A Primer on the Destruction of the Republican Party

Saturday, December 19, 1998 -- CHAPEL HILL -- Evil begets evil.

On Saturday, December 19th 1998, the unraveling of the Republican Party began. The Neo-Nazi wing of the party pushed hard, way too hard for its own good, to force Bill Clinton from office. What they got instead was what I had warned them of for months -- they got the resignation not of the President, but of the Speaker-Desig"not" -- Robert Livingston.

The mainstream media gasped at the more-than-obvious ploy in which Livingston engaged. He called for Clinton to resign and then resigned himself -- supposedly because he was a "man of honor" -- but in reality because even more dirt was in transit to embarrass him and his family. In a desperate move, Livingston resigned not only his Speakership, but his seat in Congress -- hoping against hope that the President would follow him.

Of course the President would never consider resigning -- that would set the poor precedent for future presidents to resign every time the opposition party got him or her into a similar lynch mob headlock. Clinton must have laughed out loud when Bob Livingston resigned -- laughed at the drama and laughed at this, the second high-profile casualty of the would-be Speaker's own party's track. The first was Newt Gingrich -- the Speaker that lied to Congress, the Speaker who committed tax fraud against this nation -- and the Speaker that got away with it.

Now another speaker falls, and many GOP congressmen will fall next.

They threw down the wretched gauntlet of blackmail. But the GOP underestimated Hillary and Bill Clinton, who know the evil within which they work.

They are and were prepared.

NBC'sTom Brokaw, another Clinton-basher, tried to recover from his stupid comments about the "end of Bill Clinton's dream" by attacking Lanny Davis when Davis told him on the air that Bill Clinton would not follow Livingston into exile. Brokaw snapped, saying, "If he was a man of honor... " he would resign.

Right Tom -- don't worry, you still have the nation fooled into thinking you're a "journalist." You and your moronic moralist friend Tim Russert can follow each other out the door, should you choose to be "honorable men."

But you won't.

Speaking of honorable men...

Mike McCurry, the latest Judas in the Clinton saga, had to travel all the way to London to stab Bill Clinton in the back! He appeared on a sappy BBC interview broadcast late last night in which he whined that the President "let him down" by lying to him and others about sex.

Oh, please.

Like Dick Morris and a flock of others supposedly dedicated to the President, it became apparent that McCurry had only his own future in mind when he chose to bite the hand that fed him for nearly four years. McCurry, like the rest of the scum in Washington -- and they are largely scum -- turned on his liege when it paid for him to do so.

Or so he thinks. McCurry will be labeled a traitor and no one will trust him -- no one. Like the overweight-with-shame Dee Dee Meyers, McCurry will join Dick Morris in oblivion, clawing at any opportunity to appear on MSNBC as a compensated talking head.

Unlike McCurry, Hillary Clinton traveled to Capitol Hill this morning to meet with Democrats and thank them for their nearly unwavering support for her husband. While we might never read a transcript of her discussion with the men and women who put their own political careers on the line out of something not often found in Washington -- loyalty -- we will certainly hear snippets of her remarks later in the day.

Some of my diary:

At the time of this writing I sit in Chapel Hill stunned at where history finds us this morning.

A glance at the clock on the mantle reveals it is 8:43 AM. In about 15 minutes, the United States House of Representatives will begin their debate on whether to continue the Republican orchestrated sham of "deliberative impeachment."

Republicans have done a C+ job of convincing the American flock that this is not a partisan witch hunt and that they are voting impeachment to "uphold the rule of law." Earlier this month, someone in the GOP strategy corps realized that the people in this nation were seeing only clearer that what they were witnessing was a sham trial cooked up by a small but powerful group of right wing zealots who had taken aim on Bill Clinton's back as early as 1992 when he was President-Elect.

So the crafty but stupid elephants began their non-stop sound bites which is essence telegraphed this message:

"We are so humbled by the enormity of the weight of our decisions. We have studied every page of the 60 thousand pages of pornography that Ken Starr submitted to us -- a legal brief wrapped in the cover of a dime novel. None of us want to be here and to vote on these articles of impeachment. We are here, and we vote to oust this president for no other reason than to uphold the RULE OF LAW."

As Jonathan Alter said this morning, "This has a sense of cheapness."

Oh Lord, doesn't it.

But everyone seems to have it wrong.

Make no mistake. What we are seeing is a battle to the death for control of the Republican Party. Do not think, for even and instant, that more than 200 men and women in the House who call themselves Republicans have their hearts in this lynching.

They don't.

But they are afraid. Scared to death. For they have been threatened, and threatened by the beast -- Tom DeLay, who weeps on the floor of the house for adulterer Livingston. And threatened by the Christian Coalition -- itself thankfully in its death throes. The hustle: "If you don't vote the way we tell you, we will fund and put up another Republican candidate against you in the primary. "

Period.

This is why you are seeing what could only be characterized as mass hysteria in the Republican Party. The Neo-Nazi faction of the GOP is, for the present, in control of the House. Why? Because they have been able to attract pseudomoderates like Henry Hyde because of his stinging rage after he was "outed" by Democrats as an adulterer, a liar, and worse.

The GOP has tried to rescue him. To a man they have risen to his cause, calling him the greatest congressman living. But in truth he is but a tired old man, sick inside over his approaching wheezing death and how he will make his peace with God after hurting his loving wife so cruelly and destroying the family of Fred and Cherie Snodgrass so many years ago. But filled with rage that his persona dramata has been unveiled and that this emperor with no clothes is nothing more than vermin -- not a leader, not an intellectual, not a kind wise old man -- but rather a calculating monster who has amassed a fortune on a congressman's salary. In short -- a man who has respect merely because he pretends to be a kind and wise old man.

Others in the gang stand proud in their capes of red, like Dan Burton -- another adulterer and a man who tried to "prove" Hillary and Bill Clinton murdered their best friend. Bob Livingston, who presides over a lily-white district in Louisiana surrounded by poor black families in a state which boasts a massive illiteracy rate because black children are still marginalized in schools and in life.

Then there is "The Preacher" -- Charles Canady, who most pols in Lakeland, Florida thought was gay, but turns out himself to have been involved in a treacherous affair with a married woman -- Sharon Becker -- a salacious affair which resulted ultimately in the destruction of her own marriage with Bob Becker. Canady, the man we heard lecture Bill Clinton on being a good person, is himself a laughing stock among men -- and will also sit in judgment this day.

And the list goes on.

So, it is fear, revenge, ego, greed and anger that pushes these Republicans toward the cliff this morning.

As for the President... he sits in the White House, and knowing him, he must be bemused. I know I would be. Certainly he understands what he is witnessing. Of course, he also knows it's his own fault in a way. No one, of course, knows him better than he -- and no one realized how much he would like to be different. But long ago he accepted his frailties and decided to live with them, and so did his wife.

They are playing for keeps. They are stronger. They are smarter. They are more honest.

Out of the corner of my ear I hear Tom Brokaw, a news-reading puppet, saying about Bill Clinton, "...He has finally ran out of luck." -- referring to Bill Clinton losing his place in history.

But Brokaw, who doesn't know Bill Clinton, doesn't realize that Clinton will end up victorious in this matter. In the end, he will prove who the rats are, and why they are rats.

You see, the people do not want to believe they can be had in so broad a manner. They don't want to believe that so many men and women can participate in this impeachment and be wanton.

Let me tell you -- it is very possible. It is done every day. Anyone who believes that the government works for us must be mad.

Here is one truth.

There is only one reason that Bill Clinton will be impeached today. That reason is that the Republicans have the majority. It has nothing to do with what Bill Clinton did with Monica Lewinsky. It has nothing to do with the fact that Bill Clinton lied or did not lie. It is the brutal rule of political life -- if you have the votes, you can do anything -- as long as you can cook up a rationale for the action.

This is payback. Vicious payback for Clinton's elegant destruction of the Republican party. It is payback for his brilliant strategy which resulted in a real and stinging net loss of more than 30 seats for the GOP in the House as a result of the 1998 elections. The Republicans should have gained 30 seats in that election -- they instead lost 5 seats and hang on to their majority by a fingernail. They know, as Moses knew the Red Sea would part, that they will lose their majority in the House and the Senate in 2000 and will probably lose the Presidency in a year when they might have won.

Why? Because the men and women controlling the Republican Party are simply victims of mass hysteria, mass hypnosis and panderers of some "faith" that does not exist among this American people.

The people see these New Republicans for what they are: sinning moralists. They will not forget, and this President -- either from wisdom or stubbornness -- will never let them forget. He will see his mock "Trial" in the Senate through. He will show the American people just what happened to them through the avarice of these punk Republicans -- men of questionable intelligence who tried to use the people to do their dirty work.

One after another, the GOP lemmings rose on the floor of the House and say the President is not above the law, and to allow him to get away with lying would be to say that that all Americans are not equal under the law. Well, we hate to tell you this, but that is exactly the truth. Ask the Black and Hispanic children who crowd our prisons so much so that we are building prisons at a quicker rate than we are repairing inner city schools -- where they lost all hope and turned to petty crime. There is no justice for these children. They lie fallow in jails across America -- placed there by vicious Republicans who tell us there is no choice but to imprison the helpless. "It's just too much trouble to educate them" -- that's the message of 1990's conservatism.

And if we dare criticize these evil men, they rise up in horror, slapping us down and telling us they care more than the despicable liberals who made young minority women "dependent" on welfare. Sure, they are dependent on welfare because institutionalized racism is back in vogue -- thanks to these men who accuse the President today.

The rule of law. Hah. The rule of law for the wealthy -- that is what Dick Armey stands for -- a rule of law which has no room for anyone who cannot afford a competent attorney or anyone who is not willing to bankrupt their families to hire one. How dare any Republican speak of the "Rule of Law" even as they flaunt their lawlessness by warehousing children for selling an ounce of marijuana in a Louisiana bayou so they too can afford to get stoned and bury their hopelessness in a fog of drug-induced dreams?

William Jefferson Clinton will not resign -- for that is the GOP plot, is it not? The moronic thrust of the Republicans in the House today is that the President will resign rather than face the humiliation of a Senate trial. But this too will fail. The President will rise to the occasion. He will come to the Senate and tell us exactly what happened. He will describe each step in the crude plot hatched among unseen and loosely knit hands eager to replace Bill Clinton from their fear he would fight for the underclass in his second term. He will make a mockery of Kenneth W. Starr -- an effeminate whore for the right wing. He will force some Republicans into a life of exile where they will not be able to show their faces in their own home towns.

Do not underestimate Bill Clinton, Mr. Hyde. Just ask Newt Gingrich. He'll tell you a story or two.

Bob Livingston -- Speaker Designate -- showed the GOP hand early. "You sir, should resign," he said -- and then a moment later, at 9:43 AM, he resigned instead. He got it, didn't he? Another victim of his own party, Livingston sat down in disgrace -- not his own, but that of the Neo-Nazi wing of the Republican Party.

What is the next step? The catcalls for resignation. It is the final weapon that the mainstream media and the ultra-right have. Watch for Russert, Donaldson, Hume and McLaughlin call for the President to resign. Watch them lie and say the White House is afraid of these calls for resignation.

They are not.

They know the American people are rooting -- in vast majority -- for the President to beat down these thugs and to win one for them.

-- Mac MacArthur