Monday, June 13, 2016

How the Neocon Leech sucked the GOP dry

Poor Rich Lowry, editor of National Review. He came out early on, disavowed Donald Trump and dragged his entire team into doing likewise. He thought he had enough sway among Republican voters to whip the primary and caucus electorate into embracing his point of view, thus do away with Trump once and for all.

The trouble is that the opposite happened in that it was Donald Trump who swayed the Republican electorate into embracing his point of view, thus doing away with Rich Lowry if not the National Review. That was the culmination of a long playing drama that shook the Republican Party so hard; it may not survive in its present form much longer.

Here now is a legitimate question: What happened to the Republican Party of Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan? And here is an informed answer: The Neocon movement infiltrated the Party, sucked its supply of blood to the last drop, and left it as alive as a dried out twig on a dying tree.

It all began to take shape during the second half of the year 1967. America was taking a terrible beating at the hands of the North Vietnamese and their southern allies, the Vietcong ... both of whom used Soviet made weapons. And then there was an Israeli success in June of that year using Western (French made) weapons, that surprised the Egyptians and destroyed their Soviet made weapons. It was a success that rivaled Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor 26 years earlier; a success that provided the Americans with a kind of delayed catharsis.

The Jews took advantage of that development and argued that because Israel managed to kinda humiliate the Soviet Union, it deserved to be coddled by an America that was humiliated by Soviet weapons. This is when Democratic Senator Henry (Scoop) Jackson, who had big ambitions and small talent to achieve them, jumped on the occasion and worked to turn the Soviet Union into enemy number one, while turning Israel into a political heartthrob. The concoction grew quickly and became a movement to be reckoned with for a time.

And then, a twist of the kind that's sometimes encountered in history took place. Because opposition to the Soviet Union was held more generally by the Republican Right, the Democrats who followed in the footsteps of Jackson were now led by Irving Kristol who identified with the Republicans more than the Democrats. He switched parties and was followed by his flock – a group that came to be known as the neoconservatives or neocons.

They swarmed the Republican Grand Old Party (GOP) and were embraced by its conservative members. It was as if the turncoat Jewish Democrats were the prodigal son that had come home to bestow on them wisdom, wealth and a new era of triumphs. It was a thought that served to soothe the folks who were more traumatized than others by their country's string of defeats in Asia. Little did they know that their party was stealthily transformed from being an American party serving America to a Jewish party serving Israel, always Israel and no one but Israel.

Years passed during which time: “The neocons’ heedlessness stepped all over the Republicans’ earnestness.” Ouch! Guess what I just did, my friend. I committed a sin. I plagiarized Rich Lowry. That was his sentence, not mine … except that he said it a little differently. Actually, he put it like this: “Trump's heedlessness stepped all over Ryan's earnestness.” That passage came in the article that Rich Lowry wrote under the title: “Many More Awkward Moments Are Surely Ahead for Trump's Endorsers,” published on June 10, 2016 in National Review Online.

The reality is that over a period of several years, the neocons did to the Republican Party what Rich Lowry accuses Donald Trump of doing in the blink of an eye. He starts his article with these words: “Trump's endorsers have made their bed, and now must lie in it.” But the fact is that it was the conservatives and neoconservatives who made the bed, and they are now forced to lie in it whether Rich Lowry likes it or not. If he likes it, he can hop into the bed, fleas and all, and make of it what he can. Or if he doesn't like it, he can join William, the junior Kristol, and work with him to found another party of the Right.

Having referred to the main culprits as “Trump's endorsers,” Lowry goes on to describe the ills of the Republican Party without once mentioning that such ills were long in the making, and were due to the infestation of the Party by the neocons. And of course, you'll never get him to admit that Trump's endorsers may turn out to be what they think of themselves: an antidote to the neocons; the cure that will rid the Republican Party of its infestation, and revitalize it.

When all is said and done, the possibilities are that Donald Trump may turn out to be the injection that provided the Republican Party with the shock therapy that was necessary to cure it, or the coup de grace that put the Party out of its misery.