Republican Party Propaganda Writer Andrew Ferguson Dissects McCain's Platform
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Officially Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor of the neo-fascist Weekly Standard, but he's been a notorious shill for the Bush Regime for many years. Yesterday the NY Times published an Op-Ed by him that examines the McCain Party platform. He starts with an unpleasant dose of reality about what it was like for the platform writers: "This one must have been no fun at all. Republicans this year faced a special difficulty, of course. Every American who’s not a Republican can’t stand them, a complication that robbed the platform writers of several traditional techniques." He then follows with why the platform writers were up that special creek without any paddles. "If your party holds the White House but not Congress, you blame Congress for the country’s precarious position. If you hold Congress you blame the White House. But what if, for most of the previous eight years, you’ve held both the White House and Congress, and things are still a mess?" The solution? Join the parade and do what everyone else is already doing: blame Republicans.
The writers distinguish between the grossly incompetent and corrupt Republican officeholders in Washington who created the mess and the terrifically thoughtful and luminous “grassroots Republicans” who sent the corrupt Republican officeholders to Washington in the first place. (We are to assume, needless to say, that John McCain and Sarah Palin are as grassrooted as Republicans can be.)
“The American people believe Washington is broken... and for good reason,” the draft concedes, without conceding too much. Special interests rule, expediency triumphs, congressmen are indicted. No need to mention any names.
Instead, the platform goes on, “As grassroots Republicans, we demand a return to our party’s core principles.” Such a revival, the platform implies, will fix just about everything.

One Republican incumbent pointedly not invited to speak or get anywhere near the platform is radical right maniac, Scott Garrett of New Jersey, one of only 11 members of Congress who voted against giving aid to Katrina-ravaged New Orleans on September 8, 2005. All 11 were far right Republican ideologues, of course, and this brings us right back to Fergusons' Times Op-Ed, claiming the platform, like McCain's choice of Sarah Palin, has a kind of "devil-may-care flavor."
“Republicans,” the platform says, “will attack wasteful Washington spending immediately,” even though they can’t. They can’t impose anything on anybody, either, but nevertheless “we will impose an immediate moratorium on the earmarking system.”
Powerlessness opens up a limitless future. It has the fierce urgency of not right now.
As for the core principles, they’re the same ones you’ll remember from back when the Washington Republicans were violating them: less regulation, smaller government, an end to bureaucratic “social engineering.”
But the urge to stick their fingers into other people’s business is too much for even Republicans to resist, as the Bush years have shown. The draft platform condemns the current tax code for its endless complications, for example, and then proposes several ways to make it more complicated: a tax-free Lost Earnings Buffer Account and a Farm Savings Account, more elaborate tax-free accounts for education and medical expenses, credits for people who don’t get health insurance at work and enough alternative-fuel tax incentives to make T. Boone Pickens hop up and down in anticipation.
It has something for everyone, the way platforms do, leaving the impression of a government that is not so small, not very limited, and busy, busy, busy.
The platform is also comprehensively solicitous, specializing in the political equivalent of narrowcasting-- “narrowpandering” might be the term-- which hits a bull’s-eye with a tiny constituency and leaves the rest of us puzzled. “We support the Native American Samoans’ efforts to preserve their... land tenure system.” Make fun if you want, but somewhere in Samoa at least one Republican is very happy.
One passage nicely summarizes the Republican approach to government, at the dawn of its long exile from power-- bold and feckless, all at once. In a section on “Technology and Innovation,” the platform’s authors look to the heavens. They write, “As a symbol of that commitment, we share the vision of returning Americans to the Moon as a step toward a mission to Mars.”
Labels: Garrett, New Jersey, Republican Convention, Republican platform
3 Comments:
Chris Carney votes his district and will win by more than 10 points. Chris Hackett cannot even solidify his base and is only polling at 27 percent.
Best wishes,
Barry O'Connell
You're probably right (about the outcome of the race), Barry. I see Hackett has donated a ton of money to his own race so I'm glad he'll make Carney work to keep his seat. I'm not rooting for Hackett; I hope they both lose. If I lived there I'd write-in an actual Democrat.
I wrote a commentary last week highlighting how Congresswoman Bachmann, who was a member of the Platform Committee, saw her ideology (ANWR, Cap and Trade, Immigration) being “soft-scrubbed”.
Here's my question for the Republican Convention, when will McCain endorse drilling in ANWR ... Monday so that the Platform can include it ... or in his acceptance speech ? I'm sure that he will cite that Gov. Palin has convinced him how it can be done environmentally safe ... score one for the Republicans.
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