DictatorshipIsEasier.us: Bush Amplifies "De-Funding the Left" Strategy

Listen up Dems in DC -- you better get it together and start fighting back. Remember how they went after Clinton? Well now it's YOUR ass they're after!

Robert Parry writes:

But the Republican strategy goes beyond simply making examples out of anyone who crosses this new power structure. The plan calls for irrigating the conservative propaganda vineyards with rivers of cash while draining resources that otherwise might be available to liberals and Democrats.

That’s why Bush’s second-term proposals often have a double purpose, both advancing conservative ideology and diverting financial resources to Republicans and away from Democrats. In conducting this modern political warfare, the conservatives see themselves as an army guaranteeing its own supply lines while destroying its enemy’s logistical base.

So, in the Reagan-Bush era of the 1980s, an early conservative battle cry was “de-fund the Left,” which meant denying government money to programs administered by liberal organizations. Labor unions, which generally support Democrats, also came under sustained attack.

Today, the Bush administration is seeking enactment of “tort reform,” which would limit the size of damage awards and thus punish lawyers, another financial pillar of the Democrats. The Republican assault on traditional Social Security also fits into this strategy by cutting an important financial bond between Democrats and senior citizens.

On the other side, Bush is pressing for policies that will give as much money as possible to his private-sector allies who can be expected to reinvest some of it in the Republican Party and the ever-expanding conservative infrastructure.

For instance, Social Security “privatization” would funnel trillions of dollars into the U.S. stock market and thus put more money in the hands of Wall Street investment firms, which already are big underwriters of the Republican Party.

Under Bush’s “faith-based initiatives,” taxpayer dollars already are flowing into coffers of right-wing religious groups, which, in turn, turn out their followers as Republican foot soldiers. Iraq War contracts worth billions of dollars have gone to friendly military contractors, such as Halliburton.

Democratic 'Enfeeblement'

Though rarely discussed on the pundit shows, this Republican financial/political strategy is widely recognized by operatives on both sides of the political aisle.

According to a Washington Post article by Thomas B. Edsall and John F. Harris, both Republican and Democratic strategists agree that one of George W. Bush’s unstated goals is “the long-term enfeeblement of the Democratic Party.”

The Post article adds, “a recurring theme of many items on Bush’s second-term domestic agenda is that if enacted, they would weaken political and financial pillars that have propped up Democrats for years, political strategists from both parties say.”

The article quotes conservative activist Grover Norquist as saying that if Bush’s proposals win passage, “there will be a continued growth in the percentage of Americans who consider themselves Republicans, both in terms of self-identified party ID and in terms of their [economic] interests.” [Washington Post, Jan. 30, 2005]

Norquist, who often compares notes with Bush’s White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, has long understood this crucial intersection of money and the building of an enduring conservative infrastructure.

In the 1980s, Norquist was a leader of the College Republicans when they were getting subsidies from the secretive fortune of Sun Myung Moon, a South Korean theocrat whose organization has a long track record of illicit money-laundering. Moon was pumping tens of millions of dollars into American conservative organizations and into the right-wing Washington Times.

So now we see the final act in the long march towards one-party rule. The GOP has finally gained control of all three branches of government, and holds sway over the media -- the goal of the thirty year plan of the New Right. Now they can really start destroying the Democratic party -- with the full weight of the Government.

Democrats.com's DictatorshipIsEasier.us reports on a changing America under George W. Bush.

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator" -- George W. Bush, December 18, 2000