Sarah Palin's Latest Crazy Move: Are Republicans a Danger to the Republic?

By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted July 6, 2009.

And the pattern of rejecting science and objective evidence continues. Recently, during a House debate about cap-and-trade legislation aimed at reducing global warming, GOP members cheered a claim that the science regarding this deepening environmental crisis was "a hoax."

Scaring the Democrats

Perhaps, the Republicans’ greatest success has been in intimidating Democrats, many of whom are scared away from charting a different course out of fear that they will be targeted by the Right's potent attack machine.

Even in the midst of a budget crisis, worsening unemployment and the harmful disparity between the rich and the rest, mainstream Democrats won’t broach the idea of restoring the top marginal tax rate of 50 percent, which prevailed during most of Reagan’s presidency, compared to the 35 percent now.

The best the Democrats can muster is to sit back and let some of Bush’s tax cuts expire next year, letting the figure rise a few percentage points but not nearly enough to address the nation’s looming budget crisis. (During the Eisenhower years, the marginal tax rate -- the percentage that the richest Americans paid on the top end of their income -- exceeded 90 percent.)

Sometimes, it seems Democrats would prefer to see Obama’s reform agenda fail -- and the United States careen toward bankruptcy -- than face the prospect of more GOP attack ads accusing them of "tax-and-spend."

Another key factor in this political dysfunction is that journalists in the mainstream media have their own career fears about being accused of "liberal bias" if they challenge right-wing canards or investigate GOP crimes.

With a few exceptions -- like MSNBC’s experimental evening lineup of liberal hosts -- the U.S. news media continues to cower before the Right’s demonstrated ability to destroy journalists who get in the way. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s "The Bush Rule of Journalism."]

The American Left has contributed to the crisis, too, by failing to invest much in building media outlets that will stand up to pressures from the Right, even as pro-Republican financiers were pouring billions of dollars into the construction of a vertically integrated right-wing media apparatus ranging from books, magazines and newspapers to talk radio, cable TV and the Internet.

This combination of factors has enabled the Republican Party to guide a large portion of the American population into a never-never-land of made-up facts and raging paranoia.

And, as Palin’s bizarre resignation statement made clear, the GOP was excited over possibly handing the reins of national power to someone who was clearly unstable and unfit for high office.

After eight years of George W. Bush and last year's nomination of Sarah Palin, the question must now be asked whether the Republican Party in its current form has become a clear and present danger to the security of the United States and to the future of the American Republic.

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Robert Parry's new book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq."

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