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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: 9/24/99
It used to be the anti-American radical fringe was on the left. Embracing that fringe almost destroyed the Democratic party. Now the loonies are on the right, and the Republicans face the same dilemma the Democrats did thirty years ago. The Democrats went down in flames in the George McGovern era because the majority of Americans were gagging on the excesses of the left. Note to the Republican National Committee--does anybody here read history? Columnist Kevin Phillips calls them the wingnuts, a nice shorthand for right-wing and nuts. Some of them are relatively benign, albiet off-center. Poeple who think creation science is not an oxymoron, for example. But then, you have the militia-types, the white seperatists, the conspiracy freaks, the ones who see black U.N. helicopters like other people see Elvis at the mall. This is the anti-American wing, the ones who think the country is an evil empire, that it's corrupt, that it deserves to fall. These people may be loyal to the Republicans simply because they have nowhere else to go. And they're just like the anti-American left-wing radicals who were more-or-less loyal to the Democrats thirty years ago. They spouted all sorts of evil empire rhetoric and had nowhere else to go. And the Democrats tolerated their flag-burning, left-wing excesses. Now it's the right-wingers who urge taking up arms against the evil American system. It's the fringe right that bombs buildings, not the fringe left. And now comes Pat Buchanan. Buying into the evil empire blather, Buchanan's new book---subtitled Empire or Republic?---says the United States should retreat snugly inside its own borders. But Buchanan goes further. He says Hitler never posed a real threat to the United States, and that America had no business getting into World War II. At first, Arizona Senator John McCain told me, on Monday, that Buchanan still had a place in the Republican party. But within 48 hours, McCain had read Buchanan's book, and said he should be drummed out of the G.O.P. A conversation with columnist George Will on Friday produced the same result--Buchanan, in the parlance of Will's favorite sport, should be tossed out of the game by the umpires, in this case the Republican Party. Buchanan may leave anyway. But the point is simple. If the rest of the G.O.P. doesn't denounce the extremists who're getting too close to fascism for comfort, they could end up in the same place the Democrats found themselves three decades ago. It brings to mind a story about crusty old Sam Gibbons, a Democratic congressman from north Florida, since defeated. Gibbons had been a paratrooper on D-Day, and had parachuted behind German lines with a can of Schlitz tucked into each jump boot, reasoning that if he was going to die, he might as well die happy. After one meeting with the G.O.P. freshman Congressional class of 1994, Gibbons stormed out, thundering , "You're the kind of people we fought World War Two against." Itwas excessive, hot-headed rhetoric like that that helped end Gibbon's political career. But the failure of the G.O.P. to get tough with it's extreme supporters is playing into the hands of Democrats who agree with Gibbons. It's why George W. Bush calls himself a compassionate conservative. Polls show he needs to use the word compassionate because most people don't think conservatives have a heart. And now George W. has told the Associated Press that he wants Buchanan to stay in the G.O.P. Yikes. George W.'s supporters may be marching in lock-step toward the White House. They don't need to be goose-stepping. |
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