OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: The Need to Hold the GOP Accountable

Bush could define "torture"- anyway he wanted, much as he could change the history of the U.N. inspectors not being allowed into Iraq.

The Obama Conversion

And just because the Republicans and the right-wing news media have spent the last 100-plus days bewailing Democrat Barack Obama's "dictatorial" tendencies (because he has intervened to steer the economy away from the cliff) doesn't mean the GOP has suddenly become committed to the Constitution and the rule of law. Hypocrisy is not the same as principle.

If the Republicans truly have had a conversion on the issue of presidential power, they might want to start by condemning Bush's eight years of trampling on the Founders' vision of a constitutional Republic with inalienable rights for all "" and checks and balances for government leaders. Instead, the GOP has resisted any meaningful inquiry into Bush's abuses of power.

This Republican trait of refusing to acknowledge how the party has violated the nation's core principles, from limited executive power to honest elections, remains one of the most alarming aspects of GOP behavior in recent decades.

There has been a win-at-all-cost and never-say-sorry approach that can be traced back at least to 1968 when candidate Nixon sabotaged President Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam War peace talks to secure a narrow victory over Democrat Hubert Humphrey. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Significance of Nixon's Treason."-]

When Nixon's re-election campaign chose dirty tricks again in 1972 with the bugging of Democratic headquarters at the Watergate building and got caught, Nixon eventually was forced to resign, in August 1974, and the Republican Party was punished at the polls that fall. But the lesson learned was not "don't do it,"- but rather "make sure you don't get caught next time."-

Essentially, the Republican Party absorbed Nixon's scorched-earth political style, along with his strategic insights about using "wedge"- issues, such as the "Southern strategy"- which exploited the white backlash against Democratic-supported civil rights laws.

As the GOP emerged from the Watergate debacle, top Republicans also grasped the need to build a media infrastructure that would not only push right-wing ideas but push the nation's hot buttons: demonizing gays, feminists, liberals and anyone else who got in the way.

George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign "" conceived by Lee Atwater "" became the ugly template for how to demean and destroy an opponent, a tactical approach that was later directed against a sitting President after Democrat Bill Clinton won the White House in 1992.

The Republicans hounded Clinton for nearly his entire eight years in office, including having the House impeach him in 1998 for lying about a sexual relationship (although he survived a Senate trial in 1999). [For details, see Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

The GOP's pugnacious style continued through Campaign 2000 when Vice President Al Gore was routinely denounced as a liar (an accusation aided and abetted by false reporting from both right-wing and mainstream news outlets).

Later, as Gore's narrow national election victory was being overturned by George W. Bush's campaign team in Florida in November-December 2000, national Republicans even dispatched teams of rioters to disrupt recounts and intimidate vote-counters.

Though Bush had lost the national popular vote and apparently would have lost in Florida if all legally cast votes were counted, Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the vote tally and effectively handed Bush the White House. [See our book, Neck Deep.]

Then, over the next eight years, Bush and his administration rode roughshod over the country, enacting a radical right-wing agenda, which included massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and "" after the 9/11 attacks "" sought to consolidate Republican power in what was supposed to become a one-party state with Democrats kept around only for show.

Bush's chief political adviser Karl Rove talked boastfully about creating a permanent Republican majority, which was advanced by a politicized Justice Department that pressed for high-profile indictments of Democratic groups and officials prior to elections. Rove's operations also targeted Bush's critics, everyone from former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to the Dixie Chicks.

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