OpEdNews - Page 3 of Article: The Need to Hold the GOP Accountable

Reversal of Fortunes

Only as the Bush administration's disasters mounted "" open-ended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the bungled emergency response when Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, not to mention systemic problems with health care, the environment, gaping budget deficits and a shrinking middle class "" did Republican triumphalism begin to fade.

However, even after the Republicans lost elections in 2006 and 2008 "" and the U.S. economy teetered on the brink of another Great Depression in the final months of Bush's presidency "" the GOP demonstrated no meaningful remorse. Instead, Republicans continued to rely on their old tactics of angry rhetoric and attack politics.

As Barack Obama tried to address the multiple crises that Bush had left behind, pundits in the right-wing news media talked ominously about the possible need for violent insurrection to resist Obama's "socialism"- or what Fox News' Glenn Beck called "progressive fascism."-

Congressional Republicans voted almost unanimously against every major piece of legislation that Obama proposed to address short- and long-term national problems. It was, as some observed, like watching the arsonist who set the fire throwing rocks at the firefighters who tried to put out the blaze.

Which brings us to the central role of George W. Bush's younger brother Jeb at a Saturday event in Arlington, Virginia, launching a new Republican policy group called the National Council for a New America.

As governor of Florida, Jeb Bush and his inner circle orchestrated the thwarting of the voters' will in 2000 to ensure that his brother ended up in the White House. And the Bush family's contempt for democracy and the rule of law goes back much further, indeed many decades.

One could start with Prescott Bush's collaboration with the Nazis before World War II. His son, George H.W. Bush, tried to bottle up the Watergate scandal for Richard Nixon in 1973-74, shut down investigations of U.S. intelligence abuses as CIA director in 1976, collaborated in secret contacts with Iran (behind President Jimmy Carter's back) in 1980, oversaw off-the-books covert operations regarding Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, authorized dirty-tricks campaigns in 1988 and 1992, and completed the Iran-Contra cover-up with six pardons before leaving office. [See Secrecy & Privilege.]

After the stolen election of 2000 and eight years of George W. Bush's imperial presidency, the notion of the Republicans turning back to the Bush family for advice on charting a future course is further evidence that the GOP has little understanding of why so many Americans now view the Republican Party as a threat to the Republic.

If the Republicans really wanted to learn from the past, they would begin by joining with independent-minded Democrats and other citizens in seeking a thorough investigation not only of George W. Bush's presidency but of the secret history of the recent political era.

A truth and reconciliation commission would make the most sense if it also encompassed the decades of the Cold War when the theories of unlimited presidential power took root and when excessive secrecy quietly became a lethal threat to the democracy.

Such an inquiry would, of course, embarrass Democrats, too, both for acts of commission and omission. But the Republicans "" with their unrepentant arrogance and flagrant abuses of power "" would have proportionately more to to apologize for and more to learn from.

So, it's clear that such a truth commission will never happen.

However bleak their current political dilemma, the Republicans remain confident that their many allies in the right-wing news media "" and the many careerists in the mainstream press "" will protect them.

The only accountability may come if most Americans turn their back on the reckless Republicans, perhaps opening space for the emergence of a new political party, one that may represent classic conservative positions without the overlay of right-wing economic extremism, religious fundamentalism and monarchical attitudes about presidential power.

Perhaps such a replacement for the Republican Party might come to respect and defend the Republic.

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