Here Is the Real Betrayer
By Robert Scheer
Published May 25, 2001 in the Los Angeles Times

The lessons of James M. Jeffords' defection are devastatingly clear: One cannot be both a moderate and remain a Republican senator.

The party of Lincoln through Eisenhower has been captured by the Trent Lotts and Jesse Helmses, and the promised big tent for the GOP has been shrunk to fit the proportions of a Southern religious revival meeting.

The defection is regional; the once-Republican Northeast is now solidly Democratic, offering further proof of the profound realignment in this nation's politics. The Republican Party has been captured by the right wing and is no longer a fit home for moderates.

As Jeffords put it: "I became a Republican because of the kind of fundamental principles that many Republicans stood for: moderation, tolerance, fiscal responsibility. Their party--our party--was the party of Lincoln."

Thanks to the legacy of Lincoln, the moderates of the North, particularly in the East, formed the base of the Republican Party, while the South solidified as the home of racist, pro-segregation whites who voted solidly Democratic. Then came Richard M. Nixon and his "Southern strategy" of snubbing black Republican voters--who were then a force in the GOP--and actively wooing the anti-civil rights Southern white Democrats. This realignment is best summarized by Strom Thurmond's jump from the Democratic to the Republican side of the Senate aisle, and good riddance. But the result has been to deprive the large bloc of Southern black voters of representation in the Senate.

That Dixiecrat Thurmond could join with the reactionaries and find a home in the GOP is just the reason Jeffords no longer can.

The good news is that the country as a whole is moderate in outlook, and that the will of the majority of voters in the last presidential election will now be represented in at least one branch of government to challenge the right wing's control of the House, the presidency and the Supreme Court.

Most Americans will welcome the check that the Senate can now put on the Bush administration's initiatives to further spoil the environment and erode a woman's choice, not to mention the White House's impending assault on the independence of the judiciary. This last is likely the most important battle of all, and the Democrats' control of the Senate Judiciary Committee will make all the difference in confirmation battles for federal judges, from the Supreme Court on down.

Consider Bush's inexcusable elimination of the time-honored role of the American Bar Assn. in the nomination of judges, instead substituting the rabidly right-wing Federalist Society. Imagine the outrage if a Democratic president had declared that he would go first to the American Civil Liberties Union for an "objective" appraisal of a potential judge's professional qualifications.

To understand the betrayal by Republican leaders of the progressive history of their party, particularly on the obligation of the federal government to expansively support civil rights, equality of opportunity and personal liberty, one need only remember that it was that popular Republican governor of California, Earl Warren, who led the Supreme Court through the era of enlightenment that the current court is obsessively reversing.

Jeffords fits comfortably in the Warren-Eisenhower tradition of progressive Republicans. It is of more than symbolic importance that the White House sought to punish his resistance to a tax cut for the super-rich by cutting a program that Jeffords had long supported, which was to provide federal aid for schoolchildren who benefit from special education programs. That was an act of meanness and stupidity unbefitting a president who campaigned as a compassionate unifier.

The signs are unmistakable that the Bush-Cheney administration is bent on being the most reactionary in modern history and that a true moderate must stand in opposition.

"Looking ahead," Jeffords said, "I can see more and more instances where I'll disagree with the president on very fundamental issues."

It is not Jeffords but rather Bush who has betrayed the once-honorable legacy of the Republican Party.

- - -
Robert Scheer Is a Syndicated Columnist

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001

Answers

More HORSE SHIT FROM THE LEFTISTS.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

Robert Scheer is a 'way far left' Jewish writer for the 'way far left' Los Angeles Times. Everything that he writes is subjective so as always, consider the source.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001

Thank you Telinet. Cherri has a problem screeding for turds when she is out of her field (electronic technology).

Scheer is *not* an unmitigated bad guy. A few sessions on the McLaughlan Hour with Eleanor at his side will get the same Bronx cheers she gets. Mary Matalan usually speaks for moi now that Buckley can't be bothered after 50 years of fighting the ebbill lefties.

He has forgotten that the NATION has been moving to the Right for decades. It started in the 1950s even the 1940s and historians could probably trace much of it to the "Flight to the Burbs" (which once was White Bread but now is all flavors with the White Breads moving back to the "urban core" (( bringing with them all the bad influences they learned taking over PTAs and social groups))).

Life is not "left or right" is "money vs. no-money". Blacks and Hispanics want out of the lower class low rent districts and the same good schools that the White Breads wanted years ago. AND ......they have a RIGHT TO THEM. The GOP would be the first to agree.

Its simple: you want to buy a house and live in an upscale area: "Put up the Bread, Bro." The Mortgage Co. and the Tax people don't check skin color when they cash your check.

The pendulum swings and this time it has to return to "center" or the GOP will die just as the Democrats died when they were a captive of the unions and other very vested interests.

He seems to have forgotten that some of the GOP walked near Selma and not in white sheets either and that some of the GOP went along with a great deal of even the Dreadful FDR's social legislation. While Barry Goldwater opposed using Fed. Statutes to force de-segregation and integration, there is not a Black I've ever heard call him a Bigot. And there are many, many in even the Far Right who will never tolerate the crap that the Democrats have allowed over the years disguised as "social reform" while the schools decayed in their own Wards. "Business" whether big or small, knows very well you can't have slums and do business in an area. East NY in Brooklyn and parts of Philadelphia, Camden and D.C. reflect that.

He occasionally gets a story correct but when he wades into his "world view", it is a repeat of the crap that Nelson Rocky tried 30 years ago which itself was the pale re-hash of FDR: BOM-FOG.

All reporters remember Bom-Fog because it was so perfect as a note. All they had to do to cover Rocky was write down or call in Rocky repeated Bom-Fog.

For those not enlightened, Rocky lost big time to AuH2O in 1964 because Rocky represented ONLY 15% of the GOP.

The rest did not believe in Bom-Fog (and quite frankly, the managers of the Rockefeller Interests from Chase to Exxon (then Esso) to Rockefeller Center etc. did not either.

And what was BOM-FOG?

Why it was the "Brotherhood of Man under the Fathership of God" which would distribute the world's assets more equitably (just so long as NOT ONE PENNY sitting in any big Foundation or Trust Fund was ever used). Better to let the U.S. of A. borrow and borrow and spend and spend with Chase funding some of the bonds natch.

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001