10-13-06, 9:50 a.m.

Please forgive me, but when I read prominent Republicans going on record as hoping the GOP will lose next month, something within me wants to look outside and see if the sky has fallen. At the very least, I feel unsettled because these days my being in agreement with any statements made by the GOP are as rare as having haggus at my dinner table.

But prominent Republicans have, indeed, gone on record as wanting the GOP to lose next month (albeit for varied reasons) in an article appearing in the current issue of the Washington Monthly.

The article, entitled 'It's Time For Us to Go,' offers variations on this theme from Christopher Buckley, Bruce Bartlett, Joe Scarborough, William A. Niskanen, Bruce Fein, Jeffrey Hart and Richard A. Viguerie.

At the risk of simplifying the theses of each of these authors, Buckley contends that Bush is in 'incontinent conservative.' The war in Iraq has gone sour, and Buckley indentifies the Bush administration as profligate spenders whose practice bears little resemblance to the Republican Party he grew up with.

Buckley's closing line says it all: 'My fellow Republicans, it is time, as Madison said in Federalist 76, to “Hand over the tiller of governance, that others may fuck things up for a change (or is it Federalist 78?).'

Bruce Bartlett chimes in next with a piece entitled 'Bring On Pelosi.' His argument, simply, is that losing the House of Representatives will provide the GOP with a greater chance for victory in the 2008 Presidential election.

'....[O]n a purely partisan level, I believe that loss of one or both houses will strengthen the Republican Party going into 2008. It will force a debate on issues that have been swept under the rug, such out-of-control government spending and the coziness between Republicans and K Street, home of Washington’s lobbying community. Afterwards, the party will emerge stronger, with better arguments for keeping control of the White House. Also, Democrats may well be placed under so much pressure from their left-wing fringe that they’ll be forced into politically self-destructive acts such as trying to impeach President Bush. Every Republican I know thinks Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the best things they have going for them. Giving these inept leaders higher profiles would be a gift to conservatives everywhere,' Barlett concludes.

Joe Scarborough echoes Bartlett on the issue of GOP spending, although in a more overtly humorous vein, including reference to 'self-destructive' actions on the part of Democrats. In general, though, Scarborough seems to believe it would be best if one party (read GOP) was not in charge of both the executive and legislative branches.

Scarborough's theme provide's a nice segue for William A. Niskanen's article, 'Give Divided Government a Chance,' which opens with the following statement by its author:

'For those of you with a partisan bent, I have some bad news. Our federal government may work better (well, less badly) when at least one house of Congress is controlled by the opposing party. Divided government is, curiously, less divisive. It’s also cheaper. The basic reason for this is simple: When one party proposes drastic or foolish measures, the other party can obstruct them. The United States prospers most when excesses are curbed, and, if the numbers from the past 50 years are any indication, divided government is what curbs them.'

Bruce Fein takes a different tack in a piece he called, 'Restrain this White House.' Fein directs his fire at the inability of Republicans in the legislative branch to challenge what he clearly regards as abuses of power -- most notably with the use of President Bush's use of so-called 'signing statements.' He writes:

'Signing statements also flout the president’s obligation in Article II of the Constitution to execute the laws faithfully. The Founding Fathers were acutely aware of the example of King James II, whose practice of suspending or dispensing with laws he believed encroached on royal prerogatives eventually occasioned his overthrow in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. With such precedents in mind, the framers of the United States Constitution directed the president to execute the laws without fail. The Republican Congress, however, has acted as a disinterested spectator while President Bush has stolen its legislative authority in plain view and exercised the tyrannical power of making, executing, and conclusively interpreting the law and the Constitution.'

'Today, the standard-bearer of “conservatism” in the United States is George W. Bush, a man who has taken the positions of an unshakable ideologue: on supply-side economics, on privatization, on Social Security, on the Terri Schiavo case, and, most disastrously, on Iraq. Never before has a United States president consistently adhered to beliefs so disconnected from actuality,' writes Jeffrey Hart in his article. In contrast to the anti-ideology of traditional conservatives like Edmund Burke (Hart quotes William F. Buckley, Jr. as stating that conservative politics represents the 'politics of reality'), Hart contends that ideology has taken over in the White House.

Richard A. Viguerie, who has never been described providing a voice for moderation, argues the case for the GOP loss based on President Bush's alienation of conservatives by plunging the budget into a mushrooming deficit, getting the US into a quagmire in Iraq and 'ignoring' threats caused by the People's Republic of China and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela!

[Individuals interested in reading the Washington Monthly piece in full can do so at: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0610.forum.html]

So there are a variety of motivations put forward by prominent Republicans for their party to lose the mid-terms ranging from the strategic (divided government may be better), the somewhat principled (abuse of constitutional power) to the cynical (the country is in a mess, and the Democrats will make an even bigger mess of it and self-destruct within two years).

So, I am left to ponder that I agree with these prominent Republicans that their party needs to be handed a resounding defeat on November 7, although I disagree with their motivations while finding myself in general agreement with Mr. Fein on the issue of abuses of power and constitutional authority.

This leaves me with a vaguely queasy feeling that no antacid seems to resolve. So, before I go to my gastro-interologist for a full G.I. series and offering the complaint of GOPitis and the explanation that the Republicans have been inflaming me as they have every working person in this nation, let me offer a rebuttal of sorts:

Yes, the GOP needs to be sent packing on November 7th. They have lied with seeming impunity, sent thousands of young people to their deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, shown complete disregard for both constitutional and international law, and have been positively lustful in their quest for unvarnished power.

Yes, there must be an impeachment. The impeachment of a sitting President for 'high crimes and misdemeanors' loses any meaning or relevance it ever had if not pursued against this administration. But the demands of realpolitik demand caution: Should President Bush be impeached alone, or together with his Vice President, Dick Cheney? And could Cheney be located in time to bring him before Congress? And if both President Bush or Vice President Cheney are impeached, this would make the Speaker of the House next in line of succession -- which will be Rep. Nancy Pelosi if the Democratic Party controls the House of Representatives.

If Rep. Pelosi is next in the line of succession, Republicans (however many are left in the House) will claim that the Democrats are attempting to nullify the results of the 2004 election. If they do that, will Democrats respond that since the GOP and the Supreme Court nullified the results of the 2000 election and gave the presidency to Geoge W. Bush, it's only fair that the Democrats take back what they should have gotten six years ago?

Apart from the debate on impeachment, Democrats will be handed a mess in Iraq (and Democrats have never been universally against our military adventures in that country) that can be solved by immediately ending US involvement there. When they do so, they will still be left with a staggeringly large federal deficit and claims by the ultra-right that they -- the Democrats -- caused our 'defeat' there.

Hopefully, the Democrats won't follow the lead of the Republicans featured in the Washington Monthly and argue that their party should lose next month.

Finally, November 7 must bring a GOP defeat because any other result will emboldenthe ulta-right to 'stay the course' and continue its megalomania and erosion of the people's rights.

Whatever the outcome, those of us who are proudly of the left will have little time to celebrate. We must, instead, continue to organize on a broad scale to counter the damage caused by years of ulta-right policies.

And let us, in particular, prove William F. Buckley, Jr., incorrect: Conservatives do not have a claim on the 'politics of reality.' We of the left can claim that mantle because our politics is the politics of the shop, the neighborhoods, the housing projects and the retirement communities. Our politics is informed by and breathes life and is not dependent on the rarified air of the corporative boardrooms.