The Late Great GOP and the Coming Realignment (Part 1)

In the past, reassessing our strategic alliance with the GOP as the vehicle of choice to correct the numerous ills besetting our Republic, seemed either an unaffordable luxury or an exercise in irrelevance promoted by a few cranks. Now, it is a necessity — a matter of our immediate survival.

The bitter verdict of 1996 is upon us, ushered in by a debacle of catastrophic proportion. The GOP has proven itself an unworthy steward of our hope to return America to the “Traditional Values” of our recent Christian past. It has also shown itself to be hopelessly inept. Its aristocracy of country club dolts and visionless mechanics has once again demonstrated it can no longer keep the Reagan Coalition together, let alone broaden it to embrace the blue- collar, independent, or conservative Roman Catholics that all rallied in droves to Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot. The GOP embargo on Pat Buchanan, coupled with its egregious insistence on running away from (rather than on) its own platform, was the last straw.

Consequently, a new political realignment is now taking place, driven by the sudden revelation (finally pounded home by this year’s unmitigated disaster) about the GOP: 1. It is faithless both to its proclaimed principles and to its allies; 2. It is suffering from terminal stupidity and clearly out of touch with the concerns of average Americans; 3- Its political strategists are hopelessly anchored in the past; 4. It is incapable of mobilizing the “Silent Majority” or “Moral Majority”; 5. It is visionless and morally bankrupt, without a clue as to how to restore the Republic to even a modicum of sanity; 6. Finally, its soul (i.e., its real power center) is much more comfortable with liberal secularists than Christian activists. In fact, in its heart, the real GOP despises us.

This essay, written after two decades as an apologist for the Republican Party, will examine each of these assertions in detail and the consequent course of action they suggest.

The GOP is faithless to its proclaimed agenda

While many examples might be cited, none could be more indicting than the GOP’s shattered “Contract with America” (Newt, please note: the downside of proclaiming a “National Covenant” with the American people is you lose credibility when it’s abandoned without even a peep). Pity the poor Republicans. They tried their best to prove they have principles — and that they (unlike those two-faced Democrats) would actually stick to them — to the point of making a solemn contract with the American people.

But all this new-found principle soon faded in the face of the politically expedient. Now we have a broken contract and a disillusioned electorate who registered their displeasure with being snookered by voting for a paranoid, ditzoid billionaire from Texas or by not bothering to dignify what they correctly perceived as a political sham — by sitting the election out. Now might be an appropriate moment for you to explore your own feelings surrounding this unexpected and incredible letdown. Do you remember how hopeful you were when Newt, the revolutionary, and his army of reformers launched their blitzkrieg on Congress and promised to turn the political establishment upside down before they stood again for re-election? That lasted about six months. Then we never saw or heard from Newt again about the revolution (or anything else, it seemed). Shell-shocked by his high negatives (professorial arrogance does not play well on TV), Newt went into hiding, while his agenda foundered on the rocky intransigence of the GOP Senate establishment (shepherded by none other than Bob Dole); and his congressional troops went into a long funk after losing the moral high ground on the budget battle to none other than Mr. Balance-the-Budget, Bill Clinton. Licking their wounds, they had decided Bill had won the day so they had better lay low until a charismatic visionary like longtime party leader Bob Dole could whip the Republic into a frenzy of excitement and a consequent electoral sweep in 1996.

The disappearance of Newt’s agenda, which engineered one of the greatest electoral reverses in history in less than twelve months from its unveiling is surely one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of the Republic. It is especially noteworthy that the panjandrums of the GOP have made no coherent effort to offer a rational explanation for their malfeasance in this regard to party regulars, let alone to the American public. Emulating the man they profess to disdain, the epitome of faithlessness, they simply walked off. No sustained effort, no strategic adaption, no explanation. Just a void filled with silence, a political black hole (which we will explore later in our story).

The Party is Clueless About the Values Issue

Newt’s Contract was a very good beginning, but many Republicans regarded it as the Alpha and Omega — pass this legislative package — and presto — America is back on track. The fallout from the failure of the Contract suggests that most of the GOP’s top-ranked players do not have a clue about the real ills besetting America. A balanced budget and term limits are twentieth-century answers for twenty-first century problems: secular medicine for a disease of the spirit.

Indeed, the man in the street understands the bedrock issues much more clearly than all the GOP think tanks (increasingly an oxymoron) combined, as pollster George Gallup, Jr. confirmed in August 1996 when he reported moral values had displaced economic issues as the nation’s primary concern. In fact, the loss of public virtue and personal morality surpassed economic concern by an astounding 53 to 38 percent, leading Gallup to note: “Americans are more concerned about moral values now than at any time of 60 years of polling.” Even more amazing, a super majority of voters — 57 percent — indicated that where presidential candidates stood on moral problems was “very important” (another 30 percent rated moral issues “important”). A perfect opportunity to follow up the Republican juggernaut of 1994 and throw out the sleazy gang surrounding the most amoral president in history — right? A golden opportunity for the GOP to pick up the White House and improve its margins in both houses — Right? An obvious clue that the GOP “war room” (if they had one) should emphasize “It’s values — stupid!” Right?

Not quite! In fact, it appears the only presidential strategist who read the issue correctly was Bill Clinton’s alter ego, Robert Morris (who previously worked for Jesse Helms, Bill Weld and a number of other Republicans), who apparently seized upon this high concept in-between his now infamous trysts with a prostitute. Meanwhile, one of Dole’s advisor’s designated to expose Clinton’s vulnerability on moral issues, abruptly resigned when the same scandal sheet that “outed” Morris the previous week, reported the GOP moral strategist was waging his own one-man advertising campaign in “swingers” newspapers soliciting single men to join him and his wife for “fun and games.” One could imagine, Mr. Dick Morris replying and their subsequent collaboration on developing a bipartisan approach to the moral issues debate, breathing new life into the old cliche that politics makes strange bedfellows! Tragically, as this tawdry little soap opera illustrates, the powers that be in the GOP are profoundly uncomfortable with moral issues, leading hapless Bob Dole to choke out what must be the most painfully embarrassing admission in the recent history of presidential campaigns: when asked by USA Today how his campaign was faring in the contest to present itself as the “values party” in 1996 as compared to Clinton, Dole mumbled “Oh, he’s ahead of me on it.” Simply amazing! Here we have the standard-bearer of “God’s Own Party” taking second place to the King of Sleaze when it comes to restoring even a measure of confidence in the president’s ability to being an exhorter of the public morality. How could this be?

Our first clue is to note that Dole cannot even bring himself to utter the words “moral issues” or “values.” He has to refer to them (and thus to the hottest issues of 1996) with an alienated “it” as if he was afraid even to touch the “M” word lest he be thought a zealot. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton, with instincts honed by years of vegetating in Baptist churches and governing a “fundamentalist” state, has no such compunctions. He knows exactly how to manipulate value symbols, and Hillary notwithstanding, he has enough Bible belt stuck in his craw not to only handle the issue comfortably but with apparent conviction (and you can be sure that at this very moment Clinton is indeed convicted of the importance of values!).

To accurately assess the limits of the GOP’s vision or the deficiency of its “value system, we first need to understand Bob Dole, not just because he was Chairman of the Party in the ‘70’s or the Senate Majority Leader in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, or because he is the current GOP standard-bearer, but because he is the arch-type of the traditional Republicans who control the party. He is a perfect genetic clone of his predecessors, Nixon, Ford and Bush who are eerily similar in their lack of vision beyond the next day, and their unique inability to express themselves coherently. He mirrors the political pragmatism of the political mechanics, the stage managers, the blind hierarchs of the party apparatus. In short, Bob Dole is a GOP microcosm. He is not an aberration. He is the Party. To understand his limitations is to understand the party’s inability to accept, let alone produce, visionaries.

In the traditional old-school mold shared by Bush and Ford, it is obvious that Dole is profoundly uncomfortable with any discussion of morality or values. For him, politics is the art of the possible and morals or values are regarded as “private matters” with no discernible connection to the process of governing. In his August 8 full-page interview with USA Today, Dole was as revealing as he was stupefying. Given a chance to reach out to millions of readers in a special edition dedicated to values, right off the bat Dole repeated the tired liberal cliche that “you can’t legislate morality” (O.K., Mr. Rocket Scientist, then why is murder, rape and theft outlawed?).

When USA Today opened a Pandora’s Box and asked whether Clinton had values, what was candidate Dole’s brilliant response to this gift of a question? Did he address what everyone in Washington (pro or con Clinton) acknowledges, that the President is a pathological liar (note recent comments to this effect by Democratic Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee)? Did Dole answer that the Prince of Lies is as unfaithful to his political pledges as he is to his wife, that his entire history from draft-dodging to drug abuse, from Gennifer Flowers to Paula Jones, from Whitewater to Filegate, from his much-touted religious beliefs to his embrace of abortion, homosexuality and radical feminism, is characterized by unfaithfulness, chicanery, evasion and deceit?

No, of course not. Rather, Dole answers with an astonishing, “Obviously he has values.” His only real critique of Clinton’s values was that Clinton had lost “credibility” because he had reversed his positions on welfare reform and taxes (kind of like George Bush!). Seemingly unable to cope with any meaningful discussion of values, Dole simply drew the conversation back to mundane political matters.

Likewise, Dole defended his waffling on the party’s abortion plank this way: “This is a moral issue. It’s not like all the other things in the platform.” Clearly in Dole’s traditional Republican mindset, political principles and moral values are two very different things. Morality is something very private, “a matter of private conscience,” something we should not be expected to agree on or even to discuss in polite company. Thus Dole is quoted as saying that Republicans can be expected to agree on taxes, trade, immigration and all the various issues in the platform except for abortion, on which we need to tolerate a divergence of opinion because this is an issue of private conscience. Standing the moral universe on its head, what we have here is the essence of Republican establishment thinking. We are all expected to agree and march in lock step on secondary issues like free trade, taxation policy and immigration but on fundamental moral issues we are free agents. What’s wrong with this picture? Of course, what this really reveals is that the party’s heart is centered around issues that protect its leaders’ pocketbooks. We all need to agree on the most efficient way to protect our economic interests or our freedom of choice. Beyond that, everything else is up for grabs. Henceforth, the Litmus Test for being a true Republican will not be the issues of life and death, but as Pat Buchanan found out, issues of real concern like free trade. When pressed, Dole finally thought of a value he stood for. He wanted to restore “dignity” to the White House! And there you have it, for the Doles, Bushes, Fords and the party hierarchs: values really boil down to good manners. Typical of New England and Midwestern “cutflower” moralists who value the benefits of Christian culture while denying their moral and spiritual foundations, civility, “family,” honesty, responsibility, dignity and the like are considered to be generic virtues shared by all well- mannered WASPS. In this paradigm, masterfully modeled by both George and Barbara Bush, moral issues are thought to be private and beyond the realm of polite discussion. This secular sanctimoniousness is precisely why the Christian Right is held in such disdain by the self-appointed arbiters of acceptable social discourse. We demonstrate a distastefully uncouth lack of proper etiquette when we bring up such “private issues” as morality or religious values. How uncivilized!

Finally, to demonstrate unequivocally how out to lunch Dole really is when it comes to any metaphysical or theological exercises no matter how simple, when asked by USA Today whose values he admired most, who he turned for direction or coaching, who do you think came to mind? Jesus? Senate Chaplains Dick Halvorson or Lloyd Oglivie? Or even every presidential favorite “cop out” — “Billy Graham”? How about the Pope or Mother Theresa? No such luck. It turns out Dole relies on his wife Elisabeth: “She really believes and practices her faith." After further prodding by a clearly nonplused reporter (even they know his answers to this most basic spiritual question lacked substance) Dole blurted out “Pete Dominici” — a moderate Roman Catholic Senator from New Mexico. Strange. Very strange.

Why the GOP is Vision-Averse

“Bob Dole is visionless” -Jack Kemp 1988

Bob Dole and his ilk are not only uncomfortable with fundamentals like “values” and “moral issues” but with vision itself and seem equally estranged from the basic concept that ideas have consequences. The saga of Dole’s much- heralded speech attacking Hollywood moguls for their ravenous and senseless debasing of culture is an interesting case in point, since it represents the one and only time Dole’s handlers where able to nudge him close enough to have an encounter with something so alien. Dole reportedly had to be brought “kicking and screaming” to the fateful event. He did not want to give the speech. Too uncomfortable. All this talk about morality. Besides, a lot of Hollywood types supported his campaign. Can’t risk alienating them. Finally, Dole’s aides prevailed. Hesitatingly and with many misgivings he gave the speech. He was reportedly shocked by its positive reception. As Bob Woodward reported in The Choice'. “The impact was beyond anything in Dole’s entire political history. This was entirely new territory.” Dole was apparently amazed by the effect that an idea could have. An interesting revelation after three decades as a party leader! Of course, ideas are scary things and Dole never felt comfortable enough to dabble again with this strange new force. Instead, shrewd old pol that he is, he recruited Jack Kemp who had previously ravaged Dole as visionless, to be his token visionary. Kemp could do the thinking and he (Dole) would run the show.

We must understand that Dole is not exceptional in his aversion to vision (any vision); rather he is the rule when it comes to his fellow GOP panjandrums. This is why he was openly critical to the point of ridiculing Gingrich’s Contract with America. Too revolutionary. This is why his fellow hierarchs in the Senate totally decimated the work Gingrich’s House labored to build, thus eviscerating the short-lived Republican revolution. Finally, the GOP’s aversion to visionaries is what motivated the unprecedented show of unity when the entire Republican establishment (including Gingrich, Kemp and Bill Bennett) closed ranks to oppose the only real visionary candidate with any chance of winning the nomination — Pat Buchanan.

The question is: Why this deep-seeded knee-jerk aversion to vision, visionaries, values or even ideas? First, ask yourself what these three categories have in common? Answer: They all spring from or at least are integral to fundamental, moral, and metaphysical presuppositions. When deeply held values find contextualization within a compatible vision-paradigm which powerfully articulates then provides a methodology of implementation, personal zeal is often the result. A zeal not easily given to compromise, or the etiquette of impeccable civil discourse as defined by the reigning establishment. Since values, ideas and visionaries are likely to threaten to alter the status quo, the GOP hierarch feels threatened, for three reasons: First, they are uncomfortable with those of strong religious persuasion because these people tend to break the taboo that spiritual or moral issues are a strictly private matter.

Second, value-driven visions foster true believers who are unwilling to compromise, thus violating the first sacrament of modern American political strategy — the necessity of “broadening the base” through continual compromise.

Third, as antinomians who have consciously rejected God’s law and Christ’s redeeming power, they do not wish to be reminded however obliquely of the eternal condemnation they have brought upon themselves, and raising moral issues obviously implies that there is a God who sits in judgment — of them.

In short, vision is too dangerous to be handled, because like nitroglycerine, it’s easily out of control — likely to upset the apple cart (like Newt’s freshmen). Since the Mandarins of the GOP own most of the apples in the cart, this is not an acceptable option. Dole, as embodiment of the GOP soul, is the very antithesis of the revolutionary: just another bureaucrat. The truth is, the party platform notwithstanding (platforms are uniformly ignored by the people who actually run the party; for instance, at the GOP Convention both Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich announced with apparent pride that neither had even bothered to read the platform and would certainly not feel bound by it, a sentiment no doubt shared by Governors Wilson, Whitman,

Pataki, Weld, ad nauseam), the GOP has never been a party of vision. Even those who appeared to have vision basically faked it. Both Goldwater and Reagan had deeply held conservative beliefs (communism and big government are bad, a limited government governs best, etc.) but neither could be accurately described as a visionary or even someone who could embrace a full-orbed vision for governing from a new paradigm. What about Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative which served as a manifesto for many of us back in ’64, you ask? The truth is that not only did Goldwater not write this book; he didn’t even bother to edit it before it was published.

The GOP Is Morally Bankrupt As Well As Visionless

We don’t have to look far to begin to discover epidemic symptoms of the GOP’s moral bankruptcy. First is the glaring lack of any coherent vision to rectify the virulent complex of social viruses threatening the future of our civilization. The best of the current GOP visionaries from Kemp to Kristol offer answers that are almost exclusively economical or political — balanced budgets, term limits, immigration reform, supply-side economics, various “empowerment” schemes, tougher crime packages and so on — without ever dealing with the underlying structural questions of value systems which provide both the form and substance to culture, law and economics (that is why vast sections of the Bible are devoted to all three). It is imperative for Christian or traditionalist conservatives to understand that what little intellectual firepower the GOP has — is coming almost exclusively from neo-conservatives like Bill Kristol, editor of the Standard and Dan Quale’s former Chief-of-Staff. As a whole, neo-conservatives (most of whom are former liberals and secularists or Marxists) are interested in containing or moderating the government’s role as sovereign caretaker for the people, not replacing it.

Our second clue is the proclivity of the GOP to marginalize or co-op visionaries when they do turn up. The month-long pre-convention fight over retaining the party pro-life plank is a case in point. When Dole’s operatives realized they couldn’t somehow make the issue magically disappear, they sought to render it meaningless with the following declaration: Members of our party have deeply held and sometimes differing views on issues of personal conscience like abortion and capital punishment. We view this diversity of views as a source of strength.... recognizing that tolerance is a virtue, and we call on all Republicans to reject the forces of hatred and bigotry.

From this most revealing sentiment from the GOP’s heart of hearts we deduce several insights on how the GOP holds ultimate issues of right or wrong. First, we note the stomach-turning devotion to post-modern moral relativism (as previously voiced by the party’s foremost spokesman, Bob Dole) regarding issues of moral import. Life-and-death issues like abortion and capital punishment are relegated as matters of personal conscience since there are obviously no universal standards of right or wrong that the party is expected to agree on. Of course, for some, rape, incest, lying, theft, physical abuse and even murder are matters of individual conscience (just ask O.J. Simpson) which means that morally the GOP is truly bankrupt since its all-inclusive position holds that tolerance rather than truth is the primary virtue. Moral of the story: Since the party can’t agree on ultimate moral issues, it must remain open to all comers — especially “Log-Cabin Republicans.” What better way to advertise one’s moral bankruptcy?

And just to make sure we get the message, we are forewarned that if we refuse to be tolerant or if we perhaps try to inject an uncivil tone into the debate (as I’ve just done) then, well, we may qualify as hateful bigots! Hmmm. This sounds suspiciously like secular liberal Democratic politically correct rhetoric. Perhaps there is more than immediately meets the eye here. Could it possibly be that the party leadership — on a very fundamental level - has more in common with liberal Democrat secularists than Christian conservatives? We shall examine this little bombshell at a later junction.

While rhetorically light years apart, the margin of difference between what the Democratic Party actually does and what the Republican Party actually does is rapidly shrinking.

“Bob Dole is the Tax Collector for the Welfare State” - Newt Gingrich

The GOP’s disposition to relativism and compromise has left it not only morally bankrupt but also produced results alarmingly similar to the Democratic agenda (while still maintaining a basically conservative rhetoric). Historically, of course, the GOP has never presented itself to be “God’s Own Party.” It has been the party of business, of free enterprise, of anti-communism, all of which Christians found attractive. But it has never been a particularly religious party. The closest the party has come to embracing religion is its rhetorical bent toward Libertarianism exemplified from Goldwater through Reagan to Kemp. To Christians, the Libertarian mantra that “the government that governs least governs best” was attractive because it suggested a hands-off approach to churches, Christian schools, homeschoolers, and families in contrast to the numerous intrusive schemes hatched by Democrats in their social laboratory from hell.

However, we as Christian activists failed to consider: 1. A Libertarian hands-off approach essentially means we should all be free to do our own thing. As sometime party spokesman, P. J. O’Rourke eloquently puts it, “We leave you alone.” This of course means people should be free to express themselves in whatever way they please including sexual expressions or the consequences thereof, i.e. abortion. Thus the Libertarian wing from Goldwater to O’Rourke regards Christian morality as an affront equal to the Democrats’ weird form of secular morality which is improperly termed “political correctness.” No doubt this sentiment is what motivated Sen. Goldwater a decade ago to proclaim that Rev. Falwell required a good swift kick to his posterior.

2.The philosophical ramifications implicit in the GOP Libertarian dogma that relies so heavily on the dignity, potential and power of the individual uninhibited by restraints (whether they be governmental or religious) and its idolization of the individual at the expense of God’s sovereignty.

If we were to boil down the basic presuppositions of the two parties to bumper sticker slogans, the Democrats would be: “Man is the answer and government is the vehicle” vs. the GOP’s entree: “Man is the answer, and the individual is the vehicle.” Both parties’ hopes are deeply rooted in the Enlightenment’s confidence in the basic goodness of man and his potential for progressive perfection through economic improvement and education (remember George Bush, the education president?). The only difference is Republicans place their confidence in individuals as opposed to the Democrats who favor the power of collective society (i.e., the state). Nevertheless, both are toeing the secular humanist line that man is the author of his own salvation, and if we only have enough (choose one): 1. Social Engineering 2. supply-side economics, we can fashion political paradise on earth. When was the last time you’ve heard a Republican candidate say that no party had the answers, that people were fundamentally depraved, and the only answer to America’s long-term problem was national repentance? Clearly, our most likely bumper sticker, “God is the answer, and his people are the vehicle” would seem quite out of place on the GOP bumper.

If all this were not bad enough, what we have not yet considered is the fact that the GOP establishment, while paying lip service one day of the week to the Christian agenda and six days of the week to the economic conservative or Libertarian agenda, has in fact been loyal to neither. Richard Nixon, a hero of many of us on the Right, primarily because of the enmity between him and the liberal establishment, funded a rash of newly intrusive and left leaning federal programs. Under Ronald Reagan’s budget cutting stewardship, the national debt increased from 1 trillion to almost 3 trillion dollars and the government’s budget increased from around 680 billion to well over 1 trillion dollars a year. Hardly a fitting tribute to the influence of Milton Friedman and Von Mises! It was, however, a tribute to Reagan’s Senate Majority Leader, Bob Dole, who rammed 150 billion in tax increases through Congress to keep Reagan’s deficit-laden budget afloat.

Reagan was followed by his hand-picked heir, George “Read my Lips” Bush, who went out of his way to break his word to the American people not to raise taxes so that he would have the funding necessary for financing various Planned Parenthood and abortionist schemes as well as propping up the NEA’s pornographic arts projects. As Howard Phillips poignantly summarizes: “In the 20 years from Kennedy to Reagan (’61 - ’81) government spending rose by 500 billion dollars. In the twelve years of Reagan/ Bush it grew by twice that amount to over 1000 billion (one trillion) dollars.” It’s hard to notice a commitment to less government here. Of course, such a commitment would entail telling the truth to the American people about our impending bankruptcy — and the necessity for cutting, not just slowing down, the growth rate of the budget — not a politically expedient thing to do. So meanwhile, the GOP Congress proposes a budget that would have us paying up to a trillion dollars a year just in debt service by the year 2002. Simultaneously, the Congressional Budget Office predicts an annual deficit of 400 billion dollars by the year 2004. And the GOP band plays on.

The GOP is faithless to its allies and supporters, willing to betray them for momentary advantage

That Christians and conservatives have been consistently instrumental in providing tens of millions of votes to the GOP, from Reagan to Bush to the congressional elections of ’94, is accepted fact. That the Christian Right has made the difference in literally hundreds of legislative and congressional races since 1980 (a year in which I personally helped to channel the Christian Right’s energy in defeating over three dozen Congressmen), is not questioned. That evangelicals’ loyalty as a voting block is second to none — with 80% of the vote usually being cast for the party in question (rivaled only by the loyalty of the Black vote who normally deliver 90% of their votes to the Democrats) is clear. This is a key strategic consideration in any GOP campaign manager’s handbook.

Given our significant voting strength and our record of awarding ever higher percentages of the evangelical vote to the Republican Party (to say nothing about supplying the majority of volunteers that do the real work of campaigning), what is our reward for our incredible fealty? Why, of course, a big slap in the face! Ronald Reagan rewarded us by allowing Nancy, Jim Baker, Dick Darman and Mike Deaver (all of whom regarded Christians or conservatives as “kooks”) to run his administration and eviscerate his conservative agenda. (That’s why Reagan didn’t even push for symbolic issues like prayer in school, let alone more substantial issues like the Human Life Amendment). George Bush, of course, couldn’t stand the sight of us and preferred stacking the White House staff with gays rather than evangelicals — a practice that got so out of hand that it led to the departure of the Christian Right’s sole token on the White House staff, Public Liaison Director Doug Weed.

That brings us to Bob Dole and the Republican Convention of ’96. Here we see the GOP’s “happy face” mask torn away to reveal the shocking ingratitude and superciliousness etched in stone. Rather than acknowledge the key role Christians played in delivering a Republican Congress for the first time in a half century, we are told that it’s our fault that George Bush lost. It wasn’t that George Bush was a lackadaisical, inarticulate dilettante, totally out of touch with the nation, who hardly even bothered to campaign (and was widely acknowledged by pros like Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins to have commanded the worst-run political campaign in modern history) — no, it was the Christian Right’s fault for turning the ’92 Houston Convention into a “Right-Wing spectacle.” It was also, that meany Pat Buchanan’s fault. And those horrid Christian Right people. The GOP bureaucrats in charge of the ’96 Convention were committed to one theme. Ironically it had nothing to do with what polls showed the public was interested about — namely, the rapid deterioration of the nation’s values. Nor did (as Bill Clinton not so subtly pointed out) it have anything to do with following up on Gingrich’s Contract with America that had served as the GOP’s centerpiece just twenty months previous. Rather, the goal of the wise men controlling THIS Convention was “not to repeat the mistakes of ’92" — codewords for saying that the Christian conservative zealots would have to be kept in the closet. In other words, the Convention would be “safe” (read: boring) with no upsetting visionaries (like Pat Buchanan) to unsettle the emasculated little bureaucrats running the show. As a further affront to common sense or even common decency, beyond this almost diabolical treachery (i.e., after handing the GOP Congress an unprecedented victory, we get accused of sinking the imbecilic campaign of feeble Prince George), the Dole campaign spent most of its pre-convention energy attacking conservatives from Gary Bauer to Pat Buchanan.

Even the normally congenial Dr. Dobson, who had just prayed with Dole publicly, accused him of going out of his way to insult and alienate the Christian vote. Dobson was reportedly so upset with Dole’s effort to marginalize social conservatives “that he threatened to sit out the election.” As Washington’s conservative sage Paul Weyrich pointed out, most candidates begin by solidifying their base, but Dole began by “carpet bombing” his base. Of course, now Dole expects all to be forgiven because he has selected neoconservative hero Jack Kemp (who reportedly stated he would never vote for Pat Buchanan) as his running-mate. One shivers to think once in office how Dole’s chief advisors, i.e., his pro-choice, Chief of Staff feminist Sheila Burke or Donald Rumsfield, Gerald Ford’s Chief of Staff, would have rewarded us!

The GOP is suffering from terminal stupidity

Clearly, the sheen is off the GOP’s aura of electoral prowess which was beginning to border on invincibility. If there’s one thing the GOP spin-meisters have consistently demonstrated of late, it is a unique knack for distancing themselves from winning issues. No doubt historians will note the great irony of the ’96 campaign: Bill Clinton, a man totally devoid of morality, being elected on a pro-family - moral values agenda! To compound this indignity, it will be recorded that Mr. Clinton, well regarded as the patron saint of whores of all description (whether financial, political, or sexual) did not abscond with the GOP’s moral agenda by stealth. Rather it was awarded to him by default when GOP “strategists” jettisoned it as non-relevant at best, “divisive” at worst. Since the received “wisdom” of the party elders dictated not repeating the “mistakes” of the ’92 Houston convention, the year’s hottest issues (as the Gallop Poll proved), were abandoned in the garbage dump for political scavengers like Dick Morris to reclaim. It is symptomatic of the blindness besetting the GOP wise men that in correctly seeking to avoid a repetition of the ’92 debacle, they overlooked the most obvious reason for their defeat, i.e. the nomination of a know-nothing, do-nothing (the man who elected him to the Vice Presidency, Ed Rollins, described him as lacking both conviction and vision) scion of the Eastern establishment, George Bush. Searching high and low, they finally found a suitable scapegoat for their own incompetence to moral-issue conservatives. Now we know how the early Christians felt when Nero blamed them for burning Rome! Which gets us to the next piece of evidence proving the irreversible brain damage afflicting the GOP brain thrust to their unequaled penchant for anointing tongue-tied visionless mediocritites.

What is the GOP’s fascination with nominating men who consistently lack the primary ingredients of a successful candidate: a message and an ability to articulate it? Like the barely ambulatory Ford and clueless Bush with his “vision” thing, Dole could never spell out why he should be elevated to the highest office in the land. Indeed, the GOP’s top money men were said to be horrified that in a private meeting with them, Dole was at a total loss to tell them even in the most rudimentary fashion why he was running or what he hoped to accomplish! What sort of political aneurysm would precipitate nominating a candidate who can’t even spell vision, let alone articulate or implement one to lead us into the twenty-first century? A candidate who not only is wrong on the issues but whose lack of charisma and articulation make us pine for the days of the glib George Bush?

Clearly the party elders are suffering from some political variant of Alzheimer’s—debilitating them from remembering the hard-fought lessons of the recent past and propelling them to continually prostrate themselves before the candidates with the least substance possible. This bizarre scene is eerily reminiscent of the octogenarians who ran the Politburo: a bunch of old half-wit sitting around congratulating each other on how vital and brilliant they were to rotating the Premiership amongst their small number, all the while completely out of touch with reality.

As the ultimate proof that our patient is now totally brain dead and thus beyond any conceivable resurrection, let us dissect exactly how it was that Field Marshals Gingrich, Dole and Barbour, with a legion of highly motivated congressmen and zillions of dollars available from corporate America, managed to be outmaneuvered by one of the most liberal presidents of the twentieth century on their own turf — balancing the budget. Every poll taken in the last 40 years has confirmed that the American public places far greater confidence in the GOP than the Democrats when it comes to fiscal sanity. How then did Clinton win the battle of the budget by forcing the Republicans to back down on closing down the federal government if he didn’t sign their budget?

The answer is simple. Unlike his adversaries who as previously noted suffer from a serious lack of non-impaired gray matter, Clinton is a strategic thinker.

While congressional Republicans were totally absorbed with mirco-managing legislative tactics, Clinton was analyzing the larger strategic picture. Realizing that the battle would be won not in congressional cloakrooms but in the court of public opinion, Clinton launched a massive counter-attack employing over 18 million dollars raised by the Democratic National Committee for precisely this purpose. Clinton, the “Lyin’ King,” personally directed this massive media campaign predicated on Jim Carvell’s theory that if you tell a lie big enough and long enough no matter how outrageous it is, it will be believed. Clinton’s TV spots (which incidentally violated the spirit if not the letter of federal election law governing campaign spending limits) were, as usual, half-truths and distortions. They falsely claimed that Republicans in trying to balance the budget were going to eliminate Medicare (actually they were only going to try to slow its growth rate down by a paltry few percentage points) as well as abolish school lunches for children, loans for deserving college students, and perhaps even the very air we breathe. The effect of this unprecedented propaganda campaign personally directed by a sitting president was to drive his favorability ratings up 15 points or higher than they had been (a gain of roughly 1% for every 1 million dollars invested) in crucial states, while simultaneously driving the Republicans’ ratings down.This action intimidated the GOP into backing down while elevating Clinton to a position of overwhelming strength to begin the election year. Guess where the Democratic National Committee bought TV time — in the key states, of course, that Clinton needed to clinch the election twelve months later. What a coincidence! Clinton’s scare tactics were so successful that Republican Majority Leader, Dick Armey’s aunts thought he was trying to cut off their Medicare!

Now what’s truly incredible about all of this is not that a clever politician figured out that he could use TV to his advantage. Rather, the startling thing was the lack of a counter-move from the wunderkids at the RNC. Since they were sitting on a multimillion dollar war chest, one wonders why they didn’t come to Newt’s rescue. If they’d gone on the offensive, exposing the Democrats’ charade as the selfserving scam that it was, they most certainly would have reversed the polling numbers and won the battle of the budget. Moreover, if they had pressed the matter further, revealing Clinton as the characterless leader that he is, cynically attempting to manipulate the American people by exploiting their fears while blatantly and purposefully misrepresenting the truth, he would have been forced to capitulate on the budget and would have been greatly weakened entering the election year cycle. But, oh no, the RNC was too busy worrying about what the Christian Right was up to, to pay attention to such minor things as a multimillion dollar campaign to bash their heads in. In conclusion, the brilliant strategists of the GOP (who constantly remind us of our own political inexperience and thus the necessity for allowing them — the pros — to handle strategy while we concentrate on licking stamps) allowed Bill Clinton who never saw a spending bill he didn’t like, and who enjoys dangerously low ratings in the polls on the issue of his character, to hijack the moral highground on balancing the nation’s books.

Even more astounding, however, was ceding to undoubtedly the sleaziest president in the history of the Republic, the title of DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, of the family, of traditional values, of motherhood, the flag and apple pie: a president subject to so many various investigations (Whitewater,Travelgate, Filegate, Hillarygate, ad nauseam) by multiple congressional committees and independent counsels, that he made Nixon look like a choir boy; a president surrounded by more Cabinet members and senior officials either convicted, under investigation, or about to be, than any president in history.

Didn’t it ever occur to the GOP’s leadership to use one of the Democrats’ favorite tactics against them and run against Clinton on “the sleaze factor”? If ever a President or an administration deserved it, it is this one! This would have been an arguably sound strategy in light of the character question most Americans hold about our beloved leader. It would also have allowed Dole’s managers to capitalize on one of his few apparent assets: a decent and honest character. Surely this strategy would have offset Clinton’s incredibly hypocritical claim to moral leadership for the twenty-first century!

Or how about something even more difficult to overlook in its usefulness in deflating Clinton’s stake-out of family values — how about reminding voters where Clinton’s actions (rather than his rhetoric) place him on the record of “moral issues”? Remember the “values president’s” first major effort upon capturing the White House? To make the military safe for homosexuality! What about his ambassador to America’s families, the brilliant replacement of Everett Koop with the unforgettable Joycelyn Elders — who took great delight in lecturing school children on how properly to masturbate and who went on record as stating, “If I could be the condom queeen. ... I would wear a crown on my head with a condom on it. I would.” Well stated, Madam Surgeon General! Or how about Clinton’s aborted attempt to replace the finally uncontrollable Ms. Elders with Dr. Henry Foster who midway through Senate hearings began to recall that after all — gee-whiz — he had performed quite a few abortions! Or how about contrasting Clinton’s newfound fondness for public virtue with the fact that he is the first President to be hit with a sexual harassment lawsuit and the first presidential candidate to openly have staff members assigned to covering “bimbo eruptions” containing — one way or the other — an array of women from coming forward with even more lurid tales than spilled forth from Gennifer Flowers’ twelve-year sordid affair with Mr. Moral Leadership. But the irony of a man possessed of all the moral virtue of a common street hustler posturing as the very embodiment of moral values is lost on the GOP leadership who are obsessed with staying clear of moral issues lest they be confused with religious fanatics or Pat Buchanan. Thus, happily for Bill Clinton, who may need to exercise the pardoning power of his office sooner than you think, the Republicans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, when they ceded the moral high ground which they themselves did not have the common sense to occupy. The consequences: The loss of 25% of the normal evangelical vote margin (i.e., 55% vs. 80%) and a major electoral route. I wonder if all those GOP leaders who distanced themselves from Pat Buchanan because he might prove to be so unpopular, are reconsidering their assumptions?

The big question in all of this is, of course, what should our reaction be to the Republican morass of moral bankruptcy, electoral incompetence, sheer stupidity and hostility to the Christian Right? What reasonable, workable options do we have?

Editor’s Note: In our January issue, Colonel Doner previews the upcoming fight for the GOP soul, handicaps our chances of winning, and decides the price is greater than the purse to be won. He talks about the limitations of parties in setting a course for the good ship America and examines alternative strategies. He also discovers why the bulk of the GOP prefers the company of liberal secularists to Christian conservatives. Finally, he attempts to fathom whose side Ralph Reed is on.