Dead GOP Ideologies

The facts are increasingly clear John McCain’s shallow political campaign for president shows the Republican Party is now held tenuously together by dead ideologies, but do not count on the corporate media to challenge him.

In addition, McCain, the Arizona Senator and Republican presumptive nominee for president, won the nomination early in the process, and this has effectively shut down any real debate among Republicans about the major economic problems faced by Americans this election year. (There are Republicans who do want a discussion about the issues.) Americans in staggering numbers do not think the country is heading in the right direction, but this fact matters little to the media.

Conservative pundits, from Rush Limbaugh to Robert Novak to George Will to Charles Krauthammer, dish out the witty vitriol and clever snark about Democratic Party candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but the real story is these commentators—blustering, pontificating cartoon figures—are as intellectually bankrupt as the Republican Party they so adore. The corporate media feeds these narcissistic, loony right-wing ideologues with petty guilt-by-association plots and Clinton-family obsession. What did the Rev. Jeremiah Wright say today? Did Chelsea look sad the other night? Is she out of touch with her generation? Limbaugh, Novak, Will and Krauthammer (and so many, many others in the mainstream media) crowd around the pig trough.

As respect for the neoconservative experiment declines even further throughout the country and world so does the trust in the American mainstream media. Together the GOP and media have brought us the Bush-GOP/Iraq nightmare, illegal torturing of prisoners, threats to our civil liberties and economic chaos. Now, again working together, the GOP and mainstream media want to reduce our election into ad hominem attacks against Clinton and Obama.

What are McCain’s ideas besides “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”? What are his stances and positions? How do they differ from those of Imperial President George Bush? The answer to all these questions is simply this: McCain has no new ideas, nothing that differs substantially from Bush or the incredibly botched neoconservative experiment. Even if one does not buy into the change theme this year, it is clear that McCain is Bush redux.

The issues are clear and compelling. Here is just a partial list: How do we improve wages and health care for regular Americans? What do we do about the Iraq debacle? How do we de-sanction the torture of prisoners and regain our standing in the world? What do we do about the energy crisis as gasoline prices skyrocket? How do we protect the environment, improve sustainability? The Republicans and McCain are simply nowhere to be found on these issues in any meaningful way. Clinton and Obama have debated these issues for months and months

Meanwhile, in state legislatures across the country, the GOP ideological wars continue unabated with voter ID, anti-illegal immigration and anti-abortion initiatives. GOP-sponsored legislation continues to attack science education in schools as it seeks to erase the boundary between church and state. These are the dead, negative GOP ideologies of hate and right-wing Christian theocracy that disenfranchise people, the wasteland of the neoconservative experiment.

Polls show Americans collectively do not support the GOP on these cultural wedge issues, but would you know that by following the news in the mainstream media? No. Under the current corrupt rubric, mainstream GOP media pundits speak for “all Americans.” Those who opposed the war and the Imperial Bush agenda, for example, from the beginning are the “left-wing fanatics” who speak for only a small, marginalized group in this country. Yet, again, polls show otherwise, that Americans oppose the war in Iraq in large numbers, that they disapprove of Bush in overwhelming numbers. This disconnect between ordinary people and the corporate media has perhaps never been greater in the country’s history.

Many Americans hope for a correction to the quasi-fascist government of the Imperial Bush, perhaps the most unpopular president in the country’s history, this election year. But how can that correction occur when the corporate media continues to reward those who were wrong and marginalize those who were right about the most important foreign policy endeavor in a generation? Many of us who were right about the Iraq invasion and ensuring occupation were penalized for speaking out. Meanwhile, people like John Yoo, the lawyer who wrote the infamous memos sanctioning U.S. torture of its foreign prisoners, get faculty positions at major universities.

Consequently, Americans need to continue to exchange information and work outside of the mainstream media in order to bring about real political reform in this country. It may take many more years, true, but American democracy is at stake. We are not giving up. Never.

Listen, the mainstream media will absolutely never hold McCain accountable to policy positions, nor will it stop trashing the Democratic presidential contenders. Once Democrats get their nominee, the GOP and corporate media will join together and relentlessly and ruthlessly attack the candidate. Accepting this simple and obvious fact now could help the Democratic Party win in November. It is time for new structures, frames and rules. Democrats will not win by trying to work within the corrupt GOP/media system.