The Good Old Boys

Just when you think that the proto-fascist neo-con power and influence has been neutralized, you get the likes of Mitch McConnell. If you combine a majority of Mitch McConnell’s in Congress and a George W. Bush in the White House, you get all the elements of the neo-con ideology: jingoism, war, a huge federal deficit, government for the rich, deregulation, and extreme fear-mongering and polarization. This we have had.

Now with a minority of Mitch McConnell’s with some power, you still get bone-headed proto-fascist approach to confronting severe economic crisis.

We have seen that neo-cons do not work for the common good. They work for their own inflexible interests. They would rather pinion all economic progress than conform to any pragmatic principles, especially when ideological enemies might just survive as a result.

For such autocrats, becoming irrelevant after cleaving to a ruthless power for almost a decade is not an option. They are like a plague that their constituents are comfortable with, bullies who wield power, braying principle as motive.

In the current crisis, the Republican naysayers are from the south. The southern mentality such dictators capitalize on is territorial, vindictive and suspicious of outside forces. Representatives like McConnell feed on resentment and a division that challenges working together for a common good.

Thus Mitch McConnell led the Senate Republican charge against the $14 billion rescue package for Chrysler and General Motors. He trotted out neo-con dogma about big government – “a government big enough to take everything we have.”

Never mind that the neo-con majority, with Bush at the helm, busted the backs of all future Americans with profligate deficit spending for an imaginary war on terrorism, trashed a thriving economy, and disguised tax breaks for the rich as economic policy. The hypocrisy the bullies display almost takes your breath away.

With more neo-con venom, McConnell’s plan is to break the backs of auto unions and assign blame in their direction. Pile this on the plutocratic gift of $700 billion for the Wall Street managers of greed, putting it in Paulson’s CEO-centrist hands, and you have intolerance, dogma, and a mean-spirited union-busting effort which takes precedence over country.

At the height of the credit crisis, Mitch McConnell’s campaign nabbed $1.8 million in loans from Kentucky’s BB&T Bank that ensured his political survival and paved the way to his fifth term in the Senate. This is a bank that benefitted from the $700 billion taxpayer payout that McConnell supported.

McConnell of Kentucky, Burr of North Carolina, Chambliss of Georgia, Thune of South Carolina, Shelby of Alabama, Hutchison from Texas, and Corker of Tennessee are all radical Republicans who fit in this same mold.

Most are in states that have provided subsidies and tax breaks to draw and keep foreign carmakers. Shelby, a loud critic of the UAW, has showered gifts on several foreign carmakers in his state.

Since the 1990s, Shelby’s Alabama has seen the building of three assembly plants, from Honda, Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai, and an engine plant built by Toyota, as well as numerous investments by parts makers, all this since the 1990s.

Corker’s Tennessee is the home to Nissan’s North American headquarters, a Nissan plant and a promised Volkswagen factory. Corker has been another Detroit critic.

Other states with foreign car plants include Toyota in Hutchison’s Texas, a Honda plant in Ohio, and Subaru in Indiana.

No doubt these southern Republicans are also posturing for other would-be foreign car-makers. With the weakened dollar, Fiat, the Italian carmaker, Volkswagen of Germany, Renault, a French company, and Peugeot are considering plants here.

But they don’t just disrupt loans vital to economic stability and give money to Wall Street in particular. They have been working for oil companies, drug companies and health care providers for years.

They were part of tax cuts for the rich; they helped ramrod through a Medicare prescription program that forbade the government to negotiate drug prices, and later blocked efforts by the 2006 class of Democrats to allow Medicare bargaining for lower drug prices. And they sat watched and helped while criminal companies like Enron wrote energy bills.

They are the good old boys that wedge-issue-whipped voters keep electing while the good old boys fan the wedge issue fires, talk old-South patriotism, and keep giving favor to the rich.

What is their number one priority? Let’s say, it ain’t the country we Americans know!