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Big Government Republicans

Monday, May 15, 2006
The new wiretapping scandal gives the Democrats a rare political do-over. We blew the last one a few months ago, but the revelations of big telecom companies releasing phone records to the NSA is a golden opportunity for the Democrats.

Yes I know that the polls on this issue are ambiguous, and the right-wing bloggers are bending over backwards to say that it's not an invasion of privacy. But for us, we need only hammer away at a simple message: Spying on Americans without a warrant is wrong. The current administration is endangering our freedoms, and big companies are helping them do it.

This is an important message for a number of reasons. First because it happens to be true. Second because Americans need reminding that their civil liberties are worth protecting. And third because it undermines one of the foundations of the Republican party: fear of intrusive government. For years corporate conservatives have attempted (with great success) to extract wealth from the middle class via government policy through favorable regulatory and tax policy, globalization, and the smashing of labor unions. This is scarcely a popular policy, so they masked it with anti-government rhetoric. In this they were exploiting the "Jeffersonian fallacy" that only government is a threat to your freedom.

But now the Democrats have an opportunity to strip away that facade. The Republicans have become the party of big, instrusive government - and they have done so in the name of a few greedy corporations and their own desire for personal power. This has led them to personal corruption, reckless fiscal policy, and fear-mongering. The result has been the decline of the American middle class, the loss of our liberties, and the erosion of small towns and small businesses.

If the Democrats combine this critique of the Republicans with an array of policy proposals to de-centralize government power, strengthen personal liberties, political reform, and assistance to small businesses and small towns - then we have a real story to tell. Strip the Republicans of their rural and anti-government supporters, and they'll be left with a rump base of big companies, xenophobic nationalists, and religious fundamentalists. Not the stuff of which majorities are made.

P.S. Amanda Marcotte has a brilliant post on the way to build a Southern Democratic party.

P.P.S. Where can I get one? (via View from the Left).
Posted by Arbitrista @ 7:24 AM
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