"Wade into the Democrats. Spill Their Blood."

This morning I have been reading of the corruption of the Republican party and its leaders. First, I started with an essay by Thomas Frank, who has a new book out exploring how "the spectacular misrule of the GOP was not an accident." In this book, Frank explores the roles of "Grover Norquist, Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Newt Gingrich, and the whole troupe of activists, lobbyists, and corpora-trons who got their start back in the Reagan years." Frank's essay discusses some of the issues of his book.

I then read an interview with Frank, in which Frank discusses the conservative youth movement, its connection with the South African apartheid government, and of the International Freedom Foundation's connections with the apartheid government. Frank says:

The funny thing is, the IFF later turned out to be a project of South African military intelligence. For all its constant attacks on the left for being closet tools of the Soviet Union, the conservatives were the ones who were on the payroll of a foreign power -- discreetly, of course. Abramoff and Company were, once again, fighting liberalism for pay. This was pretty big news in South Africa when it came out during the Truth and Reconciliation hearings. Not so big here.

From a reader's comment on Frank's essay, I found the link to Bill Moyers' series on the corruption of top Republican leaders and lobbyists. Now, I've read a lot on the Jack Abramoff scandal and of Tom Delay's venality, so much of the information in this series wasn't new to me. However, the details are fascinating, and Moyer's discussion of the money trail is one of the clearest descriptions I've heard.

Watch all four videos and weep over how easily people can be misled. Ralph Reed publicly was against gambling and rallied many evangelical Christians to his side, yet he was taking vast amounts of gambling money from the Louisiana Coushatta Indian tribes' casinos.

Suzil Paynter, director of the Christian Life Commission of the Texas Baptist General Convention, describes in the series how her "heart hurt" when she discovered the duplicity of Ralph Reed. Chris Geeslin, pastor and president of the U. S. Family Network, mourns how:

We were supposed to be presenting this moral value to the country and bringing the country back to God. . . and supporting these programs--and we did some of that--but. . . really, I feel now that was kind of a charade. . . "

Geeslin had discovered where the money came from to support the USFN: Russian oligarchs--and others--seeking Tom Delay's influence. The U. S. Family Network was really a money laundering machine.

Or listen to Michael Scanlon's description of how he, Reed, and Abramoff manipulated religious people, specifically stirring up Texas Christians against gambling, in order to preserve the regional casino-gambling monopoly of the Coushatta tribe:

Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos. The wackos get their information from the Christian Right, Christian radio, the Internet, and telephone trees.

At the end of his series, which can only be seen at 3 p.m. on Sunday afternoons in our area (not a prime viewing hour), Moyers reminds us of what has since happened to some of the key players in these corruption schemes. Jack Abramoff is in jail, and Michael Scanlon "pleaded guilty to charges connected to Abramoff." While Ralph Reed lost an election in Georgia, he "now runs a public relations firm in Atlanta" and "is on the host committee for a John McCain event later this month."

And what about Tom Delay and Grover Norquist, two other compatriots of Jack Abramoff? Ole Tom "has launched a new organization called Coalition for a Conservative Majority. His goal is to organize chapters in 50 states." Grover Norquist is still "busy as a lobbyist in his role as president of Americans for Tax Reform, the organization that funneled money to Ralph Reed."

In the early 1980s, young recruits for College Republicans

were told to memorize a speech from the movie Patton. But for the word "Nazis" they were to substitute the word "Democrats." "Wade into them," the young recruits repeated. "Spill their blood!"

Perhaps thinking they were patriotic, they supported an ideology and its leaders that have just about destroyed our country's credibility and the ideals for which our country has long stood. And created a poisonous political atmosphere in which calls to murder liberals and Democrats no longer seem to be metaphors.

Sources

• Rick Perlstein, "Thomas Frank on the Bush administration: Sabotage by design," an interview with Thomas Franks on Salon, posted Friday, August 8, 2008.
• Thomas Frank, "How conservative greed and corruption destroyed American politics," essay in Salon, posted Friday, August 8, 2008.
• Bill Moyers' Journal, Capitol Crimes, a series on PBS, with video and transcripts at: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08012008/watch.html