ThisClose to a Banana Republic
If Democrats hadn’t taken control of Congress this year, we might be living in a third-world country under self-reinforcing Republican rule. Ultimately we have George Bush’s stupidity and stubbornness over Iraq to thank for saving us.
As Karl Rove prepares for his final bows tomorrow on Sunday morning talk shows, the House Oversight Committee leaks the latest news in his dismantling of the Hatch Act, which has barred federal employees from engaging in partisan politics since 1939.
The McClatchy newspapers report: “Top Commerce and Treasury Departments officials appeared with Republican candidates and doled out millions in federal money in battleground congressional districts and states after receiving White House political briefings detailing GOP election strategy.â€
This comes after revelations that the State Department, American ambassadors, the General Services Administration (which oversees government contracts) and, most infamously, U.S. Attorneys were dragooned into using their time and taxpayer money to benefit Republican office holders.
Despite all this electoral manipulation, intense and widespread public anger over Iraq and the personal corruption of Congressional Republicans gave both houses to the Democrats last November. It’s sobering to imagine how a little less hubris would have kept Bush and Rove’s lackeys in power.
As Democrats congratulate themselves for uncovering the chicanery and relish their prospects in next year’s voting, they may want to take a sober look at how much their efforts to sweep out the Augean Stables are distracting them from pressing public needs.
Nobody, especially in Washington, is immune from arrogance.
Cross-posted from blog
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5 Responses to “ThisClose to a Banana Republic”
The Democratic party is as guilty of operating banana Republicans as the Republican party. Have you looked at places like Baltimore, DC, or Chicago.
Image what the U.S. will be like with the next President Clinton and more than 60 Democratic Senators. Half of the offices in DC will be moving to West Virginia and the size of the public unions will double.
When that’s the lead sentence how can you take anything said as serious?
To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds – The Moderate Voice? Indeed, heh.
I got a better one for you: George W. Bush is really Mephistopheles (Satan is of course Karl Rove) and the Rethuglicans, escaped demons from hell who like to feed on the carcasses of pure and good liberals/progressives. See…that was easy. From *that* purely nonpartisan starting point, let’s have a serious and reasonably informed conversation. Ought to be funtabulous…
The post brings up a legitimate question about the politization of all arms of the government. That should be of concern regardless of whether the occupant of the WH is a R or D and regardless of which party controls Congress.
Even those who adore Bush should be concerned about the changes his adminstritation has brought to how the ‘proper’ exercise of power had been redefined. The next president is liable to build on these new precedents and the next and the next.
It’s no longer a question of D vs R. It’s the power of the executive vs democracy,or if it’s not that yer, it will be in just a few more rolls of the jpresidential snowball. In a Banana Republic, it doesn’t much matter what the political leanings of the dictator are.