THE
PARTY IS OVER, by Mike Lofgren Penguin Books, 2013
subtitled
“How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the
Middle Class Got Shafted”
Mr.
Lofgren's background includes twelve years on the staff of [then]
Congressman John Kasich (R, Ohio) followed by sixteen years as a
senior analyst for the Senate Budget Committee under Senator Judd
Gregg (R, New Hampshire).
He
includes in the Republican Party both the formal political
organization and its extensions into talk radio, Fox News, the Tea
Party, and direct-mail fund raising. He also includes, in the
background of both Republican and Democratic parties the very rich,
whose self-interest has secured a financial environment they hope to
prolong.
His
introduction traces the take-over of the party by pressure groups
masquerading as tax-exempt 'educational' non-profit organizations.
Lofgren writes, “I was in the privileged position to see how
Congress works on the inside, when the C-SPAN cameras are turned off.
What I saw was . . . an auction where political services were won by
the highest bidder. . . . My own party, the Republican Party, began
to scare me.”
Mr.
Lofgren approaches his subject from the standpoint of tactics,
instead of individuals. The Koch brothers, the Mellons, and other
multi-billionaires are there in the background, but his emphasis is
on the effects rather than the doers themselves. His chapter headings
and and their subtitles tell his story. The quote marks after each of
his twelve chapter headings below indicate his subtitles:
Chapter
1: The Party of
Lincoln, the Party of Jefferson “What
is the Republican Party like? What are the Democrats like? Why is
there so little difference between them? And how did they get this
way?”
Ch
2: Tactics: War
Minus the Shooting
“The Republican Party has used objection, obstruction, and
filibustering not only to block the necessary processes of government
but also in order to make ordinary Americans deeply cynical about
Washington.”
Ch
3: All Wrapped
Up in the Constitution “Like
biblical literalists, Republicans assert that the Constitution is
divinely inspired and inerrant. But also like biblical literalists,
they are strangely selective about those portions of their favorite
document that they care to heed, and they favor rewriting it when it
stands in the way of their political agenda.”
Ch
4: A Devil's
Dictionary “How
Republicans have mastered the art of communicating with ordinary
people in their own vernacular, while Democrats remain tone-deaf and
tongue-tied.”
Ch
5: Taxes
and the Rich “The
GOP [the traditional Republican Party nickname] cares, over and above
every other item on its political agenda, about the rich contributors
who keep them in office. This is why tax increases on the wealthy
have become an absolute Republican taboo. Caught between their own
rich contributors and their voters, Democrats are conflicted and
compromised.”
Ch
6: Worshiping
at the Altar of Mars “There
is no getting around the fact that the GOP loves war more than it
supposedly hates deficits. But Democrats are furiously playing
catch-up.” “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly
the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. . .
. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and
the losses in lives.” [This last quote Mr. Lofgren attributes to
U.S. Marine Corps General Smedley Butler, who was twice awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor.]
Ch
7: Media
Complicity “Despite
the widely believed myth of its liberalism, over the last thirty
years the media landscape has become increasingly wired to favor
Republicans. The press's current combination of fake objectivity and
campaign fetishization has been carefully exploited by Republican
strategists for political advantage.”
Ch
8: Give
Me That Old-Time Religion
“The religious right provides the foot soldiers for the GOP. This
fact has profound implications for the rest of the Republicans'
ideological agenda. . . wealth worship, war worship, and the
permanent culture war.”
Ch
9:
No Eggheads Wanted “Consistent
both with its strong base of support among fundamentalists and with
its authoritarian belief structure, the GOP is increasingly
anti-intellectual and anti-science.”
Ch
10: A
Low dishonest Decade “America's
political crisis has been brewing for over thirty years. But in the
first decade of the twenty-first century, the sickness threatened to
become terminal.”
Ch
11: Are
the Democrats any better?
“As Republicans have grown ideologically more rigid, Democrats
have almost entirely ceased to have any core beliefs at all—and
their grab for corporate money is as egregious as that of the GOP.”
Ch
12: A
Way Out? “What
changes are necessary to right the ship of state?”
Mr.
Lofgren answers his own question by admitting it will take many
changes, but suggests we start with repairing the election process:
ban any and all private money involved, substituting a much smaller
public allowance equally to each candidate for a limited campaigning
season, ( like Britain and Australia, each of which allows less than
two months.) He adds that, like most other major democracies we
should have our election district boundaries drawn by non-partisan
commissions, to minimize gerrymandering.
I
have mostly refrained from my own comments up to this point.
Published in 2012, “The Party Is Over” performs well in outlining
major points in the behavior of the Republican and Democrat parties.
If the reader wants more detail on the individuals behind the
conflict, I recommend reading Jane Mayer's “Dark Money”,
published in March of 2016. It features, inside its hardback covers,
a remarkable diagram of the network of “non-profit” (and
tax-exempt) organizations, and their spending.
My
own experience in politics is limited to watching CNN and Fox News on
TV and Mr. Trump's dismaying disregard for truth and consistency. I
can witness to one far right organization, The Heritage Foundation,
whose leader, ex-senator Jim DeMint, keeps telling me that I want to
join the “Tea Party”. No, I do not.
