Blue Notes from a Red Zone

Government by the RNC?

The latest scandal to break over the White House involves the use of Republican National Committee network servers in order to conduct official business. The scandal, as outlined by Senator Leahy, is that the White House was attempting to get around presidential records acts by using networks that automatically destroyed e-mails over 30 days old. Given the White House obsession with secrecy, I'm sure this was the primary motivation.

A secondary concern has been built around the dissemination of information with potential national security implications through a network that required no security background checks or other precautions.

These considerations are valid concerns, and lay at the conscious decision to move away from White House networks to Republican National Committe networks. But they don't bother me nearly as much as the fact that it is instinctive for the White House to view the RNC as part of the government. Of course they would use RNC servers. They use the RNC for virtually every bit of government business.

John Bolton famously, and stupidly, went on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart in order to tell us that the President's responsibility is to represent only those who voted for him; otherwise, why have an election?

Oddly enough, I thought the point of an election was to vote for a leader to represent the entire country. But George W. Bush is intractable in his view that he governs for his base, and the rest of us are of little concern.

Bush and his cronies have one guiding principle: to advance the interests of the RNC, if not politically, then economically, but hopefully both. The war in Iraq has been a phenomenal success for the Republicans economically, so Bush lives with the destructon of Iraq and young American lives without much care or concern.

In the same way, Bush views the entire executive branch as an extension of the Republican party, so it seems completely logical and natural to utilize the Justice Department to wage partisan witchhunts against Democrats and ignore Republican bribes, crimes and utter corruption. Rather than prosecute a Duke Cunningham, Carol Lam should been have investigating voter fraud. After all, the Republicans have made the prosecution of voter fraud a top priority, so as to give rationale to the Republican Party claim that voter identification cards are required to ensure democracy (as opposed to the real reason, which is that voter ID cards are required to suppress the Democratic vote). After a while, it became apparent to at least 8 prosecutors that this priority was skewed. After six years of being on the top burner, prosecutors had uncovered only 86 cases of voter fraud, mostly based on confusion as to how to fill out a form. The complete total of actual documented intentional fraud amounted to about 2-3 votes per national election - not quite enough to fix the outcome.

By making the RNC the fourth arm of government, we have completely tossed out the preamble to the Constitution. It still remains in theory, proclaiming government to be for the people, by the people, of the people. As currently practiced, it is now government for a small select group within the triumphant party; by and of the select group.

We need our government back. There isn't a Republican candidate on the horizon willing to do this. So, let's get behind a Democratic candidate and bring the
Constitution back home. And get the Republican National Committee servers out of the White House.

posted by Lenore Wilson @ 10:52 PM