Republicans: bravely marching forward to a one party state
This is a fairly typical example of what has been happening at Bush rallies around the US. You have
the paranoid screening of audience members for anybody who isn’t a Bush supporter already, followed by bloody repression when some protesters still have the temerity to show up at what should be public occasions.
It reminds me of nothing as much as the carefully orchestrated May 1 celebrations you used to see when the Soviet Union was still alive and well, only clumsier. but then the regimes there had a lot more experience in that sort of thing, the Republicans are only starting. Give them some time.
I have blogged some half dozen incidents today in which individual Republicans or the Republican Party as a whole seem to be involved in election fraud or voter intimidation. I did not have to search long for these incidents and indeed there are many more incidents I could and will mention.
It seems to me that the Republican Party is engaging in a systematic attempt to sabotage the presidential elections, either hoping to suppress enough votes to let Bush “win” outright or at the least throw the election into enough doubt that Bush can win his “election” in the courts, again. This is not the first time modern Republicans have done so; both in 2002 and 2000 there were incidents of voter fraud and intimidation throughout the country, but it is the first time it seems to be both centrally organised and this widespread.
During the 2000 elections, most of the incidents seemed to have been adhoc attempts, with the Republicans making a serious attempt to circumvent the democratic process only after the elections. But once the opportunity was there, they did not hesitate to make use of it, culminating in the socalled “preppie riot” which shut down the recounts. Quite a lot of the people involved turned out to be on the staff of Republican senators or representatives, including one Tom Pyle, then policy analyst on the staff of Tom Delay…
At the same time, the Republican Party has been busy building its powerstructure, in the Executive Branch, in the Judicidary and in Congress, the media and in business.
This process, which has been going on for decades has accelerated during the Bush administration. The Rpeublicans have used the great corruptive power of government, the power to hand out money to increase their power, by rewarding those loyal to them, punishing their enemies and letting their friends built their fortunes on the back of the taxpayer.
Ironically enough, it was Dwight Eisenhower, the last honest Republican president who first warned of the corrupting power of the “military-industrial complex”, but if he ever thought it would get this bad?
What the Rublican Party is trying to do is create a one party state, a United States which has the veneer of democracy, will still have multiple parties and hold elections, but in which only the right people will win those elections. That is why this election is so important; if Bush “wins” this process will only accelerate, but if Kerry wins there is at least the chance to turn the tide. This won’t be an easy process and we should not be resting on our laurels once Kerry is elected; the Republican Party won’t go away just because Bush loses, nor will it see the errors of its ways. It will be a long, hard slog, in which Democrats, liberals and other sane people must not fall in the old trap of thinking it’s all a game played by people with honourable intentions on all sides or think the Republicans are interested in anything other than their own power.