They're past the point where they can say "I was just kidding."
The combination of party loyalty and the new "conservative"
viewpoint has put Republicans in a position that will result in a historical reputation far worse than any blame on Herbert
Hoover, he who is supposed to have rigidly stuck with "correct" capitalist principles while presiding over the onset of the
Great Depression. Or Woodrow Wilson, who seems to be mostly remembered as a president whose global idealism never took human
nature into account.
The driving force behind the Republican 30-year climb from
the failure of the 1964 election - augmented by the finding of a religious power base of support - was the wide array of political,
economic and social propaganda devices that brought about greater power in the ability of their little choo-choo to climb
toward a pinnacle.
Problem is they have crested that pinnacle and that which
heated sufficient steam to turn the big wheels of the economy upward should have been cooled down a bit so as not to peak
at such an accelerated pace.
The combustible for that engine was primarily the agressive
expansion of corporate influence that was already in place prior to 1964 as Eisenhower pointed out when he left office.
We now find ourselves in the position of having our accelerator
stuck to the floor. Driven by on-going aggessive corporate influence based on a self-inflicted need to continue expanding
in order to survive, they've caused us to crest the peak way over the speed limit as we commence barrelling down the other
side on a road that is neither straight nor gentle in its decline.
That corporate genie who is not going back into his bottle
and whose survival involves turning America away from its traditional global role and self-image has to push us ahead out
of desparation, regardless of speed.
In order to survive, our moneyed giants must get this country
to politically follw their needy agenda by force of arms and belligerency ... and an unending array of deception of the electorate.
In order to survive, our moneyed giants must get the citizens
of this country into that state of a captured audience - forced to face relentless marketing and pressured more and more to
spend and borrow.
Credit card companies and drug companies typify this need
with their brutally self-interested government lobbying and business tactics.
It may not have been just the Republican Party that can take
credit for this powerful economic transition as we choo-chooed our way to the top of the pinnacle. But it has been irrevocably
established that the Republican Party has broken the governor on the accelerator.
Arthur Ruger
Publisher, The American Choice online political
journal
© Arthur Ruger 2006