Richard Viguerie: "It's Aliiiiive!!!"

The "Funding Father" (as he is most often known) of the modern conservative movement has become so disenfranchised with his pwesident that he now criticizes his GOP on Thomm Hartmann's wonderful Air America program. It reminds me of when "Fog of War" came out, and how it stank of an old man (Robert McNamara) on his death bed trying to justify his sins, and disown those he could not justify. Viguerie's creations are his responsibility, and he won't be able to distance himself from their consequences at his judgment.

Viguerie is actually the Dr. Frankenstein of our politics over the last 40 years. He has taken something that was dead and buried; buried by direct armed conflict with fascism, by the overwhelming guilt that accompanied the belated end of segregation and Jim Crowe, and by the unnecessary fear of nuclear annihilation put upon us by Democrats and Republicans, alike. That body to be resurrected was conservatism.

It was unnatural to exhume the New England protestant royalty-intelligentsia and refashion it as a champion of the poor, of the devout, of the simple working family man.

It was an abhorration to assemble the old "government off my back" libertarians with the religious oppressors in the Moral Majority leadership;
...the blue-collar worker, who hasn't the time to understand the root of his condition, with free-for-all trade econo-fascists at Chicago U;
...the anti-tax libertarians with the military industrial complex and its think tanks;
...the Mexican-hating Southwestern candidate with the checkbooks of executives whose bonuses are dependent upon exploitable immigrant labor;
...the "We're always #1" nationalists with the "Our government is incompetent" free-marketeers;
...the outdoors-loving followers of the gun lobby with the anti-environmentalists who wish to leave no cache unmined, no deer unextinct, no wood uncut;
...and most of all, the proud veterans, servicemen and women, and their families with those cowboy candidates whose dismissive rhetoric and hard hearts sounded flat-out disrespectful.

Of course, it was doomed to fail, just as Frankenstein's monster would never assimilate and be able to function of its own free will. This is because neither has a free will, no purpose common to its parts, other than to be. For the GOP, that was to be in power. Once it had completely achieved that in the Spring of 2005, its independent parts attempted to do their independent things, and could no longer work for the whole. The brain, left over from the 1950's and probably cloned from Prescott himself, could only sense and think in horror as its legs, back, feet, mouth, and eyes did things of their own free will, angry at each other over their lack of cooperation, and frightened the villagers.

We'll go ahead and stop with the allegory, I think. It seems like enough to have gotten the point across, but I reserve the right to go back if necessary, or funny.

Viguerie's sins are those of uniting the incompatable. Fear and arrogance, hate and pride, wealth and poverty, constraints and boundlessness, faith and pessimism, were functional together insomuch as none of them were in a position to expect treatment all at once. As soon as they were, they tore eachother apart.

Did Viguerie understand what he was doing, or was he the first true-believer, as W is a believer, in the common purpose of this unrealistic "assemblage"? Or, did he know he was simply empowering a beast of parts to serve the purposes of the rich? The answer is irrelevant.

Just as McNamara may have actually believed the domino theory, and that we could win in Viet Nam, an educated man should have seen that he was simply feeding the military industrial complex and the anti-communist sentiment that would keep it full for the coming decades... Viguerie is smart enough to know that these parts of his neocon alliance are competing more than they are complimentary, and this alliance could only fail when it had completely succeeded. Judgment of him will probably be the same, regardless of his intentions or level of consciousness.

Despite his irritability at the GOP and its current condition, Viguerie is not for impeachment. But I'd bet he would forever banish Bush and Cheney to the Seventh Circle of Republican Hell. Their damning offense: overreaching and blowing the GOP's cover. For those of you who haven't visited, it's a good show. It's inhabitants include Joe McCarthy, Henry Kissinger, whose soul was recently found to have been there since 1967 (he's been working on conract for Luke, his endearing name for his buddy Satan, since then), and Calvin Coolidge. It's run by Huey Long, who tortures them all for fun, and in true Huey Long fashion, taxes them for the honor of being his subjects. What could be more painful for a Republican?

Viguerie believes that blaming the beast, for being the beast, will absolve him of his sin of unnatural creation. In the end, he can hope only for Purgatory, and only if he takes the very life he gave from the beast. To ignore the criminality of his creation is to plead "not guilty" to the crime of creating it, and his sentence must certainly be more harsh for his lack of contrition.