CHAPTER II

TRUE TO OUR ROOTS

Bob Dole, our top banana, didn't know or care what he was :

In the 1996 presidential campaign, our Republican nominee, Bob Dole, appeared to be a muddle of the roader on the middle of each shoulder veering right and left as the competition moved him. Politics as usual! We lost no hope he'd awaken from the slumber of age to the zealousness of youth to regain our roots, to do true battle for the true heart and soul of Constitutionally conservative, moderately progressive Republicans long before his desperation became ridiculous. He seemed too old to remember what we're all about, philosophically, historically and spiritually--if he'd ever cared to know.

Dole never cared to know - - if he was anything:

In his "Farewell to the Senate" address, Bob Dole admitted that as a young man he first decided to run for the House of Representatives, and then decided if he would run as a Democrat, like his parents, or as a Republican. True to his character we've come to know and love, especially from his self-deprecating "looser ads" on TV, when Dole found out that the Republicans in his district outnumbered the Democrats, he chose to run as a Republican. Ike had been his hero. But not for Ike's moderately progressive, Constitutionally conservative views, but because Ike had been Dole's commander in WWII. That was the depth of Dole's loyalty, and of his politics. Dole had no fixed political vision and did not share the convictions or traditions of our party. He was weaned on Democratic politics. His pliable putty was well molded to fit right in to the takeover and make over of the Republican Party by an unholy pragmatic coalition of Fat Cats, Theocrats and Dixiecrats in collusion, which Dole helped lead. We were a party of convenience, not of conviction, for Dole.

A lack or vision:

Dole, like the many other Republicans and self-styled so-called conservatives in the field, had lost his political vision, if he ever had any beyond his parents' Democratic instincts and seeing what he'd have to say to get elected. He must have wandered in the dark and wondered where he was coming from, and what he was based on, historically, spiritually, and philosophically. Looking for where the next campaign dollar and vote will come from had clouded his political vision. Yet, in the cynical underworld of practical politics former Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, the father of contemporary "conservatism" who had penned the first "Conscience of a Conservative," and Republican's presidential candidate in 1964 (who had castigated Dole in 1987), finally had to endorse Dole in the Arizona primary in 1996, as the best Blue Ribbon conservative in the Republican feed lot. The only practical alternatives by then were extremists like Buchanan and Forbes.

POLITICS AS THE CLASH OF THE TITANS:

With friends like these, we don't need enemies:

Who was that man? I'd like to shake his hand. But even he couldn't help us fall in love with Dole! During the Arizona primary, Barry Goldwater, placed his mantel on Dole's shoulders. Wasn't Dole the man who, less than a decade earlier, Goldwater (who served under Dole as Majority leader) said had not the leadership qualities needed¹--even for Majority leader, let alone President?

Bob Dole of Kansas [is] today's Senate leader . . . [He] has [not] mastered Senate rules and procedures or maintain[ed] the decorum of the past .... [He] is [not] within a country mile of Russell, Taft, Johnson, Dirkson, Humphrey, or others who served In the Senate over the past thirty to forty years.

In Dole's case, he does not have the leadership qualities that his job as GOP . . . leader requires . . . I and other Republicans were unable to harden his hide. The Kansan must become tough² if he is ever to become a leader.

I remember a particular incident involving Dole that occurred toward the close of 1986. President Reagan had vetoed a bill....I knew we had the votes [to increase an appropriation]....So did Dole. But it was heading toward 6 P.M. and he was getting fidgety. I wanted Dole [to bring the higher appropriation] to a vote. I was prepared to stay long into the night ii necessary. Dole had wasted two or three hours piddling around, deciding what to do. I got pretty sore, stood up and asked him,

"Aren't you the majority leader?"

"Yes," Dole said.

"Well, why don't you use your power?"

He never did, and everyone went home early³

Compromising positions:

This was the man Barry Goldwater endorsed as Mr. Conservative Republican, for lack of a real conservative Republican who was a real leader. Dole's fidgety muddling had become as much a Dole trademark, as Dole is a trademark on the banana peal on which Dole constantly seemed to be stepping and slipping. It would be funny except that he kept landing in compromising positions, positions that compromised conservatives, Republicans, freedom and our country.

Doles's constancy was astounding:

Dole constantly compromised true conservatism for votes. For two years Dole had been echoing Newt Gingrich's and the other political descendants of radical and reactionary Dixiecrats, Theocrats and Fat Cats rhetoric about balancing the budget and cutting the deficit, as if that were most important to the Republican and truly conservative traditions. Now that those goals were no longer politically popular, after the reactionaries and radicals had closed down the government, Dole was for a 15% cut in taxes without any offsetting increase in government income. Dole was not above buying a few votes by increasing the deficit and in every other way.

Dole was doing the forward-backward two step, or two face:

In the South Carolina debate, Dole had a chance to stand out from the pack to favor Constitutionally recognized individual rights of women to control their own bodies by rejecting the Theocrats' anti abortion plank in the party platform. Instead, he said what most of the Theocrats' sycophants said: that he would favor a federal ban on all abortions. Later, he claimed he misunderstood the question, and added that he favored outlawing abortions except in cases of rape if a mother's life's in danger. So Dole stood out alright, as confused and vacillating.

Dole compromised conservatism for theocracy:

Then Dole shepherded through the Senate a bill against some abortions. According to it, abortions could only be allowed only if a woman's life and/or reproductive capacity are in danger--when a deformed baby can not be saved and both lives can not be saved in any case. That bill only avoided a Supreme Court veto because President Clinton had the mercy on the bereaved families that have to choose between the lives of a mother and a deformed fetus destined to die anyhow, by using his veto. Dole could not condone ripping out a dying, deformed fetus. However, he would have ripped out and compromised one of the most basic conservative and Republican planks in our ship of state: that we're for the maximum individual liberty for our citizens consistent with the greatest good of all and a fair, true interpretation of the Constitution. HE'D GIVE ALL THAT UP, just so a few more votes by religious fanatics and fascists would be cast into his cauldron! For that, he would have violated the separation of church and state. Is that conservative of the principles of our Constitution?

Dole didn't use Lincoln's and Teddy Roosevelt's principles:

Where was our Lincolnian defender of our faith in the Constitution? Dole was off muddling around in his mind, trying to decide if the extra votes he'd get for favoring a total ban on abortions, would be worth that further sell out. As it was, Dole settled for the lesser sell out which would weasel word support for the current self-described "Christian Coalition's" version of the old "silent and moral majorities" (modern Theocratic equals of Abolitionists, Prohibitionists and Antidisestablishmentarians in our history).

Dole decided to disallow abortions except when a mother's life is in danger from a rapist's fetus (but only if the fetus would not have to be terminated in late term), rather than leave it up to the individual citizens concerned and their doctors. Dole chose to legislate morality! That was against one of the strongest proscriptions in Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative! Dole barely stood up to Buchanan's more extreme bigots who won't allow any abortions. Dole beat Forbes by tentatively embracing Forbes' Fat Cats' new tax proposals that would deny the wisdom of nearly a century of Teddy Roosevelt's championed progressive taxation. Now Republicans are rolling back TR's wisdom regarding the progressive taxes on inheritances.

In order to get enough money to win the White House, even at the cost of selling us out to the multinational corporations' fascistic world order, Dole was prepared to pander to corporations' desires for profits from a tax cut that embraced supply side voodoo economics, sought to get his opposition to the increase in the minimum wage, and used Dole's sponsorship of a gas tax roll back. Economists said sad experience has shown that gas tax roll back would be taken advantage of by the oil companies to stuff their pockets, instead of be passed on to consumers.

Confusion and collusion in the ranks:

Our party is racked and cracked by infighting between parties to a disreputable coalition in disastrous collusion. These include those who would define their conservatism according to one set of principles, like Goldwater's individualistic Jeffersonian liberalism,⁴ and those who would confine their "conservatism" to other principles such as Buchanan's mobs of Jacksonian⁵ democrats, Dixiecrat racists,⁶ Catholic and fundamentalist Theocrats,⁷ and Forbes' and Kemp's fascist⁸ Fat Cats⁹ of the New World Order¹⁰ of the global economy. They spout supply side economic nonsense, but little dribbles down as wealth for anyone but the scions of riches. They seek acceptance of flat tax proposals to increase corporate profits. Each correctly insists the other's radical and/or reactionary position is neither conservative nor Republican. But they all joined in a radical and reactionary Contract on America that came too close to succeeding, even if now Buchanan is giving the Fat Cats gaff over GATT.

Current extremisms:

A rabble rouser like Buchanan¹¹ raises mobs like pitchfork wielding French peasants or radical left wing Jacksonian democrats to march like reflections of left-wing revolutionaries--in the name of conservatism! They march on the castles of right wing fascist Fat Cats (in the Federalists'¹² traditions), men like Steve Forbes (who would do the Adams family proud)¹³, Jack Kemp (who emulates the bastard, Alexander Hamilton)¹⁴ and other corporate political hacks and jocks. Such a left wing populist as Buchanan is in many ways is also said to lead a right wing movement against reactionaries such as Kemp and Forbes in favor of reactionary protectionism that once was the bailiwick of the Fat Cats' politicians before their bosses became heads of multinational conglomerates and began to favor free trade for their products. Coincidentally this populist "champion of the worker" is seeking to impose a Theocratic regime in accord with the Catholicism of Bill Bennet and Pat Robertson, who have every reason to be at each others' throats.

Yet, those extreme right wing progeny of the Federalists, such as Forbes, are said to lead the left wing of our party! Clearly, we need to clarify ourselves to ourselves and to the American people. Too long we've settled for misleading labels and misleading politicians. Constitutionally conservative, moderately progressive Republicans' true heritage in the moderate middle between radical left and reactionary right wing extremes lies buried among lies of our party's recent past and present. Many who pretend to be moderate conservatives are really fascist Fat Cat wolves in sheepishly conservative clothing devouring our silence and our lambs: unsuspecting voters.

Our Mainstream, Main Street, Not Mean Street Roots:

Many of us had been mainstream and Main Street moderately progressive, Constitutionally conservative Republicans since before our snow treks through New Hampshire for Goldwater in our youth. We have been appalled and alarmed as left wing Jefferson, Jackson and Dixiecrat democrats and right ring Theocrats and Federalists' Fat Cat political descendants took over our party in Goldwater's hallowed name. We were alarmed when Nixon and Reagan sold our party out to Rockefeller's supposedly left wing Eastern Establishment Fat Cats (who had been Goldwater's primary opposition). They became the Fat Cats of our multinational corporate conglomerate in the fascist new world order of the global economy.

Continuing confusion of a coalition in collusion:

Reagan, Bush and Dole not only invited Dixiecrats and Jefferson/Jackson democrats, Theocrats and Fat Cats to our party. They sold us out to those factions for contributions and for votes. Now they all are in cahoots. All together (in a concerted effort reminiscent of the tyranny in George Orwell's 1984), they took out a second contract on America (the last being in the 1920's). That contract expresses a gun totting NRA mean streak of racist Dixiecrats and Bible thumping holy rollers and other Theocrats who carry out the dictates of their God and the fascist¹⁶ Fat Cats who run the mean street¹⁷ called Wall Street and the fascist new world order. New Conservatism turned out to be nothing better than anti-social¹⁸, raggedly individualistic¹⁹ and theocratic mobocracy serving money grubbing "fiscal²⁰ `conservatives'" in the worst Federalist tradition: servants of "fistful"²¹ Fat Cats of a fascist New World Order. Such Right Wing extremists and their Dixiecrat and theocratic lackeys are mean by all measures and in all senses.²²

Reclaim conservative roots and root out wrong extremists:

The scions of riches²³ who paid for our political campaigns and publications after Goldwater was defeated fostered intellectual confusion and led other reactionary extremists into our party. They and their progeny attacked the progressively moderate Constitutional conservatism that is our most glorious and most precious heritage at the heart of our Grand Old Party, the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. We were committed to conserve Constitutional and progressively moderate government that protected the Constitutional rights and equal opportunities of all law abiding citizens.

We began with the best of the wisdom of moderate federalists like Washington, the early Madison and Adams, and later lingering federalists like Marshall²⁴ and Whigs like Webster and Clay²⁵, and all who developed and conserved the best of past legislation and institutions. We were historically dedicated to progressive moderation in policies and extremism in the defense of our fairly interpreted federal Constitution and civil rights.

We need to reexamine, re-emphasize and reclaim our roots, and root out from our party the left wing Jefferson/Jackson democratic and Dixiecrat rabble-rousers, the rabble and babble of holy rolling fundamentalists and some Catholic theocratic bigots and moral tyrants like Bill Bennet, and the corporate conglomerate's Fat Cats of the fascists' new world order of the global economy. They all created our pitiable condition.

The wrong extremism:

Lincoln clearly believed that the extremism he was forced into, extremism in the defense of the Union and the Constitution, invasion of the Southern States and Proclaiming emancipation of the slaves against Constitutional guarantees he did not get a chance to alter by Constitutional amendment, is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of equal rights, due process, and Constitutional government is no virtue. The current crop of Dixiecrat and other Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democratic bigots, on one hand, and the greedy multinational corporate Fat Cats, Theocrats and their lackeys, on the other, exploit all extremes, even their own coalition's factions' extremism in policies and, at most, moderation in protecting peoples' true Constitutional rights while they fanatically pursue their extremist factions' mythical states', weapons, and religious rights and to impose all those on other citizens. All are taking advantage of our venerable names, "Republican" and "conservative," and traditions, while being as untrue to Republicanism and conservatism as they are to the American people and to Goldwater's meaning, movement and legacy.

Battle for heart and soul:

Bob Dole said he wanted to battle for the conservative heart and soul of our Republican party. But how could he espouse any vision for the future? A vision can come like a flash, a conversion. However, we have no hope that any politician running around the country, capital or capitol has time to think or envision anything. Or that he can see our future when he's forgot our past.

Different principles:

We despair about where fellow Republicans are leading our party: From Washington's Mount Vernon through Jefferson's Monticello, by Jackson's Hermitage into a French Revolution-like mob of peasants carrying Buchanan pitchforks! From Washington's and Madison's skilled workers and farmers, past estates and plantations of the landed gentry, along railroads into the steel mills, oil fields and bailiwicks of robber-barons, into Multinational Board Rooms reminiscent of Hamilton's and the Adams family's fondest aristocratic dreams, Forbes and Kemp would lead us to a corporate state in a new fascist world order in the global economy!

Roots in the wrong extremes lead in the same wrong direction:

Those paths converged into the confusion and chaos of our politics and they all led in the same direction: an alliance or coalition or extremists in collusion: the left wing path of populist Dixiecrats and Jefferson and Jackson democrats, the narrow path of populist Theocrats, and the right wing path of Fat Cats all led toward a fascist corporate state that seeks to legislate morality. It is reminiscent or George Orwell's 1984. If we fail to stop them, our party and our country will continue to be run by and for an unholy alliance of Dixiecrats, democrats, Theocrats and Fat Cats from a new multinational corporate world order in the global economy (including the military-industrial complex about which President Eisenhower once warned us).

If we fail, our country will more and more be run by politicians of both parties who will serve those world masters in exchange for the advantages of office. They will continue to be bought by the Fat Cats by campaign contributions. All paths prompt us to cry out even if the chance or any candidate reading or hearing our cries is nil. Even if our cries fall into file 13 and onto dead ears. Still, we must try, or surely, we must cry. We must show the future A Bull Moose in the Age of Aquarius: An Old Conscience for New Conservatives.

To strike a resounding chord in conservative souls:

Unlike Lincoln, what I say here, the little I can do here, really will be little noticed nor long remembered. But I also know, that should my observations and explanations strike a resounding chord in the souls of truly conservative citizens, the lackeys of the scions or riches will hold me up to ridicule, dirty tricks, persecution and retribution! You shall know them better by their works than by their words. I'll be accused of inciting class warfare because I speak against the fiction that fictitious entities like corporations and institutions have the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of citizens. I'll be accused of opposing religion because I insist that secular government equally fair to all ethnic, religious and other factions is essential for peace, prosperity and the possibility of true religion in any form.

I raise my voice only to avoid two worst fates that can conjointly befall our people: the choice between class slavery or class warfare, and the choice between one Theocratic value system or another. Only if we arise before the enslavement has gone too far can we throw off the Fat Cats' and Theocrats' yokes without class, civil or religious warfare. Already, those who see through the glass darkly from right wing militia to Farakhan know there is an evil abroad which they hope to inflame into an opportunity for conflagration. They just haven't yet discovered it's true nature or source is the age-old collusion of prince and priest. Their frustrated understanding is expressed in frustrated fits toward violence, as counterproductive of all good as it is evil and futile. Once we recognize the true source of our enslavement, we'll be able to see how they can enslave us and how we may yet avoid it without futile and evil violence. All we want is to conserve the best our forefathers and our peers have created in this country as conditions for continued progress into the future.

IN SEARCH OF ROOTS

True Conservatives are Moderates who Conserve the Best:

Conserve the Constitution and the best we have created:

As Barry Goldwater pointed out in his original Conscience of a Conservative in the early 1960s, conservatives originally had been committed to conserve both our Constitution and the best laws and institutions our founding fathers, society, and government have created and can and will create. This is true even when or if they were, are, or will be, created by other parties. As Constitutionally conservative, moderately progressive Republicans we believe that all fundamental tenets of our government in the Constitution (such as separation of church and state and freedom of speech) must be conserved and passed on to posterity. That's because we believe they can best light our country's and the world's soaring flights into the future.

Fundamental to our flight is the need to conserve Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt's moderately progressive ways of looking at our dynamic society and their realistically fair methods of interpreting and conserving our true Constitution. It does shock one to find how much of what Teddy and Abe had to say is still relevant. For example, there is little or nothing that needs to be left out of the "Bull Moose Manifesto" after nearly ninety years. Of course, there are many new fundamental problems posed by the growth of technology and conditions that change how their insights should be applied in the modern world.

Learn from roots, don't necessarily copy them:

That doesn't mean we today should always copy Lincoln's and TR's conclusions of what was right for their worlds. Our world has changed too much. Our party helped that happen. We should adopt republican, anti-Fat Cat, checked and balanced democratic ideas of Lincoln, the openness, vigor and progressive spirit of TR, their knowledge of our roots and their championing of the little guy, and their methods of thinking about how our government can respond to a changing world and the changing threats of Theocrats, Dixiecrats, and, now in our case, Fat Cats' threats of a global economic world order, to protect freedom and improve life.

Sometimes Abe and Teddy are directly relevant:

What they have to say is sometimes directly relevant today, and still bears adoption as well as inspiration and consideration. For instance, when the flap over campaign financing reform began in the Fall of 1996, a Newsweek article, "The Real Scandal Is What's Legal," quoted Teddy Roosevelt. After looking at the problems of "soft money," (unlimited contributions to political parties by all legal residents and corporations with interests in the U.S.), "The Indonesian Money Trail," had asked:

At a time when global trade is growing and borders are porous, how do we protect our electoral process...from foreign influence? With "soft money" flowing freely, how do we prevent wealthy foreigners and corporations from elbowing aside our own Fat Cats?²⁶

"The Real Scandal..." quoted Teddy Roosevelt's answer, which realizes that any contributions by the Fat Cats' corporations anywhere must be controlled, in spite of a now perverted Supreme Court stacked by the Fat Cats, Theocrats and Dixiecrats with so-called "strict constructionists" who claim that it limits free speech to limit what Fat Cats' and scions of riches' corporations can contribute to political parties. In spite of that, at least it is still possible to limit contributions by corporations and other Fat Cats in specific campaigns.

That is what Teddy Roosevelt advocated nearly a century ago: 'It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes.'²⁶ ...It's good enough for TR, how about the rest of us?

Much of what both Lincoln and TR said will be found to be very, directly relevant to the needs of our people and society and government today. We should use them, but not abuse them.

True "Con" "servatives" "serve with service" to our people:

Truly conservative government must govern "with service" to the needs of our people, and "serve along with" our other great institutions that keep us healthy, happy individuals and families creating a society in which as many as possible can and do fulfill their potentials, physically, psychologically, economically, socially and spiritually. We Constitutionally conservative, moderately progressive Bull Moose seek to do that primarily but not exclusively by freeing people to take advantage of opportunities, by removing all artificial yokes from their shoulders.

We have learned from experience in creating the best of all possible that have yet seen the light of day that sometimes we must help provide safety nets for the fundamental needs of citizens where free enterprise fails or where that is beyond its profit making role. We try to create the conditions in which all spiritual, artistic and cultural institutions can flourish and may be supported by individuals' industry and our common wealth. But we do not seek to support, or impose the values of, any sect upon any individual for the sake of any value, principle, group or god. Governments may support only secularly shared social communal not sectarian religious, values, and must protect individuals from the forced imposition of all social values not shared by all. go we must serve, but above all preserve the ground rules that make that possible.

Fat Cats and Theocrats are not conservative:

Definitions of some current forms of Reactionaries' fascism:

Fascism is the practice of having people exist for the sake of the ruling element, to be ruled for its good, and "given" rights that accord with its values--whether that ruling element be a state, a party, the "father or mother land," a religious group, corporate or aristocratic Fat Cats, or even a combination thereof as is being attempted here as well as in medieval Europe and Nazi Germany.

In fascist states, laws are made to use the people for the good of some principle or faction. In our free society, laws are supposed to be made to use the good for the people. In fascist societies, government treats people collectively for the sake of the ruling class, principle or fatherland. In free societies, government is supposed to treat people individually for the sake of each person. Free governments create laws for the good of individuals and families while recognizing, protecting and insuring the liberties they already have by reason and nature, by reason of their nature as rational beings forming a social contract, and by defending individuals from being hurt by others' pursuit of others' unequal liberties. Fascist governments believe that they or their ruling element are the source of the good and liberty which they think they give to the people.

We are awash in waves of fascists using us and our government:

We are awash in waves of fascists using us and our government for the promulgation of Theocrats' religious values and faiths. Wrongs also come from the economic right, and from bureaucrats instilling their politically correct values on the rest of us. They are all equally wrong and pernicious. They all wish not just to legislate, regulate, and enforce morality, but their own peculiar brands, not for our sake but for the sake of their religion, or their version of god, or

good social order, or protection and enhancement of their property or bank accounts. Such fascism from the supposed "conservative" followers of a man like Coldwater who said repeatedly while opposing civil rights legislation that "you can not legislate morality." ²⁸ Goldwater rejected the fascism²⁹ now practiced by his pretended followers who, for religious reasons, try to limit women's rights to abortions and adults' access to what they consider "indecency" on the internet, to mention only two of the multitude two of their violations of our civil rights.

We are awash in Theocratic fascism:

We are awash in fundamentalist and Catholic fascists imposing religious values upon most of us, whether anti abortionists, prayer in school nuts, advocates of disguised public funding for parochial schools, you name it! Even the clamor for the death penalty and laws against homosexuals and affirmative action is primarily from the religious right whose pernicious values infest their political opinions and infect our communities.

We are awash in waves of Fat Cats' fascism:

We are awash in the fascists' use or us and our government for the good of a multinational conglomerate of military, industrial and other corporations by big businesses' aristocrats and Fat Cats, perpetrators of a new world order in the global economy. We see them seeking unfair advantage in taxes and regulations. And we see them achieving those goals by having contributed sufficiently to campaign coffers on both sides in elections that their will is done no matter who wins. And they have made their support so necessary by raising the campaign ante so high that no politician can afford to tell them where to stuff their cash other than their coffers.

We are awash in waves of pseudo liberal political correctness:

Left-wing democratic and feminist fascists advocate crushing waves of political correctness. Every thin-skinned whiner seeks to punish those who don't share and adhere to their values. Some would punish male vocal expressions of appreciation of female bodies as sexual harassment or even assault. We must stop the thin skins' stifling imposition of unshared values, whether in regard to overly avid sexual or gender repression, or in regard to a million other forms of creeping bureaucratic controls. They've spawned a world where even kids are punished or even jailed for kissing or taking medicine to school. But it is a world in which they have so cheapened the value of law that kids routinely violate them by bringing guns to school to protect themselves from others who are not stopped from doing so, or to bully or kill with them. Law and order nuts try to make us into a police state there youth are already being sentenced by many cities to house arrest without trials, called curfews, just for being young no matter how capable and responsible they are. My daughter who started taking college courses at age eleven couldn't even ride a bus or take a subway back from class late at night in some cities although she made straight A's while her irresponsible twenty-something classmates would be allowed to.

Distinction blurred between conservatives and extremists:

We must stop supposed conservatives from blurring the distinction between the reactionary Fat Cats' and Theocrats' right wing radical extremism and the moderately progressive Constitutional conservatism of Republicans who seek to conserve the best in government and society and to protect truly Constitutional civil rights of citizens in the process.

The roots of our dilemmas:

Purpose of the analysis of our roots:

It is not my purpose here to sort out all the threads in our elephantine blanket, nor to explain in detail how, historically, each became woven Into the fabric of our party banners. Here I will only indicate broadly the diverse threads twisted around diverse roots. I will suggest how some came in and how their coats of many colors obscure the primal beauty of the blanket and banners that carried us on our great beast through the last, and the beginning of this, century. We must not lose sight of our Constitutionally conservative and moderately progressive roots, and their reaffirmations by our two great Republican presidents, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

Threads of Dole's coat of many colors:

The Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, Dixiecrat, Theocratic, Populist and Federalist Threads:

Bob Dole inherited a tattered coat of many colors that left him looking like a muddled mule. Red, white and blue threads came from Goldwater's mantle colored by Jefferson's democratic individualism which stressed states' and individuals' rights and very limited government. A smattering of gingham and sackcloth and ashes came from some Jacksonian democrats and some holy rolling fundamentalists and Catholic Theocratic populists who used to wear Buchanan's frocks. Some Buchanan's Boys brought blue and khaki colored threads from workers, unionists and farmers who once would have been among Jackson's left wing democratic supporters and prairie populists. Some left wing democrats in Buchanan's Brigades wore French peasants' red coats or democratic populists' blue collars. They sometimes care for progressive policies. Most, especially Buchanan's Theocrats, care little for individuals' civil rights except those consistent with everyone believing and acting the same, their way. Their anthem is "They did it my way!" They, like Buchanan's Dixiecrats and democrats, reject true conservatives', "fair construction"' of the Constitution. Some multicolored threads came from Alexander's checkered shirts, including a remnant of progressively moderate, Constitutionally conservative populists.

We got a lot of red and grey threads from political progeny of Dixiecrats: Many who are against our own party's traditional beliefs slipped into our party among gray clad and white sheeted descendants of Dixiecrat segregationists and other refugees from the Dixiecrats, Democrats and KKK. Many of them wore white robes of holy rolling fundamentalists and Catholic Theocrats, in the worst traditions of the Antidisestablishmentarians, Prohibitionists, Abolitionists and Anti abortionists. Others wore the white sheets of the KKK. Many vote with Theocratic enthusiasms and favor a whole list of legislation imposing values of the religious right.

Black tails and blue blood came from Forbes' Fat Cats:

Forbes and his supply side, flat tax Fat Cats of the new world order continue the traditions of the Fat Cats' corporate military-industrial complex (about which Eisenhower warned us) and of the Rockefeller Republicans (against whom Barry Coldwater raged wars for voters). These Fat Cats' self-renewing right wing reaches back in history to Hamilton and Adams and their Federalists and their successors such as the robber barons. Now big buck corporate multi nationalists support a new world order where they seek the right to exploit all workers, consumers, savers and environments. Their campaign contributions support Republican and other candidates to get legislation favorable to their goals.

Where they all came from:

The Fat Cats:

The predecessors of our Fat Cats of whom many Republican politicians are the political progeny, in Taft and Hoover's lineage, supported Rockefeller's Eastern Establishment against whom Goldwater contended in the early sixties. Nixon led them back in the back door. Reagan re energized them by deregulating licentious entrepreneurs and enterprises. These scions of riches ruling multinational corporations were re embraced by Bush and Dole as harbingers of a new world order for the global economy. They even have great influence in the Clinton administration. They are the movers behind Nafta and GATT. These political progeny of "Federalist Fat Cats" have almost always been with us behind the scenes, making themselves essential by paying for both sides of political campaigns. For the first time in the last presidential campaign they got so blatant and careless, and Dole got so desperate as to try to exploit the fact that his opponent also was becoming beholden to those multinational Fat Cats, that Dole called the voters' attention to the practices that had already dirtied Dole even more than the Democrats. Voters were reminded of Dole's heady Gallo-"n" of quid pro quo, and of a Republican National Committee fund raiser who was sentenced to prison for seven years for finance violations. The voters responded appropriately to our hypocrites: a blight on both our houses! Not having a viable alternative, many, like me, stayed home. People can see clearly now that they are no better off letting a multi nationalist Perot or Forbes buy an election with their own money than in letting Clinton or Dole buy it with some other multinational Fat Cats' coins, even those from China.

Jefferson and Jackson democrats and Dixiecrats:

These three groups were those to whom Goldwater began to open our party in 1960 to 1964:

The Dixiecrats and some Jefferson and Jackson democrats, like some fundamentalist and Catholic Theocrats, at first seemed like populists who do share many moderately progressive, Constitutionally conservative views. Not really. They supplied many of the troops for Gingrich's revolutionary Contract on America's people. They have become the bulwark of the new Republican party, especially in the South. To our eternal shame, they, incarnated as people like Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott, have (hopefully temporarily) taken over leadership or our party.

The Theocrats:

Some are right wing Antidisestablishmentarians. Many are descendants and spiritual heirs of seeming democratic and other Theocratic populists who favored Abolition and Prohibition. Some are from religious groups, or are first or second generation immigrants, and all never really accepted Constitutional limitations on their democratic enthusiasms that ran rough-shed over our Constitution, the amendments of our bill of rights such as the first Amendment.

The deeper problem:

Political paranoia and schizophrenia:

Multiple positionalities:

Those four extremes, the Jefferson and Jackson democrats, the Dixiecrats, the Theocrats, and the right wing Fat Cats are strangling the lifeblood from our Grand Old Party. This suggests we need to clarify and redefine our heritage, our nature, and our future, instead of just our image (which is all most Republican politicians seem concerned with). We include rugged individualists (classical "liberals" in the tradition of Jefferson) who, like Goldwater, call themselves "conservatives."³¹ We have states' rights fanatics who harken back to Patrick Henry's and Jefferson's anti-Constitutional tirades to save the Confederation, a tradition reinvigorated by the Dixiecrats' Confederacy. We include right wing fiscal (read that "fistful") conservatives. They are fat cat fascists in the tradition started by Hamilton, Adams and other extreme right wing Federalists. Some current cohorts are called "social conservatives." They are radical theocratic fascists who would make most of our founding fathers blush with shame and men like Thomas Jefferson speak with flame! We even have other Pitchfork carrying democratic and populist descendants of Jackson following Buchanan. We've everything between.

These are "ideal" distinctions:

Most people, like our party, are all mixed up, woven of varied threads, like Joseph's coat of many colors.³² There are also still many of us moderately progressive Constitutional conservatives who suffer silently while we cling to traditions of Washington, the early Madison and Marshall's moderate federalism, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower. We have little in common with the Fat Cat fascists, or the states' rights democrats, Jeffersonian individualists or Stonewall Jackson mobocracy democrats. We are as repelled by pure blood descendants of Dixiecrats with views from the KKK as we are by the Theocrats who overlook and overrun the First Amendment. Yet strains of the siren songs of each mythology permeate our atmosphere.

These cats and crats aren't originals from our Grand Old Party:

Fat Cats, Theocrats, Dixiecrats, and democrats aren't originals from our Grand Old party:

These mythologies are not from the heart of our Grand Old Party! Nor will these myths long linger among us. They are anachronisms who are too far from the great consensus to beat as the heart of any major party. Some may re-form as Dixiecrats, some as a fundamentalist, pseudo "Christian" party, others may return to their Democratic roots. Dole kept them with us by mollycoddling many at the 1996 nominating convention. Many had recently become Republican new conservatives. Many of Buchanan's and Perot's disillusioned Democrats and Dixiecrats and Christian Coalition's fundamentalist and Catholic Theocrats have already realized they really have no home and no real prospects in either major party. Many are antiblack and anti-Jewish racists, theocratic moralizers, anti abortionists, and other anti-American reactionary extremists who opposed much of the best for which our country has stood, for more than two centuries.

We win some and lose some--down and out cats and crats:

Many political descendants of traditions of Dixiecrats, Democrats, and Theocrats who became supposedly "conservative" Republicans but who are not following Buchanan into never-never land, are dropping out of politics and the electorate to become militiamen, Freeman and assorted other right wing para-military militia nuts stirred up by the NRA. They have no understanding of our Constitution.

Cats and crats fanatics aren't Bull Moose progressive populists:

Democratic, Dixiecrat and Theocratic fanatics who championed Buchanan are a far cry from the moderately progressive but Constitutionally conservative prairie populists who followed Teddy Roosevelt in the Republican Party and out through the Bull Moose door in protest when Taft's Fat Cats stole the Republican nomination from his people at the heart of the party. Many political progenies of Teddy Roosevelt's followers and other moderately progressive populists did finally forsake the Republican Party to join Franklin Delano Roosevelt's new Democratic Party coalition in collusion with Dixiecrat racists and liberal Jacksonian democrats. FDR's strong federal government gave Teddy's populists who believed in a strong but Constitutional government, an ephemeral political home which could never be home. Consider the spiritual progeny of Lincoln lying down with the racist Dixiecrats! Just look at shades of the mismarriage in today's Republican Party to see how horrendous was the mismatch!

The odd couple: Archie Bunker and Mr. Jefferson in FDR's party:

In spite of FDR's having taken over and remodeled Jefferson's and Jackson's party on the lines of TR, much of the Democratic Party remained at heart dedicated to strict construction, states rights and limited federal government, Dixiecrat strains that are coming alive in William Jefferson Clinton's New Democrats. They are forgetting TR's moderately progressive, Constitutionally conservative model for FDR as they fall into schizophrenic mode between their Jacksonian radicals and their Jeffersonian roots. The heart of Republicanism was transplanted close to the heart of this new Democratic aberration that continued until Clinton reached back to his Jefferson/Jackson Dixiecrat roots. He re embraced the more traditional Democrats, and re attracted many of Goldwater's political progeny who had their natural home among traditional Democrats. Our only voters Clinton's not appealing to are KKK racists and the Theocrats. He'd gladly let us keep that undesirable element. Some Republican populists had shared the theocratic enthusiasms of Abolitionists and Prohibitionists. Some are now in the tradition of the KKK.

Disaffection in the Republican and Democratic parties:

Some blue and khaki collar political progeny of Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose populists were temporarily regained from the Democrats by Reagan's rhetoric in his campaigns. Many were then lost again alter the elections, to Reagan's and, later, to Bush's governmental pains as they governed for the Fat Cats' gains. Then they checked out the opposition: Buchanan, Perot, and Clinton's New Democrats. Many are political descendants of the Bull Moose who never returned, including many who never were from Boston. Moderately progressive prairie populists, "Khaki collar" family farmers, blue collar workers, professionals and small businessmen had long had a home in our GOP. They were the heart of TR.'S support and the Bull Moose snort. They were angry, and they wouldn't take it anymore. They charged out to roam away from home with the Democrats. They must be brought home to their hearts' hearth to replace the Dixiecrats who the "new" Democrats, true to their traditional roots, will lure back with our "Good riddance!"

We need to clarify the distinctions between the parties to again give the people a choice between the democratic political progeny of the Confederation and the Confederacy and the truly Constitutionally conservative, moderately progressive republicans--whether this be done in our two traditional parties or in two or more new parties. There is no contradiction in our being moderately progressive and Constitutionally conservative in accord with Marshall's, Lincoln's and TR's goals and "fair construction" of our Constitution.³³

Jefferson and Jackson are not our patron saints:

Jefferson's states' rights, "close" or "strict" "construction" of our Constitution and his arguments for limited government and against internal improvements, and Jackson's pursuit of popular unconstitutional enthusiasms, never played a part at the heart of our Constitutionally conservative, moderately progressive republican traditions. Yet those beliefs are now fundamental to many who now call themselves "conservatives" and Republicans. These new conservative, new Republicans, keep crowding out of our party our moderately progressive but Constitutionally conservative small town and prairie populists, educators, skilled workers. Even some small businessmen misled by corporate myths.

Neither are Hamilton and Adams:

The Fat Cats' political progeny of the late Federalists who now use our party squeezed out and broke the heart of Republicanism in the days after Taft broke TR's heart, and in administrations from Harding until Hoover we saw the results of their first Contract on America. Our true heart we've not regained in spite of constant political transfusions and confusions from these Fat Cats, Dixiecrats and Theocrats. They offered us a mean and shriveled heart to replace the great, tender and full hearts of Lincoln and TR. We could well do without such a diseased and congested damning dam to the life blood of our party and our country.

Republican's moderately progressive, constitutionally conservative traditions:

What we're not:

Many Republican still share few of the democratic legacies, either of Jefferson's ragged individualism, of Jackson's pandering to radical mobocracies, of states' rights Dixiecrats' pandering to racists, or of religious Theocrats pandering to Popes and Holy Rolling fundamentalists, Many of those from classical left wing liberal legacies of Democrats now pretend to be right wing conservative Republicans. They do serve the big, bad Fat Cats. Send them back to the Democrats. W. Jefferson Clinton is leading some of them back toward the democratic roots of his namesake already. Nor will we share the traditions of extreme right ring Fat Cats promoted by the progeny of the later Federalists like Hamilton and Adams, or their legacy, through Republicans like Taft, Harding, Hoover, Rockefeller, Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Dole, to men like Jack Kemp and Steve Forbes. Those right wing fascists are foolishly portrayed as the left wing of the current GOP. Neither are really from the traditions of the big heart of our Grand Old Party.

Where We started:

Let us reclaim our own traditions, and reject the Democrats'. To do so we must know where are our roots. The basic dichotomy in American political life has always been 1) Jefferson's and Jackson choice between democratic visions either of a confederation of states controlling a very limited federal government or of an unfettered mobocracy doing the unfettered will of the people, and 2) our republican visions of a Constitutionally defined federal government of checks and balances formed by the people that protects citizens' rights and provides for the good of the people while limiting the oppressive range and severity of popular enthusiasms. That dichotomy goes back to arguments over the Confederation and Constitution between states' rights democratic partisans of the Confederation and the federalist champions of "We the People's" Constitutional republic.

Various groups were known by various names.³⁴ But we are concerned more with the essence of the two positions than with their varying party names, or with the names of their shifting proponents and opponents. President Washington, squarely advocating 2) the early federalists' republican position, grew to distrust both 1) the left wing states' rights, radically democratic position of Henry and Jefferson, and even a third option that developed to the right of the early federalists, 3) the right wing extremism of Federal Party servants such as Hamilton and Adams³⁵ of the Fat Cats of the time. These, 1) and 3), were the extremes at either side of Washington's moderately progressive Constitutionally conservative administration. The Federalists were at first closer to Madison's and Washington's early form of federalism. However, Hamilton and Adams led the Federal Party (Federalists) toward the extreme right in reaction to what was at first unfair and irresponsible charges of "monarchism" against them by Henry and Jefferson's democratic party.

Moderately progressive, Constitutionally conservative roots:

Washington managed to hold to the early federalist center and not join either party during his Administration. One of his reasons was that he felt that as President of all the people, he should give up any appearance of partisanship. He went so far in maintaining the middle as to have members of his own administration at both extremes although they were often at one another's necks. By the time he became alarmed at the democrats growing extremism and power, Hamilton and Adam's party had grown to the right toward an aristocratic or plutocratic oligarchy that equally violated the Constitutionally conservative, moderately progressive road Washington had chartered for our country with Franklin and Madison and other of the early federalists.

We must not let the significance of the fact that neither Jefferson on the left nor Adams on the right had been part of the magic moments of the Constitutional convention. Even Hamilton had played the role of outsider, seeking a degree of plutocracy incommensurate with the federalist spirit of the leaders of the Constitutional convention. He had, in fact, in response to rejection of his proposals, taken his marbles and gone home at the moments of critical climax when the federalist vision momentarily came together and triumphed. Although Hamilton was to become one of the major propagandists and protagonists for his vision of the Constitution in the often misleading Federalist Papers, those only vaguely resemble the real early federalist vision as originally pulled together by Madison.

Although Madison had played the central, if not pivotal, role in formulating our true course, in Washington's administration, Adams had been given Madison's rightful place at Washington's right hand. Before the ink was dry on the printed copies of the ratified Constitution, and Madison was done diplomatically pulling together the first ten amendments of our Bill of Rights, Hamilton and Jefferson had divided up the electorate into two camps between which Madison felt he had to choose allegiance. Belatedly, Madison chose to throw his lot in with his old friend and cohort in the Virginia wars against the established churches, Jefferson. So by the end of Washington's administration, within ten years of the formulation of the original federalist vision, Madison's vision had been pretty much given up by the leaders of the two major factions in American politics. And Madison, as befit his personality, timidly fell in line behind Jefferson.

That left only Adams' afterthought, Washington's emulator, friend, biographer and possibly the only surviving true early federalist, to carry on Washington's tradition. That was John Marshall who ran up the middle carrying on the tradition of Washington and the early Madison for the first third of the nineteenth century. Fortunately, Marshall had been appointed to head the Supreme Court as a last gasp of John Adam's soiled right wing administration whose Federalists went down to justifiable defeat for their fascist excesses in their use of the Alien and Sedition laws. As we will see, Washington and Marshall had great influence on the Whigs who moved back toward the middle in remembrance of Webster's early federalism. Also, Marshall, through his Supreme Court decisions, influenced a whole generation of young Americans who read the law, such as Lincoln. Through the Whigs and the law, the early federalists like Webster, Washington and Marshall led to a perpetuation of the early federalist vision even after Madison had long forgotten the magical moments that led to the greatest Constitution in history. Likewise, as we will see, both Abe Lincoln's and Teddy Roosevelt's administrations steered moderately progressive, Constitutionally conservative courses between the right and left wing extremes of their parties and country.³⁶

Madison's and Washington's early federalism:

We conservative Republicans are in touch with the philosophical, historical, Constitutional, and spiritual roots of Lincoln's and Roosevelt's moderately progressive Constitutional conservatism of the Grand Old Party. Many share our traditions. To know where we are going, we should first ask, "Where do we come from?" We start from the early federalists who created and fought for passage of our Constitution: Webster, Washington, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, Jay, Madison, Morris and Marshall. As it became clear that the Confederation was just a trade of King George for a variety of ineffectual governments, non of which did more than promise prosperity, these leaders and others started advocating a moderately progressive Constitutional conservatism. Some, such as Adams and Hamilton, were soon led astray by Fat Cats' ambitions. Others, such as Madison, were lured by a lust for power to exploit the paranoid reactions of the opposing faction led by Jefferson. Marshall carried on the tradition when all else was lost in the Federal Party's Alien and Sedition Law debacle.

Washington's progressive, conservative constructions:

After the Constitution and Bill of Rights were adopted, Washington's first administration walked a narrow plank between men who were becoming extreme rights' wing Federalist lackeys of Fat Cats, like Hamilton and the Adams family,³⁷ and extreme left wing, states' rights democrats like Henry and Jefferson. Washington pursued and sought and fought to conserve the moderately progressive but Constitutionally conservative path of the early federalists who had created, revered, and understood the Constitution with its proper "fair construction" interpretation.³⁸ Not only was Washington willing to see the federal government do all that the Constitution would allow for the peoples' progress, such as create a National Bank, he was assiduous in seeking to make sure that he operated fully within the limits of the Constitution, interpreting it as fairly as possible.

Washington's first great debate of the new Constitution:

Thus, the first great Constitutional debate grew out of Washington's challenge both to Hamilton (who sought to use the government to help his wealthy supporters form a National Bank) and to Jefferson (who made no secret of his alarm that the federal government should be expanded into such financial realms to aid Federalist supporters). Before he would sign the Federalists National Bank bill, he challenged each (Hamilton and Jefferson) to provide reasoned arguments for him to study prior to deciding whether having a national bank would be Constitutional and/or vise versa, and useful or not overall. They did, and Washington chose, despite what must have been misgivings and mistrust of Hamilton's actual set-up (which did abuse government power for the good of his Fat Cats' lackeys and supporters) to adapt Hamilton's scheme as the best Constitutional solution available to choose to solve the country's financial plight. For, despite Hamilton's bastardly ambitions and dastardly corruption, Washington recognized his friend, of whom he had been the mentor, as the most able Secretary of the Treasury available and a man whose plans had saved the Confederation from final financial ruin.

However, Washington seems to have been under no illusions; he must have known Hamilton was also using government largess to build support among an incipient, insipid Fat Cats' aristocracy. Washington knew that such extremes needed to be given some leeway to counter reactionary friends of the Confederation such as Patrick Henry and Washington's own ambitious Secretary of State, Jefferson. They were intent on limiting the federal government by a supposedly "strict" interpretation of the Constitution so that they might retrieve the confederate form of government which they had been unable to save when it had been rejected for the Constitution's favored federalism when it had been ratified.

Conflict and confusion balanced in the ranks:

Hamilton and Jefferson were leaders of mutually opposed factions in Washington's government who he tried futilely to hold in balance. Later, Washington's distrust of, and opposition to, Jefferson's radically democratic, states' rights views of limiting the federal government to the views of the friends of the Confederation, drove Jefferson from Washington's administration. Adams followed Hamilton and Gouveneur Morris around a right turn from Washington's moderate federalism to their logical right ring Fat Cat fascist conclusions that eventually led to their reactionary excesses that got the Federalists' Federal Party killed off in politics. That left our political history to be remade and rewritten for over half a century by radical Jefferson and Jackson democratic friends of the Confederation. Madison finally followed Jefferson into Patrick Henry's and Virginia's states' rights democratic politics.³⁹

Federalists' accidental legacy of Constitutional conservatism:

Washington's Constitutionally conservative legacy continued by a happy accident:⁴⁰

The discredited Federalist President John Adams appointed a truly moderately progressive, Constitutionally conservative federalist, John Marshall, to be Chief Justice of the United States and head of our Supreme Court.⁴¹ Marshall molded our Courts and interpreted the Constitution according to Marshall's "fair construction"⁴¹ inspired by Washington's moderation. That Constitutional tradition was to guide Lincoln's fight for the Union and move him to free the slaves. It would also lead to Teddy Roosevelt's fight for unions to free wage slaves, and FDR's fight against the Fat Cats' Great Depression, at other times of crisis for our country.

Fair construction was the guiding star of our conservatism:

The light from Marshall's star of fair construction was carried on by some of the more moderate Whigs. It was adopted at the heart of republicanism in creation of our party. It focused footlights on Lincoln's moderately progressive, Constitutional conservatism, lit the way for McKinley and spotlighted Teddy Roosevelt. It had been eclipsed and snuffed out for awhile after President Johnson was impeached by radical Theocrats and Fat Cats. They had taken over our party, plundered the South during reconstruction and pocketed public lands in vast stretches of the American West for nearly half a century. After Teddy Roosevelt, our light was again eclipsed by the repressive Taft Fat Cats whose right wing of our party took back over. The Fat Cats' sycophants took out their first contract on America that caused the Great Depression. They led our party and our country nearly to destruction. After a brief ascendency against his will, under Ike's five stars, the Federalists' political progeny who claimed that "What's good for General Motors is good for the Country," remained Rockefeller's Eastern Establishment. The Pat Cats took over our party again, partly from Ike's naivete, in spite of General Eisenhower's warnings against their military-industrial complex.

Broad or loose construction was the Fat Cats' vapor ray:

Those right wing friends of the Fat Cats had always accepted a "broad or loose construction" of the Constitution, by which they let it allow whatever they wanted it to, and disallow whatever was not good for the Fat Cats. Whatever difficulty their vapor ray spotted, it disappeared. They allowed the language to be interpreted anyway it would please them to, like a lot of the loose interpretations of our current courts which alternate with those of strict construction. Between the two they serve both factions of the New Republicans. They had started with Hamilton's National Bank that was unwisely and unnecessarily a government giveaway to their Fat Cats' upper classes. Although some form of National Bank would clearly have been Constitutional, this was the best Washington could get at the time. The actual form the Federalist congress adopted really violated the stricture on the federal laws to be equally for the welfare of all, and bank legislation in favor of the Fat Cats has gone downhill from there, until our laws now give the Federal Reserve an unnecessary, unconstitutional stranglehold over our lives. Hamilton's Bank Bill sought the welfare of the few. Now such loose Constitutional interpretations as justified that bill justify everything from corporate welfare at the federal level to not allowing the federal government to force local law enforcement to enforce federal laws like the felon check law for issuing gun permits. Such interpretations assured a multitude of financial help for business at every level of government, from the struggling villages', to the supportive states', attractions for big businesses, prodding all political subdivisions to competition for businesses, such as the Constitution had been designed to curb between states.

The only trouble is, gee whiz, we're dreaming our lives away:

The Bull Moose' grumpy old stud was left bellowing out In the cold:

During the dark days of the Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt finished stealing the descendants of Teddy Roosevelt's blacks, and blue and khaki colored collared moderately progressive, Constitutionally conservative prairie populists and similar such supporters. Extreme right wing business bound Taft Fat Cat Republicans had negligently left or cast them out of our party along with other progressives and populists. Since then the rest of us real moderately progressive Constitutionally conservative Republicans dreamt of the day we could again lead our party and our country on the paths of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. Like TR's Bull Moose, we are still left bellowing out in the cold. We're randy to rampage and retrieve our country's rule.

We liked Ike and took his warnings seriously:

Finally, some political progeny of the old Bull Moose followed Ike home, in from the cold. After a few years of General Eisenhower's moderately progressive Constitutional conservatism, as he retired, he warned us again against the right wing Fat Cats' military industrial complex that had supported and controlled his administration and Rockefeller's Eastern Establishment, and would back Nixon.

Sometimes Fat Cats and corporations get put out In the cold:

Even Teddy Roosevelt's first Republican presidential campaign was still largely funded by a few Fat Cats to whom Teddy wouldn't keep his commitments (so he had some extra motive to pass up his second run for that big business bought and sold White House). Ike even axed some of his advisers caught catting around with the peoples' trust. Goldwater conservatives wrested control from Rockefeller's Eastern Establishment in 1964 in Goldwater's campaign without Fat Cat (corporate) suspender spenders. Goldwater campaigned on an average contribution of about $16. per contributor. Fat cats' grants are aid and comfort from the enemy of good government. As in much else, here Barry unintentionally showed us the way to resist the Fat Cats' calls for succor from the suckers who they give contributions.

Barry lost, largely to LBJ's mushroom ads and his own Civil Rights Bill vote. However, Barry's example suggests there is a way for us to carry on until true campaign finance reform is done: campaigns by candidates for all federal offices who make the same promise (to those who would be their bosses) not to sell out by accepting money from any corporation or institution or more than a hundred dollars from any individual, themselves included. Only once we succeed in having such souls elected will we be able to get responsible campaign finance reform along similar lines. Campaigns must be won on integrity instead of contributions. Let those who accept big buck donations from Fat Cats prosecute Bull Moose politicians for selling out for quid pro quo to the average Joe who pays us a hundred bucks! It has to start somewhere if we are to free our politicians from being beholden to the big bucks. Let it start with us.

We were seduced and brainwashed; we never bought the Nash:

We little dreamt but will long remember that apologists for wealthy elitists, men like Bill Buckley, Russell Kirk and now, the pissed off pied piper of popery and theocratic morality, Bill Bennett, who spoke so glowingly of liberty, were really nothing but new voices sounding like Jefferson and Jackson while serving the same old Adams family Fat Cat monsters lurching alter corporate money, served by modern incarnations of The Grand Inquisitor such as Bennet and Starr. In their new, supposedly conservative, form they were simply seducing us to grant the scions of riches the liberty to exploit our people and rape our land, and/or vice versa! The same monsters had lurked behind Taft, Coolidge, Herding, Hoover, Ike, Rockefeller's Eastern Establishment, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Kemp and Dole. Now we know who's dole Bob was on. In Forbes, we saw the monster Fat Cat eye us, face to pimply face.

We can see clearly now the evil's here :

As Lincoln said in passages quoted in Chapter I it is the same evil practiced by Kings and Confederate rulers. It is now moving our government. The idea is always the same: one class has a right to exploit others, to let some individuals live off the wealth produced by others' labor, whether that be through exploitation or taking advantage of others in the financial markets. Those who want their money to work instead of themselves have been seduced into the exploitation class, themselves to be exploited in turn by bigger fish up the food chain until the next netting occurs and their wealth ends up in the belly of a what of a corporate financier. Our poor people are being seduced into the ethics of seeking something for nothing by lotteries and IRAs and mutual funds.

Just as the Nobles were in an unholy alliance with religious dupes in the middle ages who granted the Nobles the divine right to rule in the temporal realm in exchange for letting the Theocrats rule peoples' morals, our Fat Cats have made an unholy alliance with Theocrats and racist democratic demagogues to keep the Theocrats' and racists' religion and race ruling everyone in exchange for being given the right to rape the wealth, people and resources of our country and the good green earth. The final insult is that our Theocrats and racists no longer sell out just to Americans, but to multinational corporate conglomerates that merely pose as patriots, such as multinational munitions makers stirring up the NRA to try to reduce government controls and regulations! Scions of riches, with no true allegiance except to wealth, are like Trojan eagles that land on their feet in the camp of their enemy anytime they are shot down flying under one flag; they simply fly off under another. From the beaks of those beastly birds, well-paid apologists croak, supposedly sounding like conservative intellectual leaders with little critical thought on anybody's part, their croaks transmitted as odes to virtue by the Fat Cats' controlled media.

We little dreamt but will long remember what we did there:

We dreamed that if Goldwater's followers who called ourselves conservatives could bring to our party a lot more people who called themselves "conservatives," we could win the battle for the hearts and minds of Americans. We lost our hearts, minds and souls in the process. And we lost America. Like salmon we swam up stream, over dams and white waters to spawn those democratic, Dixiecrat, and Theocratic imposters and demagogues who mated with the monster Fat Cats to reproduce the bastard monsters who could take out a Contract on America without batting an eye. The bastard offspring all are minor monsters: pseudo conservative crosses of states' rights democrats, racist Dixiecrats, fundamentalist and Catholic Theocrats and true believing democratic mobs serving the major monster Fat Cats who control them by feeding them supposedly conservative myths through a corporate controlled mass media and campaign contributions. That is the same monster at heart against which TR and the Bull Moose charged, the same against which TR and his Rough Riders charged at San Juan Hill, the same which Washington faced at Valley Forge, and Lincoln sent men to die to fight at Gettysburg.

Throughout history this major monster has mated with all manner of minor monsters to create all the bastard fascists serving Fat Cats, moral and other tyrants. We didn't realize how radically different from our true Constitutional conservatism were the extreme Jeffersonian ragged individualists, the Jacksonian democrats, the narrow minded and cold hearted, racist Dixiecrats, the thoughtlessly fanatical Theocratic fascists, and the coldly calculating Fat Cats. We never imagined how cleverly we could all be manipulated by the scions of riches' control of the mass media, campaign contributions, public relations people and lobbying.

The opiate of the conservatives:

We were lulled to visions of grandeur by the claims that we were growing masses of conservatives. We didn't realize how radically those Jefferson/Jackson disciples of democrats, Dixiecrats, Theocrats and right wing Fat Cats under the guise of conservatives had reconstituted political rhetoric: that "conservative" no longer meant what it had when it referred to the cautious moderation of moderately progressive Constitutional conservatives who were seeking to conserving the best of our government and society against the right ring reactionaries, left wing radicals, theocratic fools and other extremists who constantly opposed the centrist progress and preservation of the early Madison, Washington, Marshall, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Ike. We didn't see how, soon after our hero, Goldwater, took over the GOP, and unknown to that great but misled myopic champion of the people, we were still being taken over and led by the fat cat scions of riches even as we were wresting control of the GOP from Rockefeller's faction they'd supported. They lured us back to the trough of big business, by now a conglomerate of multinational corporations in a new fascist world order of a global economy. We're now led by sacred and secular, political sons of bitches serving sick scions of riches.

Hooked on Cash-ish for political campaigns:

The corporate bosses hooked us with seductive media which won campaigns but cost money, and with the campaign contributions to pay for it on both sides of elections. Thus the Fat Cats win no matter who win the elections. The victors are always beholden to the vicious. By providing exorbitant funds to get one candidate to use exorbitantly expensive mass media, they make it necessary for all to fall down at their feet for money. They can buy from Democrats only divided loyalty, since Unions do supply some funds to the Democrats in the name of the working man, but generally those serve the labor bosses more than their followers. Republicans, no matter what their political complexion, republican, democratic, theocratic, conservative, etc, have been at the beck and call of these corporate and other scions of riches. The people must demand campaign reform that throws out the need or possibility for political fixes from those Fat Cats and scions of riches. We must make effective, stringent limits on contributions and expenditures in political campaigns. If that takes restocking the Supreme Court, or a Constitutional amendment, so be it. No once should have the right to buy election even if he finds fools ready to sell it. That denies the rights of the rest of us to governments with integrity.

Ignore platforms and promises:

It doesn't really matter whether the prattle supported by the multinational Fat Cats is that of the extreme right wing, or that of other fake conservatives they ape, distort and pre-empt, or even that of their worst Unionized opponents. Still, we can bet that lurking behind the intellectual confusion of all movements will be some servants of the scions of riches and advantage, those corporate Fat Cats of the new world order. It is time to purify ourselves and flash our pedigree. It's time to take back our Republican party, to remake ourselves in images of moderately progressive, Constitutionally conservative leaders like Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. Or else it is time to give it up and renew our Bull Moose charge into greener pastures, leaving our Grand Old Party's elephant to atrophy and become a museum trophy. In any case the Republican party is about to implode upon its now hollow heart as it explodes from all in incoherent parts. We want to come home to renew our Grand Old Party.