soul of the Party has been retooled over the years
without even realizing it. In fact, Christian Conservatism has so entirely
subsumed the consciousness of the Republican Party that it has slowly
eviscerated its independent will from the inside out. And it is symptomatic of
the fact that any Republican political candidate lives in dread of offending
the Religious Right because they have gotten quite good at “withholding” their
approval, especially if they don’t like someone’s religious affiliation. Just
ask 2012 Republican torchbearer (and Mormon) Mitt Romney, the recipient of a
shocking 3 million “vanished votes” drop-off on election day.
Barry Goldwater, the conservative’s Conservative, warned
about the Religious Right back in the 1960s and 1970s when he observed, “I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country
telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume
to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me … Religious factions
will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to
them recognize that religion has no place in public policy … Mark my word, if
and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re
sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem.” Goldwater understood
the meaning of separation of church and state—while realizing that this was a
nation founded upon a premise of Freedom of Religion. Not just Christianity;
all religions! As such, he recognized the vitiating effect of fundamentalist
fanaticism in the mainstream of American political expression.
Now virtually every credo inside the
Republican platform—from fiscal responsibility, Second Amendment Rights to bear
arms, enforcement of our immigration laws, and a belief in a free market
economy—all appear to be springing from the Fountainhead of some dark
fundamentalist agenda that attaches its Seal of Approval on everything
conservative. True or not, it has turned out to be the ultimate political kill
shot. It savages dissent, blocks diversity and horsewhips anyone inside the
party that does not fit neatly inside the far right conservative cookie cutter.
Like it or not, that’s been our brand for the last 20 years, and we have to
move away from it.
The irony of ironies lies in the
fact that about 73% of the American people have stopped buying it…more if you
listen for the silent dissent inside the GOP itself. What the Republican
leadership—at least the ones who still have some semblance of self-respect—needs
to do is put its ear to the ground and listen to the distant drum of reasoned
response and the ghost of Barry Goldwater.
Step
5: Understand the human need
for Common Sense Conservatism. And for God’s sake, somebody learn how to read a
poll! How hard can it be, GOP, to understand your strengths and weakness, win
the fights you can win, and stay away from social issues that are plainly
hemlock to our integrity of purpose?
In characteristic political hypocrisy, the radical wings
of both Democrats and Republicans claim to be defenders of human rights and the
elusive “freedoms” defined by the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution. In
truth, neither political party has any problem infringing on our individual
liberties when it comes to advancing its agenda.
The
far right wants to tell women what they can do with their bodies. They think
it’s OK if some nut job who hasn’t been licensed, tested or qualified (and who
may not like the way I eat my popcorn in a movie) can pack heat on the street
if he wants to. They want to tell us who can marry whom and what constitutes
commitment, and would—if they could—create an unofficial Christian Caliphate to
run America.
The
far left wants to get our guns, control what we put into our mouths, including what
we feed our children at school (but send them home for wearing religious
symbols) and blunt our right to pray in public. They want to bust us for smoking
in our own front yards, force small entrepreneurs into employment practices
that will bankrupt them, and extend civil rights to illegal aliens that we deny
to our own people. And God help anyone who still believes that the First
Amendment is not under direct assault by Liberal Vigilantism, including that
most insidious of all social mechanisms—Political Correctness. Although the PC
Vigilantes can’t enact laws to shut down Freedom of Speech—including an
individual’s God-given right to make an ass out of himself—they can trot out the media Thought Police, the “tweet” posse, and
the weight of the vocal minority to drive out of employment or public forum
anyone who does not conform to the rigid vernacular of the verbally benign.
Please,
dear Elephant, just take a look at what’s really going on. And quit breaking
lances on the Windmills of changing times. Some arguments are already lost.
Some are already won…while others are just stupid and best left to the
Democrats. Examples: 85% of the GOP base now believes in a woman’s right to
choose. That’s not the national base of all parties: that’s the Republican
base. The fight is over! It’s over! So why is Right to Life even a plank in
the Republican platform? Could it be the fundamentalist tail is wagging the
dog? (I grant you that 3rd trimester abortions are tantamount to
murder. So common-sense legislate against that. Otherwise leave it alone.)
On another issue, 83%
of the American People strongly believe that the Second Amendment contains the
individual’s right to bear arms. That argument is won. We are victorious. And,
unless we are stupid enough to let the vocal minority shout down reasonable
people, this is a public sentiment is not going to abate. We’ve won! Move on.
Another battle that we are winning is the left-hand media
spin in the press that 77% of all Americans now find lacking in credibility and they believe are rapidly becoming goons for the government agenda. This comes
from a Gallup Poll, folks! One of the few that maintains its reputation for
objectivity. [A media, by the way, that has been shut out of most White House
activities and almost all press conferences involving Barack Obama—he of the
transparent Administration and a new era of “openness.”]
All the above are landslide figures pointing
to the fact that these issues are decided. Most are done so because the common
sense of a cross-cultural, highly motile, futuristic America has been forced by
circumstance and an expedient media morality to decide on its own what is
relevant and what is not. It’s also an indication that facts, more than the
strident cries of the demagogue, are once again starting to make an impact, which
leads to emphasis on our next important point…
Step 6: Set up a “Fact Bank” to antidote Jackass Knowledge. Come
up to times Elephant. There is a wonderful new term out there that plays right
into your political wheelhouse. It is called “Jackass Knowledge.” It was
started by a magazine concept called Modern
Jackass (in 2005) and refers to someone who gloms onto a few tidbits of
information about any subject and suddenly starts expounding like an expert—on everything
from GMO to the origins of Capitalism. Of course, the deeper they go into the
subject the more quickly they display their ignorance—that is if they are challenged by an intelligent
informed opposition.
Unfortunately that informed opposition too often comes
from conservative radio and TV talk show host who, though they often do a
credible job of fact checking, are tainted out of the gate by their brand. Besides,
all you need to do to condemn a cogent conservative perspective these days is
to say it came from FOX News or Breitbart and it’s (unfairly) DOA with a
majority of viewers.
On the surface at least, the deck seems stacked, because
the large body of the press generously covers the diatribe from the Democratic
camp and lays it on like jam to a gullible public without vetting a single
half-truth that comes spilling out of their propaganda banks. The glorious
irony in this is that, by now more than 3/4th of the informed
American public looks upon their spin as tainted and lacking in veracity.
So that news void longs to be filled by facts and figures
and live experiential reporting from credible sources armed with statistics and
somehow able to qualify as disinterested parties. Republicans, if they’re truly
smart and respond to the demagogic spin with hard facts referenced to the
nines, could actually turn public sentiment in their favor. But it would require
a relentless pursuit of the truth, loaded with credible sources, and to date
neither party has been very responsive with either. So, seize the Truth
initiative, Elephant! If we were immediately able to wrangle all the facts (from
impeccable references) and do so on a timely basis, we would bring the world
back to realize again the Freedom of Information for which we so valiantly
battled over the last 20 years (and for which we received virtually no credit).
Step 7: Retool the
Political Gene Pool. And Expose “Celebrity Fascism” for the Contagion that it
is. I know this seems superficial to
note that Politics always amount to a beauty contest. It should also be
self-evident.
Unfortunately
more than ever, perception is reality. And even though there are some truly
lovely, intelligent, profoundly dedicated Republicans, most of them are under
cover for an number of reasons. Frankly, most politicians these days are not
the “intellectual aristocrats” who founded this country or even the ones who
made it great. In fact, the political gene pool has been so badly watered down in
the last 25 years that POTUS Bill Clinton is still the hottest political
commodity in America. He is followed closely by Barack Obama. (Tarnished though
he may be, he is still the darling of Gen Y and most Millennials.) And Hillary,
the clear Democratic frontrunner for 2016, is quite the rave with American
women, 67% of whom think she would make an excellent President. So the Dems for 2016 enjoy a mediagenic acceptability
factor going in. And in a nation increasingly drawn to style over substance,
this is formidable opposition.
As
an additional point of leverage and a powerful one at that, swing voters daily behold
a glitz and glamour entourage from the Broadway and Hollywood elite batting
from the left side of the plate and proudly proclaiming their egalitarian
Democrat heritage. Everyone from George Clooney to Lady Gaga, from Brad and
Angelina to Oprah, from Meryl Streep to Matt Damon, plus Stephen Spielberg, David
Geffen, Harvey Weinstein and every major power broker in entertainment—all
chime in their very vocal support of Democrat candidates, especially for the
highest office in the land.
So
what does the GOP get to trot out as “celebrity” standard bearers—Donald Trump,
Rush Limbaugh, Duck Dynasty, Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin?
Meanwhile,
every Republican in film, television and entertainment is forced, like the
Christians in Ancient Rome, hide his or her political affiliation —resorting to
the use of sacred symbols, coded conversations and secret societies such as
Friends Of Abe, FOA, with Chapters in
LA and New York … that hold meetings at hidden venues (and fend off the IRS). They
do so in peril of their careers, because—although no one dares declare it
publicly—people in film and television get fired for claiming to be Republican
or even expressing conservative views. Unless you are a Clint Eastwood, a John
Voigt or a Robert Duvall—and too powerful and long-standing to be unseated—you
must tread carefully in the very Orwellian realm of Hollywood, Broadway and
every broadcast communications center west of Mogadishu. (This is particularly true of pink ghetto jobs such as casting,
stylists, gaffers, film and television editors and well-paid expendables in the
profession as well as any actor not on the “A” list.)
I call it “Celebrity Fascism” because this is
clearly what it is. Along with left spin media bias (recently “outed”) it is
one of the most subversive invasions of personal liberty in a profession that
so proudly proclaims itself to be a bastion of freedom of expression. Nothing, in
fact, could be further from the truth.
The
ultimate irony of this Liberal entertainment Cabal is that—were these closeted Conservative
professionals gay or women or black or Buddhists and being persecuted for their
lifestyle, their beliefs or their gender—it would churn up the biggest civil
rights scandal in modern times. And yet Republicans and conservatives
throughout the business endure this kind of vicious discrimination with almost
stoic grit invariably suffered in silence.
Therein
lies the paradox of the Pachyderm. Republicans have, somewhere along the way,
cultivated this proud and dignified (but silent) defiance of the crass public
norm, when what we should really be doing is rolling up our sleeves and taking
the fight to the Democrats. Start by defending our own who are being bullied
and driven under in the world of entertainment. Expose Celebrity Fascism and
Liberal Fascism in general for what it is—a suppression of human rights and
an attack on the First Amendment.
So, let's put our shoulders to the task, Elephants. Have the sand to denounce the political repression that is going on right in the backyard of our Creative Brain Trusts in film and entertainment. Bring some of our best and brightest out of the closet and into the light of day. (You might actually be surprised at who stands up to be counted once you do.)
Return
to what you were GOP, a champion of the average man. The Democrats are masters
of depicting themselves as the heroes of the working class, when what they are
doing is using them for fodder—for votes, the collective embrace of big
Government and a loss of the individual will.
Once
the GOP was the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt, Henry
Kissinger, Nelson Rockefeller, Barry Goldwater and Eliot Richardson. This was
once the haven of John Wayne, Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope.
Let’s
get back to basics, Republicans. There are a lot of good, young, energetic
intelligent aspirants in the Republican camp right now. Just cut them a little
slack. Rather than try to pound them into shape so they can fit inside the
far-right conservative cake pan, allow them a little individuality. Return to
what this party once represented—diversity with a moral compass, strength and
the ability to be impeccable to our word.
And
have a nose for the future, Elephant. Carl Sandburg was right: The past is a box of ashes.
