December 30, 2009

Not A Dime's Worth of Difference

by Jim Cullison

There was a lot wrong with Alabama governor George C. Wallace, but he hit upon an infuriating and depressing truth when he famously declared that there wasn't "a dime's worth of difference," between the two major political parties in this country. Any reasonably objective observer of the GOP and the Democrats would be forced to conclude that it is largely rhetoric and symbolism that distinguishes the two parties from one another. When in power, they're operationally identical. Wallace uttered his immortal analysis over four decades ago, and subsequent administrations have merely reinforced the powerful truth of his words.

Take health care, for openers. At the moment, the G.O.P. is uniformly and righteously opposed to the indigestible Democratic mess winding its way through the bowels of Congress. Congressional Republicans decry the various forms of chicanery and vote-renting deployed by the Dems to propel their unworkable and unaffordable health care utopianism to the Oval Office desk where Obamanon's pen awaits. The Grand Old Party is rightfully vehement in its castigation of this legislative abomination.

Yet they are also bloody hypocrites. They choose to forget that they played the EXACT same legislative games in order to inflict a similar fiscal ruin on The Republic back in 2003, with the prescription drug bill. When THEY controlled the White House AND both houses of Congress, they blasted long-term holes in the nation's balance sheet with legislation that they knew was fiscally catastrophic and philosophically anathema, all so they could peel off the votes of the elderly in 2004. Their professions of limited government and budgetary prudence were fully exposed as pure rhetoric. Six years later, they stand bereft of moral credibility or philosophical credibility when they deplore Democratic health care bills done in the name of Obamanon.

Further proof of the overall pointlessness of devout partisan affiliation can be found in the field of foreign affairs. Democrats lambasted Dubya and the GOP tribe for eight years, rightfully assailing his senseless war in Mess-o-potamia and his romantic desire to export democracy to benighted corners of Central Asia. Yet no sooner do they retake the reins of power on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, then they double down on a debacle in the Graveyard of Empires, pouring tens of thousands of troops into the historically proven futility of nation-building. Evidently both parties are allergic to the common sense policy of non-interventionism, relentlessly choosing to ignore the mountains of evidence demonstrating the wisdom of non-interventionism (namely, mountains of American bodybags) in favor of utopian nation-building adventurism.

The voter who stoutly prefers fiscal and military restraint is without a plausible partisan alternative. The option put forth by George Wallace some forty-one years ago was manifestly unappealing. However, a third party is sorely needed, a political party based on caution, common sense, and a sense of limits.

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