Bush and Cheney: The Republican Party Dumps Lincoln and Nixon - Becomes A Closely Held Family Corporation

Every other year is an off-year in the federal election calendar. But on Election Day, 1975, Gerald Ford, the first president in United States history to be directly appointed by Congress without the interference of the voters, reshuffled his cabinet and White House Staff.

Dick Cheney, the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, was nominated to be President Ford's Chief of Staff. General Brent Scowcroft was nominated to be head of the National Security Council when Henry Kissinger became Secretary of State. And George H. W. Bush, father of this year's Republican presidential nominee, was nominated to become Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Cheney, Scowcroft and Vice-President Bush would all reappear in prominent roles during the Iran-Contra scandal during Ronald Reagan's second term. But more significantly, these Ford partisans in the Republican party were significantly responsible for forcing President Nixon from office and contributing to the pattern of politically motivated presidential impeachments and threats of impeachment which culminated in President Clinton's impeachment in 1998.

Throughout American history, the U.S. House of Representatives has tried to choose the president, in direct contradiction of the constitutional intent of having the president chosen by the states. This unconstitutional choice mechanism has been institutionalized in campaign finance reform, where the House, which appropriates the funds, pays for the presidential campaigns of the major party candidates. Why McCain's campaign finance reform proposals were anathema to the authoritarians who don't trust the voters to choose the president. Now that Bush is the Republican nominee, comparisons are being made with the only other son of a president to become president, John Quincy Adams. John Quincy Adams was also chosen by the House of Representatives. Adams received only one-third of the vote in the 1824 election to Andrew Jackson's 40%. But Jackson didn't get a majority in the electoral college. So Henry Clay, the third major candidate, threw his support to Adams in exchange for becoming Secretary of State, considered at the time to be a stepping stone to the White House. Instead, Andrew Jackson was elected president in 1828 with just under 56% of the vote, which was the biggest popular vote margin in history until Theodore Roosevelt's election in 1904.

It's clear that by joining the cabal that urged Nixon to leave office, the elder Bush and Cheney are not faithful to the will of the voters. They know better. George W. is cut from the same piece of cloth. Nixon, one of only 7 Republicans to be elected president twice, and one of less than half a dozen presidents to receive electoral votes in more than two elections, has not been mentioned at the 2000 Republican national convention. George W. Bush says his priorities are faith, family, and country. That does not hold out much hope for democracy or the voters, not to mention separation of church and state.

The Bush Family, and the Houston oil constituency that President Bush represented in the House of Representatives, is America's link to national interests in Iran, specifically the Shah of Iran. Not surprisingly, Dick Cheney was Chairman of Halliburton, an oil exploration company, when he was selected as Bush's Vice-Presidential running mate. In 1953, the United States supported the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government and the installation of a hereditary ruler in its stead. At that time, President Bush was a "businessman" in the oil industry. More likely, Bush was a cut-out for the CIA. Who would be more reliable than the son of a Senator. (Prescott Bush, the father of President George Bush, and grandfather of George W. Bush, was a United States Senator from Connecticut from 1953 to 1963.) It is more than likely that President Bush was America's Yuri Andropov, the intelligence aparatchik who rose to the top of the heap.

Desert Storm was the liberation of Kuwait from Iraq, but it was also the restoration of hereditary rulers to their assets. In the 1950's and '60's, when Israel was the target of an Arab boycott, Iran surreptitiously supplied Israel's oil. So, it may not be entirely a coincidence that the Israeli-Palestinian peace summit collapsed on the day Dick Cheney was announced as George W. Bushes Vice-Presidential nominee. Nixon was alleged to have offered South Vietnamese President Thieu a better deal if he won, prompting Thieu to obstruct the Paris Peace talks in advance of the 1968 presidential election.



So, is it any surprise, that after riding into the White House on the coat-tails Ronald Reagan, one of the most successful democratic politicians in the history of America, with the help of an overtly racist Willy Horton advertisement, George H. W. Bush would use his power and influence to turn the Republican Party into an instrument of personal power by steamrollering his son into the presidential nomination? Former President Bushes two sons are governors of two of the biggest states in the union, Florida and Texas. What exactly have the Bush children done in the past to deserve election to these high offices?

In order to subvert the Republican Party into an instrument of personal and family power,

George W. Bush, the Republican nominee, had to win the South Carolina Primary by giving a speech at Bob Jones University, a school which banned interracial dating.

The Republican Party was founded in Philadelphia in 1856 on the principle of abolishing slavery. Until the New Deal reforms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the mid 1930's, most African-Americans were Republicans. Over the past 65 years, the social activism of the Democrats in contrast to the laisser-faire social philosophy of the Republicans brough most African-Americans over to the Democrats.

Now, it is fitting that the Republicans should reassemble in Philadelphia to purge the party of Lincoln's influence by nominating the second member of a family which distances itself from African-American progress and abortion rights, not out of personal conviction, but for purely political expediency. If Bush wins the November election, it will be the death of the Republican Party.

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Contact: Joshua Leinsdorf