Three Monday headlines prove Republicans don't deserve your vote.
Like Trump, everything the GOP touches, dies.
Three Monday headlines remind us of the damage the Republican Party has inflicted on America, while it’s still delivering harmful blows.
First headline: dirty secret, revealed
The first appeared this morning in the politics section of the New York Times. “A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election.”
The story cited the account of a man named Ben Barnes, a major force in Texas Republican politics for at least three decades. In 1980, Barnes and former Texas governor John Connally, Jr. (1963-69) helped get Ronald Reagan elected president, beating incumbent president Jimmy Carter, by conducting back-door illegal foreign policy discussions with Arab leaders.
In the summer before the 1980 election, Connally and he visited capitals throughout the Middle East, meeting with a host of Middle Eastern leaders. They were delivering “a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Ronald Reagan will beat Carter and give you a better deal,” according to the Times’ account.
Now 85 years old and apparently guilt-ridden in light of former President Carter’s being near death, Barnes decided to tell his story. The injustice imposed on Carter had for all these years gotten to him, and it was time to come clean.
“History needs to know that this happened…I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more. I just feel like we’ve got to get it down some way.”
What happened
As background, the scheme Barnes described revolves around the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, when 52 American diplomats and employees of the American Embassy in the Iranian capital of Tehran were taken hostage by a group of Iranian religious militants.
Carter authorized a military action to rescue the hostages on April 24, 1980, which failed, killing eight U.S. servicemen. As a result, the American hostages remained in captivity for 444 days, from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan’s inauguration day.
Nov. 22, 1963 connection
Connally, who sat in the front of the car John F. Kennedy was riding in when he was assassinated in Dallas, switched to the GOP in 1973 when it looked as though the Republican Party would replace Democrats as the preferred political entity in the Lone Star State, especially after Democrats pushed through the civil rights legislation of 1964-65.
Betrayal
Soon after returning to the United States, Barnes said Connally reported to William Casey, chairman of the Reagan presidential campaign and later, under Reagan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Although evidence has never been revealed that Reagan himself knew about the trips, it would be beyond credulity to believe his campaign chairman, Casey, was acting on
his own.
President Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before election day. But the Connally/Casey efforts paid off, as the hostages were released immediately after Reagan took the oath of office and Jimmy Carter was leaving for his Georgia home.
Barnes’s story is all the more astonishing as an opening-of-the-kimono moment for a man who until about 20 years ago was synonymous with Texas Republican politics, having served as the Texas Speaker of the House from 1965 to 1969 and in the even more powerful (in Texas) Lieutenant Governor’s position from 1969 to 1973. (Barnes apparently switched parties with his support of Democrat John Kerry when the Massachusetts senator ran for president in 2004.)
Connally operated for years as a Texas powerhouse and was an obvious mentor for Barnes, and others. So it was no surprise when Connally in 1980 ran against Reagan. But when Connally began losing to Reagan in the primaries, he decided to support the Californian in a big way.
You might think that ceding the nomination lane to Reagan and spearheading the Middle Eastern parleys would earn Connally a Secretary of State or Defense post—jobs he coveted. But even though his dealings tipped the scales in Reagan’s favor, the 40th president only offered Connally a Secretary of Energy spot, which the Texan declined.
Second headline: W’s debacle
The second headline, “How the U.S. Broke Iraq,” in today’s Washington Post is not unlike those in other papers commemorating the 20th anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq by order of Republican President George W. Bush. With the complicity of much of the Washington establishment, Bush marshaled the United States military to invade, not the country that spawned most of the 911 terrorists, Saudi Arabia, or which harbored the plot’s leader Osama bin Laden and offered a training ground for the terrorists, Afghanistan–that would come later.
Instead, inexplicably, Bush targeted a country run by a despot, yes, but one that possessed no clear connection to the 911 attacks.
Consequences
Let’s first address the damage to lives and treasure. According to the Post story, more than 4,000 American service members died, with “countless more” who returned home wounded and/or traumatized. The Post reported more than 306,000 Iraqis lost their lives due to “direct war-related violence.”
Then there were more than 200,000 U.S. service personnel who have suffered from burn-pit-related illnesses. Recent legislation initiated and passed under the aegis of Joe Biden expanded medical benefits for Americans so affected 20 years ago..
As for money, Brown University estimated the Iraq war added an immediate deficit of $1.1 trillion to the American treasury, without taking into account compounded interest. This flies against protestations by administration spokespeople like Richard Perle, chair of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board. Perle claimed on July 11, 2002 that oil-rich Iraq would ensure the War would essentially pay for itself (the nation.com march 13 2003).
President of the Council of Foreign Relations Richard Haas said on MSNBC the Bush administration’s biggest mistake is one that has had consequences both in Iraq and America for generations–they didn’t plan for what to do after they achieved victory--how to run the country they had just torn apart.
As evidence, one of the first things the Bush administration did was fire everyone in the Iraqi Army, unleashing thousands of angry militants who might have been used to rebuild the country.
As Iraqi chaos grew, the Bush team launched another, expensive military operation, called “the troop surge,” which cracked down on insurrections, threw more money into the country, and eventually calmed tensions. But the end result was that the American invaders would leave the country altogether, hoping the fragile government and traumatized country would get it together after they left.
Just as the disorganization and chaos inherent in the Iraq War hurt Iraqis, it had a negative effect on Americans, Haas said. The disorganized initial American government performance, in concert with Bush’s decision to invade without taking into account the overwhelming American opposition to the war, served to “isolate many Americans from their government.” Haas added this generated the anti-government animus that inspired many who eventually turned to the nihilistic messages of Donald Trump.
To counter the bad news stories on the war, today’s Iraq War follow-ups also included some good news about the country: the presence of an American University, called the American University of Sulaimani, which offers top-notch college programs to young Iraqis based on curricula common to universities in the United States.
Interviews with students oozed with optimism that they were acquiring important knowledge and skills to make their country a model of freedom in the future. Student satisfaction may not only be linked to the quality education they’re getting, but also to the low cost of their tuition and
housing fees.
According to the school’s web site at auis.edu.krd, tuition ranges by program from $1,450 to $8,900 annually with 40 percent of each student’s tuition paid for by “sponsors, gifts, and grants.” Dorm fees range from $600-$1,200 annually, mirroring fees American colleges have not seen since waves of Baby Boomers flooded American universities in the mid 1960s. American students saddled with enormous debt for attending schools here may well ask, “Where can I sign up?”
Third headline highlights Republicans’ Trump and Russia support
The third headline, in today’s Washington Post, “Republicans rally to Trump’s defense as he faces possible indictment,” reflects the latest reason why Republicans cannot be trusted. The Post reports: “On Sunday night, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called the investigation political, suggesting it was an example of government ‘weaponization’ against the ex-president, while calling for ‘calm.’”
Meanwhile, McCarthy’s House henchwoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, two days ago called for “defunding ongoing (federal) Trump investigations” as an ultimatum in ongoing negotiations about the debt ceiling crisis. Her mob style message: “Nice little full faith and credit of the United States thing you got going there. Be a shame if anything happened to it if you don’t go along with our hostage demand to stop all DOJ probes into Trump.”
McCarthy is also calling for “weaponization” hearings chaired by Jim Jordan to investigate Manhattan District Attorney Bragg.
Republican jihad
It’s a pattern we've become used to as things heat up with Trump’s legal woes: McCarthy calls for calm while taking pains to not cross Trump personally. Simultaneously, Republican House attack dogs do the wet work against government institutions, not just in the second branch (Legislative) of government, but also in the first (Executive) and third (the Courts). Richard Haas described the Republican tactics as “jihad against juries, judges, and prosecutors” across the judicial system of the United States.
Fellow travelers
McCarthy, Taylor Greene, and Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis haven’t reserved their government trashing to just domestic issues. They’ve now established a pattern of taking Russia’s side in the Ukraine conflict, calling it a “territorial dispute,” parroting Kremlin talking points.
On MSNBC retired Admiral James Stavridis said Republicans’ Russian tropes hurt Ukraine’s morale and encourage Putin. The Russian leader takes heart that these GOP’ers appear to reflect the future of the Republican Party. As Putin sees it, if he can just hold on until the 2024 presidential election when either Trump or DeSantis wins, he can see a clear path to getting the U.S. to abandon Ukraine, giving the Russian dictator the green light to bring Ukraine to its knees.
Bottom line: On an average Monday March morning, three news stories reinforce the danger of electing Republicans, ever. In 1980, Reagan sent a two-man squad in a back-door foreign policy scheme to undercut a sitting American president. A good man, Carter, lost. A duplicitous man,
Reagan, won.
Former Republican Ben Barnes, a member of the duo, has decided at age 85 to clear his conscience as Jimmy Carter lays dying in Georgia. In the meantime, his and John Connally’s work has defiled America’s reputation on the world stage, delayed 52 American hostages from getting home sooner, and deprived the country of an honest president for four more
important years.
The second story underscores the danger to America of Electoral College votes rather than popular ones in electing presidents. That method, in concert with an unwise Supreme Court decision to stop a mandated recount in Florida, gave the presidency to a man without the personal wisdom and habits of mind to be a good president.
People died in Iraq by the hundreds of thousands, including more than 4,000 plus Americans. Lives and families were destroyed or disrupted. Americans lost faith in government, and the ground was laid for a kind of American nihilism that found a leader in Donald Trump.
The third story reflects in many ways the after-effects from at least 40 years of Republican presidents and governance that have destroyed any vestiges of what the GOP may have once stood for. When norms are ignored and trampled on, as Reagan and Bush did, succeeding generations take norm-breaking to the next level. The idea is, if X and Y, the party’s elders, did it, why shouldn’t we?
If 2018, 2020, 2022, and early individual election results in state elections that are favoring Democrats in 2023 are any indication, American voters may need again to send another clear message to Republicans–something like, “As long as you betray us, you will not get our vote.”
–trg
It’s hard not to fall into a trance of helplessness when waiting for the MAGATS and Trumpism to dissipate.
Amen!