I just listened to an extended excerpt of Willard "Mitt" Romney's Republican presidential nomination bow-out speech on Friday's Democracy Now! podcast. He says he's "suspending his campaign" because,
ROMNEY: I?d make it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win. Frankly, in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror. ... And one of the things we believe in is that we cannot allow the next president of the United States to retreat in the face of evil extremism. [emphasis added]In other words, voters, vote Republican or die.
With shameless hacks like Jonah Goldberg making hay by diluting the term "fascism" to a meaningless surrogate for liberalism, I run the risk of diluting the term myself. But I don't think so. Romney incites a dangerous form of politically cynical right-wing reaction that David Neiwert calls "pseudo-fascism." Conservatives may hate the notion, but pseudo-fascism "creates the ground conditions for the real thing to break out. Which is bad news for liberals and conservatives alike."
This is a chapter out of Dick Cheney's 2004 playbook, when in the old blog I asked about what I called "protofascism":
CHENEY (September 2004): ...it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we?ll get hit again, that we?ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we?ll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we?re not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.It seems absurd today to think the Republicans could win the 2008 election on a straight appeal to fear and promise to keep us "safe" by making sure their offensive of bloodletting across the oil arc of South Asia continues for at least 100 years. But it worked like a charm in 2004. (see archive media below the fold)
Then-Democratic-veep-candidate John Edwards happened to be on a campaign stop in Orono, Maine the day after Cheney made those statements. The video seems to be missing from the deepblade.net server in the original post HERE, but I managed to dig it up in order to re-post:
At 2004 campaign rally in Orono, Maine; The Owl can be heard uttering the "f-word" in the background
I thought Edwards had a pretty good political answer for Cheney that day:
John Edwards (September 2004): George Bush and Dick Cheney [said] to the American people [that] if America is hit by another terrorist attack, it's the fault of the American people. This statement was calculated to divide us about an issue of the safety and security of the American people? it's un-American, is what it is?. George Bush came into office saying he was going to unite this country, not divide it ?- saying he was going to restore honor and dignity to the White House. So he was asked today by a reporter about what Dick Cheney had said. His response was to stare back at the reporter and say nothing.I thought he turned that around nicely as he pulled people back from losing their voting right to fear. But what do I know? Kerry/Edwards failed to repeat that message much. Pretty soon, they were cowing behind Kerry's promises to kill and kill and kill and kill "terrorists."
Wow, that September-October 2004 stuff has just really popped into mind this week with Mitten's message. It wasn't pretty then and it won't be pretty in the fall of 2008. The Democrats better come up with a stronger answer to Republican militarism.
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