Image: Chad Blake at http://www.donblake.com/
The Republican Party has long been fond of saying that their values are as American as apple pie, but I think they have their pies mixed up. It should be humble pie. Together the Republicans in Congress and the Bush Administration are rapidly reaching –if they haven’t already–a record number of scandals.
When I was younger the Republicans I knew used to preach that the problem with Democrats was that they always drew America into wars. The comeback to that is that the Republicans always seem to get us into scandals.
Think about the last 100 years. Of all the Republican presidents we have had only Theodore Roosevelt, Coolidge and Eisenhower had administrations largely devoid of major scandals. It prompts the question: Is there something about the Republican Party that fertilizes this sort of activity?
It certainly appears that certain key Republican beliefs make them vulnerable to scandal. When you review the last century there have been three types of Republican scandals–fiscal and financial corruption, abuse of power and what I would term moral hypocrisy.
The first proceeds from the GOP’s market-driven, laissez faire economic philosophy that preaches that government should not intervene in the affairs of business. When it does so, goes the Party line, it only makes things worse.
As we have seen dating back to the nineteenth century, when government operates this way business gets out of control. Jack Abramoff, Enron and Halliburton are merely the heirs of the Robber Barons.
As for moral hypocrisy, there is an old saying that rigid morals provide a great hiding place for scoundrels and hypocrites. In the last three decades family values has become a Republican dogma defined by the religious right and groups such as the Moral Majority. This “new Puritanism” has resulted in an increase of the equivalent of scarlet letters being worn by Republican politicians including Mark Foley, David Vitter and Larry Craig. Nathanial Hawthorne knew this theme well, mining it for several novels and short stories.
I heard an interview on public radio in an Idaho gay bar that lent some weight to this theory. One person said that it’s really too bad Senator Craig has chosen a life and a philosophy that will not allow him to be who he is.
On the other hand, the Democratic Party has been more welcoming of gay politicians. In the Democratic Party you should not have to hide who you are for fear of that the moral ayatollahs of the right will condemn you to perdition.
With abuse of power, the standard theory is that after World War II the GOP adopted a belief in a strong presidency. George Bush’s “I am the decider” echoes Richard Nixon’s. “I am the President.” Yet this belief in a strong executive also has deeper philosophical and historical roots.
The Republicans have always been great admirers of Edmund Burke, the British conservative whose horror at the excesses of the French Revolution made him wary of popular government.
Burke looked across the Channel as the spectacle produced by Madame Guillotine drifted across the water. He believed that if given free reign the people could create as much destruction as any dictator. In Reflections on the Revolution in France he wrote:
The effects of the incapacity shown by the popular leaders in all the great members of the commonwealth are to be covered with the ‘all‑atoning name’ of liberty. In some people I see great liberty indeed; in many, if not in the most, an oppressive, degrading servitude. But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
Like Burke, the Republicans have a suspicion, even a fear of the common people. In the hands of today’s Republican Party, Burke’s suspicion of the average citizen has morphed into spying, paranoia and persecution. If Abramoff and Enron are the heirs of the Robber Barons, Alberto Gonzales is the heir to Joe McCarthy.
The Republican Party has never been a strong proponent of civil liberties. During the Cold War they saw a “red” under every bed. Now after 9/11 they see a terrorist in every airline passenger.
There is something deeply disturbing about the fact that the current incarnation of the Republican Party has become a party of zealots for it is in the nature of zealots to go too far.
If the Democrats are smart they will grab this theme and run with it. To attack the GOP’s corruption and hypocrisy is a no-brainer, but by tying the corruption to a larger GOP zealotry they have an answer to the Republican mantra of “tax and spend.” The current GOP is the Party of corruption and abuse.
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