The infamous letter signed by 47 Senate Republicans is but one of the many ways in which the increasingly insane and dangerous GOP base seeks to destroy American democracy and replace it with a mix of theocracy and oligarchy and a never ending war regime. One needs to look beyond the recent letter to see that it is only part of a trend to undermine the civil laws and grant special rights to religious extremists and vulture capitalists. A piece in Salon looks at the worrisome trend and what it could portend. Here are excerpts:
The Republican senators who warned Iranian officials that any agreement they made with President Obama would not outlive the present administration appear to have been blindsided by the backlash against their letter. . . . . Sen. John McCain downplayed the extraordinary letter as business as usual: “I sign lots of letters,” he told Politico.
But the firestorm continues to rage. Newspaper editorials slam the senators who signed the bill; more than a quarter of a million people have signed a petition calling for the senators to be tried for treason; #47Traitors has been trending on Twitter. Why has this letter garnered such a visceral reaction when attacks on the president and his policies are the everyday currency of the modern Republican Party?
It has created a backlash because it shows, with crystal clarity, that the ideology of Movement Conservatives is not simply partisanship. It is an attack on American democracy itself.
Whenever adherents of an ideological faction recognize that they do not have the popular support to control the president, they try to game the system. This happens on a grand scale, as when Southern whites so hated the outcome of the 1860 election that made Abraham Lincoln president, they picked up guns to get their way. It happens on smaller scales, as when Republicans in Congress today threaten to shut down the government to make President Obama do what they want.
[W]hen a faction tries to gain the upper hand at home by interfering with our international relations, Americans are able to see their attack on our fundamental system for what it is.
The precedent established by the Logan Act held firm from 1799 until the 1950s, when members of a radical faction within the Republican Party tried to take control of foreign policy away from their own president in order to impose their ideology on the country. Movement Conservatives within the Republican Party were horrified by President Eisenhower’s domestic initiatives. These men hated the New Deal consensus, believing that regulation of business, protection of labor, and establishment of a social safety net had imported communism into America.
They launched a public brawl with Eisenhower, arguing that his support for the United Nations opened the way for communism to conquer America. It was only a question of time until the UN dictated all U.S. laws (it would start, they warned white Southerners, by ending racial segregation).
Eisenhower was shocked that his opponents were willing to weaken the nation internationally to score domestic points. He pointed out that Americans had let Congress control foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation, and the resulting disaster had inspired the authors of the Constitution to centralize international negotiations in the president. But Movement Conservatives ignored the historical record and continued to whip up opposition to Eisenhower’s foreign policy in order to weaken his support and kill his domestic Middle Way.
Their efforts backfired. Determined to prevent the passage of the measure, Eisenhower had to build a coalition with Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson. . . . . and for the rest of his presidency Eisenhower would work with Democrats, rather than Movement Conservatives, to make policy.
Sixty years after the Bricker Amendment failed, 47 senators have tried, once again, to undercut a president they abhor by attacking his foreign policy. The letter was addressed to Iranian officials, but it was aimed at strengthening Movement Conservatives at home.
The letter put into stark relief that Movement Conservatives value their ideology more than the nation’s founding principles. If members of a faction can override the president so long as they are willing to sacrifice the country to their cause, elections don’t matter. Only ideology and commitment do.
In 1799 and 1954, this was not what most Americans understood to be American democracy. In 2015, while sending a letter to the leaders of Iran was probably not illegal, Americans across the political spectrum are echoing their predecessors when they condemn the senators who signed it as #47Traitors.
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