The best characterization of George W. Bush that I can recall ever reading comes from Al Gore’s new book, “The Assault on Reason”. Gore points out in his book, and I agree with him, that the two stereotypes of George W. Bush as a dimwitted stooge or as a religious fanatic are flat out wrong. Rejecting the idea that Bush is either stupid or truly religious, Gore characterizes Bush in a nutshell like this:


Few would argue with the conclusion that the vast majority of Republican Congresspersons for most of George W. Bush’s two terms in office have been virtually indistinguishable from Bush himself. While they were in power they gave him everything that he asked for, and they repeatedly refused to investigate the grossest abuses of presidential power, even when his approval ratings fell into the 30s. Only recently, with his approval numbers falling into the 20s, have they begun to distance themselves from him.

A tremendous amount of damage has been done to our country since George Bush took office, and consequently we now find ourselves in a perilous crisis, with our Constitution in tatters, our treasury being depleted by rampant militarism, our international reputation at an all time low, and with a broken election system. Therefore, Americans would do well to carefully consider prior to the next election the five pillars of George Bush’s Republican Party. This is a description of five groups of people, the first four which overlap to a great extent, who lead, support, and vote for today’s Republican Party.


The economic royalists

I believe it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who first coined the term “economic royalist”. That term refers not merely to people who are wealthy, but to those who believe that it is their God-given right to have more wealth than other people, and that it is the main purpose of government to protect and enhance that God-given right. Here is how FDR put it, as he explained in his classic 1934 Democratic Convention speech to the American people the rationale behind his New Deal, which lifted tens of millions of Americans out of their poverty following the Great Depression:


Al Gore uses the same term, “economic royalists”, to provide an excellent synopsis of this group of people using modern-day terminology. He describes the economic royalists as those


Important results of the efforts of these people has been a wealth gap in our country that has expanded to levels unprecedented since the 19th Century, with CEOs now making 431 times that of the average working American, and the poverty rate in our country increasing substantially during the Bush administration.


The militarists

Though the dangers that our nation faces today are clearly minor compared to those we faced during nearly half a century of the Cold War, George W. Bush has declared a state of permanent war in our country and virtually suspended the freedoms and rights guaranteed to us in our Constitution; he invaded and occupied a nation which posed no threat to us, spawning a war that shows no signs of abating after more than four years; he violated our Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches with his warrantless spying on hundreds of thousands or millions of American citizens; and in his abusive treatment and torture of thousands of prisoners of war, he has repeatedly violated international law specified in the Geneva Convention of 1949, as well as the due process clause of our Fifth Amendment, our Sixth Amendment right to a public trial, to face one’s accusers, to be represented by counsel and to be informed of the charges against one’s self, and our Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. And our Republican Congress sat silently by while George Bush and Dick Cheney did all this.

There are several causes and components of this rampant militarism. One primary cause overlaps with the economic royalists: Wealthy corporate friends of the Bush administration have made billions from their no-bid contracts associated with the Iraq war, as billions of dollars have gone missing; we have built several permanent military bases in Iraq; and now we are insisting upon and intimidating the Iraqi government to gain control of their oil.

George Bush himself seems to take a perverse macho pleasure in his imperialistic and cruel policies, repeatedly emphasizing that he is a “War President”. According to Richard Clarke, Bush’s counterterrorism chief, Bush stated at a meeting on the evening of September 11th, 2001:


When Donald Rumsfeld pointed out that international law allowed for self defense but not for retribution, Bush exploded, “NO. I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass”.

Another component of today’s rampant militarism is ultra-nationalism, best illustrated by the many Bush administration signatories to the “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC). That organization’s chilling (for anyone who abhors imperialism) document, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, written long before the 9-11 attacks on our country, sheds much light on George Bush’s “War on Terror”.

The primary theme of that document is that our military must be much stronger than the militaries of any nation or combination of nations that might oppose our ambitions, in order that we may “shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests”, “boldly and purposefully promote American principles abroad” and maintain an “order that is uniquely friendly to American principles and prosperity”. More specifically, we now have new “missions” which require “defending American interests in the Persian Gulf and Middle East” by “deterring or, when needed, by compelling regional foes to act in ways that protect American interests and principles”.

For millions of Americans who support the rampant militarism of George Bush’s Republican Party, fear and racism undoubtedly play a major role. Constant fear mongering by the Bush administration causes many ordinary Republicans to be so fearful for their own safety that they are willing to have their Constitution and the rule of law in their country destroyed in return for George Bush’s promises to protect them. The fact that most of the victims of George Bush’s cruel and inhuman policies are Muslims of Middle Eastern descent and dark skin undoubtedly makes that bargain more palatable to many of his followers.


The propagandists and destroyers of our First Amendment rights

Despite the tremendous wealth that the economic royalists contribute to the Republican cause, and despite the fear mongering propagated in support of their militarism, most Americans simply do not share the values of the Republican Party: Most Americans would like their government to provide a national health care plan; most believe that women should not be branded as criminals for choosing to have an abortion; most believe we should have laws to require a higher minimum wage than we have had for several years; the list goes on and on. So Republicans need something other than their policies to get the votes they need to win elections.

Our Founding Fathers, recognizing that a free flow of information is essential for the maintenance of democracy, enacted the First Amendment to our Constitution in order to address that need. Such a free flow of information would be instrumental in exposing the Bush administration and its Republican Party for what it is, and that would have allowed American voters in 2000 and 2004 to make more informed choices in the voting booth.

But the virtual monopoly by supporters of the Republican Party on the ownership of major news sources in our country does much to stem the free flow of information. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, our corporate news media failed to explain to the American people that the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq was based on little or no evidence; even now they refuse to inform us in any detail of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths resulting from our invasion and occupation of their country; during both the 2000 and 2004 elections they failed to follow-up on clear evidence that George Bush had failed to fulfill his National Guard commitments; and they failed to explain to the American people that the proposed Bush tax cuts would benefit only our wealthiest citizens.

And to compound the problem, George Bush has denied our First Amendment rights through the use of so-called First Amendment zones to prevent protesters from being heard, by denying access to journalists who criticize him, by threatening to jail reporters who criticize his administration, and by paying shills (with taxpayer dollars) to write government propaganda disguised as news.


The crooks

But even that isn’t enough for Republicans to win elections. To provide Republicans with a chance against a Democratic Party whose values are much more in tune with the values of the American people, Republicans must also resort to bribery and election theft.

Since Republican policies favor only a small proportion of the population compared with the Democratic Party, Republicans are completely dependent upon donations from wealthy donors in order to stay in office. Consequently, they repeatedly vote in favor of the rich and powerful, and in return they are rewarded with money. In theory this is illegal, but it is very difficult to prove, since the deal is rarely sealed in writing. Legislators who receive money from wealthy corporations for doing favors for them will routinely tell us that their vote was not influenced by the bribe … I mean the campaign donation.

Therefore, only the extreme and more or less obvious cases of bribery (or accepting bribes), such as that perpetrated in 2006 by Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, and Bob Ney, are typically prosecuted. But the solicitation or receipt of so-called “legalized bribes”, in the ethical sense, has become the routine way in which most Republicans (much more so than Democrats) obtain money for their campaigns. As I said, their continuation in office is dependent upon these bribes … I mean campaign contributions. So they are always skating close to the edge. And every now and then, when they get a little careless or overly arrogant, they skate off the edge.

Control over our elections provides another means for Republican victories. For various indefensible reasons, most Republicans believe that it is ok to have our votes counted by computers using secret vote counting code, with no means of determining whether or not the vote count is accurate. After all, these are private companies that supply the machines that count our votes. What right do we have to regulate or investigate their activities? – or so goes Republican logic.

In 2000, after George Bush’s brother, the governor of Florida, illegally disenfranchised tens of thousands of African Americans from voting in the presidential election on the grounds that they were close computer matches to felons, after a Republican orchestrated riot in Miami-Dade County stopped the vote counting there, and after various other types of election fraud as well, five Republican Supreme Court “Justices” stopped the manual recount of the votes in Florida on grounds that had no Constitutional justification whatsoever, thereby declaring George W. Bush our 43rd President.

I could go on and on about this. Here is evidence of vote switching fraud in national elections from 2002 to 2006; here is evidence of widespread election fraud in 2004; here is evidence of widespread election fraud in 2006; and we have recently learned that the Bush administration fired their federal attorneys for either refusing to investigate non-existent election fraud by Democrats or for pursuing too aggressively cases of election fraud perpetrated by Republicans. In fact, the main purpose behind the whole U.S. attorney firing scandal appears to be the stealing of elections.


The gullible

Despite all their money, the support of most of the corporate news media, and widespread election fraud, Republicans nevertheless must still rely on many millions of gullible Americans to push them over the top. They must convince many millions of Americans to buy into the absurdity that their economic policies are not weighted heavily in favor of the rich and powerful; that George Bush and his associates didn’t know that Iraq posed no threat to us whatsoever when he went to war against them; that the tough talk and excessive eagerness of Republicans to pull their country into war is a manifestation of courage; and finally, many millions of Christians buy into the absurd idea that George Bush and the Republican Party is the party of Christian values.

Al Gore describes the situation in his book:


Some readers of this post may by now be wondering why I haven’t specifically mentioned the Christian Right as one of the pillars of the Republican Party. The explanation can be found in the above excerpt from Al Gore’s book. The Christian Right is made up of those leaders who “cloak the right wing faction’s political agenda in religious camouflage” plus those rank and file Christians who are gullible enough to believe that the Republican Party promotes Christian values. These are the people who believe that Republican economic policies, which drive people into poverty by the millions and make no effort to help families acquire the basic needs of life, are Christian; that the Party that is so enthusiastic about going to war for no good reason is “pro-life”; and that the Party of crooks and liars is Christian.

Many of these people may be sincere Christians. But the ones who are are exceptionally naïve to believe that the Republican Party is the Christian Party. Here is what a Christian minister had to say to Christian voters Congress and Presidency was controlled by the Republican Party:



Today’s crises

The huge wealth gap in America today threatens to rend the fabric of our civil society. Our rampant militarism and imperialism has made us pariahs in today’s world and threatens to bankrupt us and plunge our world into global chaos. The secrecy of our government and constant attacks on our First Amendment rights, the corrupting effect of money in politics, and the widespread perpetration of election fraud by those in power poses perils to our democracy that we haven’t seen since our Civil War.

But worst of all has been the contempt for the rule of law shown by our president, vice president, and their minions. Whenever confronted with a law he doesn’t like, George Bush simply issues a “signing statement” to nullify it. He has consistently shown nothing but contempt for our Constitution and essentially acted as if international law does not apply to him or his country, since he believes that we have the power to ignore it. Al Gore puts it like this:


That is the essence of the Constitutional crisis we have today. Many of our Democratic representatives feel that if we wait it out for another year and a half and elect a Democratic Congress and President in 2008 we will get back on the right track. My great fear is that it will be too late by then. A solid precedent will have been set that says that it is ok for our President to be above the law, like a King, rather than a servant of the people. I don’t see how we’re going to reverse that precedent if we don’t take aggressive steps to remove George Bush and Dick Cheney from the offices they have so greatly abused, while we still have the chance.