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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive. Editorial 02/16/01 note: for links to information resources on the new Bush era, go to NewsBoom THE TWO HORSEMEN The Republican Party has two wings; one greedy, the other pious. Sometimes they work together and the party soars like an eagle--taking control of Congress, shifting the nation's agenda to the right, winning the White House despite getting fewer votes than Al Gore. Other times, they flap like a wounded turkey--the witch hunt impeachment fiasco, the Whitewater road trip, the isolationist sniping during the air war over Serbia. It's a battle between the corporate country clubbers and the pious pulpit pounders for the soul of the party. So far, Dubya is doing a masterful job of keeping them together. But if a match made in heaven like Jennifer Lopez and Puffy Combs can fall apart, a trial seperation between the 19th hole and Sunday school may not be far behind. After all, these are two groups of people divided by class, issues, and philosophy. The greedy wing is populated with Vince McMahon MBA's--if it sells, it's good. Profit and gain make the world go around. The pious wing is fueled by culture wars, gay rights, and abortion. Bill Gates is a corporate Republican, Bill Bennett a cultural one. A card-carrying greedy Republican wouldn't invite one of the pious to his country club. A dyed-in-the-wool pious Republican wouldn't invite a member of the greed wing to his church. Dubya is a little of both. The Prescotts and Walkers and Bushes are Connecticut Episcopalian Yale men. That's where Dubya was born and went to school, but he became an authentic Texan soon enough, trading Episcopalianism for Methodism and tea sandwiches for chicken-fried steak. Texas is home to both--oil barons who never saw a wildlife refuge they didn't want to drill inside, and church-goers who think the sweet by-and-by will be packed with heterosexual Protestant white people. So far, he's been able to walk the line between them. Take two of his cabinet appointees. John Ashcroft's resume has been done to death: culture warrior, teatotaler, non-dancer, homophobe. Ashcroft, like the rest of the pious, sees the world as a corrupt and dangerous place where good does daily battle with evil. If homosexuality is evil, then you try to deny James Hormel an ambassadorship because he's gay. If abortion is evil, then you eliminate funding for anyone who counsels abortion from the budget. If Bill Clinton's behavior is evil, then you become the first senator to demand his resignation. If compromise on your core beliefs is evil, then you give interviews rejecting 'those who counsel compromise" in favor of a more in-your-face strategy. In his world view, everything has a moral weight, and each decision is made on the basis of whether it helps good triumph. The problem, of course, is that true believers always define good and evil to suit themselves and then claim it's based on holy injunctions. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, like the rest of the corporate wing of the party, isn't troubled by philosophy. His prayerbook is a spreadsheet. He came to Treasury from Alcoa, and how the ran the old-line metalbender provides some clues about why he could never fit snugly inside one of Ashcroft's Assembly of God pews. First, O'neill threw thousands of Tennesseans and others in the South out of work when he moved many of Alcoa's plants to that strip of Mexico that borders the U.S. Six bucks an hour for the worst-paid job in an American plant became six bucks a day for the best-paid job in the Ciudad Acuna plant. In 1996, a group of nuns who own Alcoa stock brought some of the Mexican workers to a stockholder's meeting in Pittsburgh. Hearing of the plans, O'Neill chewed out a Benedictine sister by telephone, angrily demanding who she thought she was by threatening to bring Mexican workers to a shareholder's meeting. They came, and O'Neill called one of the workers a liar when he complained that a chemical spill had sent over 100 employees to the hospital, and that foremen refused to let any workers take a bathroom break if they used more than three sheets of toilet paper. O'Neill only backed down when the nuns produced newspaper clippings about the bathrooms at the plant and about the chemical spill. None of this was a matter of right and wrong to Paul O'Neill. It was simply a matter of profit and loss. To the corporate GOPr's, business is a sort of transcendent creature: it is neither good nor evil. It just is. Profit is the only measurement of good. You can see where this will lead sooner or later. Either the pious will bust into the boardroom, demdning to know about good and evil, or the greedy will enter the church, asking pointed questions about economic gain versus social policy. Either way, Dubya's honeymoon right now isn't with the Democrats. It's with the two wings of his own party. Anyone care to bet when the first divorce papers will be filed? |
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