End of the culture war: Now the religious right has turned against the
Republican Congress, the great revolution is over
By Sidney Blumenthal
Created Oct 20 2006 - 8:46am
The spectacle of hypocrisy, impunity and corruption engulfing the Republican
Congress has its origins in its rise in 1994, extolled as the party's
"revolution". First came the Republican Lenin - the speaker, Newt Gingrich -
determined to annihilate his enemies and extirpate the "counter-culture".
But after twice causing parts of the federal government to shut down and
being cited for ethics violations, Gingrich was forced to resign, on the eve
of Clinton's impeachment trial, by fellow Republicans. (They had private
knowledge: Gingrich promptly abandoned his second wife for the mistress he
had maintained on the House payroll for years).
The next speaker, Bob Livingston, resigned almost at once when the
pornographer Larry Flynt threatened to release recordings of Livingston
moaning in the company of his mistress, which Flynt had purchased from the
scorned woman. Into that vacuum the most powerful figure in the House, the
then whip and later majority leader Tom DeLay (nicknamed "the exterminator"
for his pest control business), inserted a dull, reliable frontman - Dennis
Hastert, known as "coach" for supervising school wrestling in small-town
Illinois, his greatest previous distinction.
DeLay was the Republican Stalin, a ruthless consolidator and centraliser.
His K Street project forged an iron triangle of lobbyists, special interests
and Republicans that he believed would rule forever. But DeLay overreached
and was indicted for corruption. Hastert was left to fend for himself.
When the story broke about Mark Foley, the Republican congressman from Palm
Beach who lured teenage congressional pages to his townhouse, Hastert
lumbered forth like an agitated but dazed bear. "The people who want to see
this thing blow up," he said, "are ABC News" - the network that first
broadcast the story - "and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by
George Soros" - a Jewish, Hungarian-born financier who funds liberal causes.
Demonising this rootless cosmopolitan, however, failed to distract attention
from a dissolving cover-up. Day after day aides have trooped before the
suddenly reassembled ethics committee to testify that Hastert and others had
known about Foley for years. In the process a network of mostly closet gay
pages has been exposed, who advanced and protected each other while working
for politicians whose careers were propelled by gay-bashing. The unmasking
of Republican Capitol Hill has excited leaders of the religious right to
demand a witch-hunt.
As Christians battle Sodomites under the crashing Republican big tent,
several high-wire acts have fallen to earth. Last week Bob Ney, of Ohio,
pleaded guilty to bribery, caught in the web of Republican super-lobbyist
Jack Abramoff. This week the wacky Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, renowned for
his personal hunt for WMD in Iraq, came under investigation for corrupt
practices; the FBI has also raided his lobbyist daughter.
At the White House Karl Rove's assistant, Susan Ralston - formerly
Abramoff's assistant - resigned for facilitating favours for and from Rove
and others, including Ken Mehlman, Republican national committee chairman.
This week another Republican congressman, John Doolittle of California,
announced he was turning cooperative witness in the federal investigation.
The concatenation of scandals is shattering the last shards of "revolution".
"Reform" has metastasised into the Abramoff scandal, "culture war" into the
Foley cover-up. And Hastert has transmuted from omnipotent Brezhnev into
ghostly Chernenko, presiding over the final decrepit stage.
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
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