The most recent GOP presidential debate,
held in Dearborn, Michigan, this time, was mostly a very dull affair. Hardly
any of the usual entertaining histrionics: even the naturally theatrical
Rudy seemed unusually subdued. As the soft buzz of the television blended in
with the sound of the bus going by and the barking of neighborhood
dogs, I was lulled into a comfortable haze, and nearly drifted off to sleep
– when suddenly Chris Matthews’ voice cut through the mental murk, like a headlight
cutting through the thick San Francisco fog rolling down my street:

“Governor Romney, that raises the question, if you were president of
the United States, would you need to go to Congress to get authorization to
take military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities?”

The way the Stepford candidate phrased his
answer – “You sit down with your attorneys” – was the biggest
misstep of his campaign, so
far. Whoever programmed him neglected to put the
Constitution in his database, as Ron
Paul rightly reminded
the audience. Yet I’m getting a little tired of people saying “it
will come back to haunt him.” It’s really not a fair criticism, if
you go and read the
transcript. What he was saying is that he hopes it doesn’t come to that,
in the case of Iran, and that the US should exhaust every effort to resolve
the alleged
“crisis” diplomatically. He clearly hopes to prevail by taking punitive
measures short of war.

On the question of presidential power, however, Romney simply refused to answer,
and started yammering
about his lawyers again.

Obliquely noting Romney’s sleek evasion, Matthews repeated his question to
Duncan Hunter, who I guess
must be running for Secretary of Defense, because of the air of expertise with
which he explained that it all depended on whether we are dealing with a “fleeting
target.” This faux version of military-speak refers, I suppose, to some
“24“-like
scenario in which the Evil
Iranians have somehow gotten their hands on a super-weapon capable of obliterating
American cities at the push of a button. What kind of a “fleeting target”
is an alleged nuclear site in Iran? What, I wondered, is that old fool talking
about?

Ron Paul made a mistake
in responding to the question purely reactively. Why criticize Hunter, whose
candidacy is a joke? Paul let himself get drawn into Hunter’s Hollywood-generated
fantasy, at least momentarily, and only got back on track when he described
all this talk of an Iranian “threat” as war
propaganda.

In striking contrast to Paul, however, the most shocking answer of all was
given by none other than the mild-mannered, outwardly likeable Mike
Huckabee. The Arkansas governor’s public persona is that of a small-town
mayor chock full of down-home American wisdom straight from the heartland, measured
and never shrill. Yet the friendly farmer down the road evaporated before our
eyes, and something awful and Cheney-like
appeared in his place, when Matthews directed his question at Huckabee:

“Governor Huckabee, same question. Do you need Congress to approve
such an action?

“HUCKABEE: And I would do it in a heartbeat.”

“In a heartbeat” – there goes the Constitution!

One could plausibly argue, as Garet Garrett did,
that Congress surrendered its constitutional prerogative long ago. Even after
Japan attacked Pearl
Harbor, FDR, that most
imperious of Presidents, would not have dared go to war without a
vote of the people’s representatives. Yet, “nine years later,”
as Garrett pointed out, “a much weaker President did.” That was Truman,
who sent US troops to Korea without
congressional approval, and, in defense of his action, claimed that the war-making
power invested in Congress by the Founders was “obsolescent.” The
President and his partisans argued that we had to be able to react to the Soviet
threat at a moment’s
notice: it was an early version of the Jack Bauer scenario, albeit even less
plausible. Yet Congress swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, and, under the
tutelage of a Democratic administration, American conservatives, once opposed
to the imperial presidency, were seduced
by the cold war. Later, the “war on terrorism” allowed them to be
talked into surrendering
the last remnants of their historic devotion to the Constitution. Which is how
we arrived at the sad spectacle of some backwoods governor proclaiming his willingness
to ditch it “in a heartbeat.”

Taken somewhat aback, I think, by Huckabee’s unseemly eagerness to discard
the whole idea of the consent of the governed without even so much as a by-your-leave,
Matthews asked: “Without going to Congress?” Huckabee answered by
withdrawing into the safety of Hunter’s “fleeting target” Hollywood
fantasy, asserting his duty to strike first and ask Congress later, “because
it’s actionable right now.” Matthews, however, clearly impatient with all
these elaborate evasions, took it to the next level:

“MATTHEWS: If Congress says no, what do you do, Governor?

“HUCKABEE: You do what’s best for the American people and you suffer the
consequences….”

One dearly hopes one of those consequences will be the impeachment of President
Huckabee.

Even worse than the brazenness of such a power grab, however, is the Governor’s
demagogic rationale for it:

“But what you don’t do is what you never do, is let the American people
one day get hit with a nuclear device because you had politics going on in Washington,
instead of the protection of the American people first.”

Do we really face the prospect of having to choose between democratic governance
and survival? This contention, aside from seeming a bit overwrought, is not
based on any conceivable scenario, nor is it remotely concerned with Matthews’
original question, which posed the prospect of an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
We are not talking about Hunter’s “fleeting target” here, but about
a long-term
program by Iran to acquire a nuclear capability, the progress of which is being
closely
watched by the international community, and minutely
monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Furthermore, it is
absolute nonsense to believe that, even if Iran does go nuclear in the next
ten
years or so, it will be able to launch a nuclear attack on the continental
US. We haven’t heard anything less credible since George W. Bush asserted
– with a straight
face! – that unmanned
drones sent by Iraq could devastate American cities.

Both McCain and Thompson gave surprisingly common-sensical answers, with the
former quickly disposing of the Jack Bauer scenario and going on to say that,
in the case of the more likely course of events – “a long series of build-ups,
where the threat becomes greater and greater” – of course he’d consult
with Congress. Thompson concurred with McCain, but Benito Giuliani took the
Huckabee line, and then some.

After declaring that it would have to be an “exigent circumstance,”
he illustrated what such a circumstance might be by going after Ron Paul,

“And the point of – I think it was Congressman Paul made before – that
we’ve never had an imminent attack, I don’t know where he was on September 11th.

“GIULIANI: And since September – well, I think it was kind of organized
in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And if we had known about it, maybe – maybe hitting
a target there, quickly, might have helped prevent it.

“In any event, we’ve had 23 plots since September 11, where Islamic
terrorists are planning to kill Americans, that we’ve had to stop. So imminent
attack is a possibility, and we should be ready for it.”

To begin with, it’s just not plausible that hitting targets in Afghanistan
– or Pakistan, where, Giuliani avers without evidence, the 9/11 plot was also
hatched – would have smashed a terrorist ring inside
the US. The plot was hatched and implemented years before the dirty deed
was done, and the hijackers had been living in the US – including in the general
vicinity of Rudy’s “sanctuary
city” for immigrants, both legal and illegal – for a good length of
time.

Secondly, twenty-three presumably thwarted terrorist attacks since 9/11? This
is big news, except for one thing:
it isn’t
true.
Nearly every case of suspected domestic “terrorism” has been bogus,
the product of an overzealous
prosecutor, or just plain trumped-up
from the get-go. The US government has even backed
down from charging Jose
Padilla, an American citizen locked up without
trial, with doing what then-Attorney General John Ashcroft said
he was guilty of, which was supposedly plotting to set off a “dirty bomb”
on American soil. Where did Giuliani get the number “23” from? Probably
the same place the Reverend Louis Farrakhan got the
number 19.

If Giuliani has information that Iran is organizing a terrorist attack on US
soil, then perhaps he ought to let us in on it: and, well, you can see how far
we’ve strayed from Matthews’ original question – about Iran, remember?

As I’ve pointed out before,
Giuliani’s foreign
policy team is focused like a laser on the goal of attacking Iran, and they
make no bones about it. Norman
Podhoretz, one of Giuliani’s top
foreign policy lieutenants, “prays”
that Bush will launch the hit before Giuliani is sworn
in. If Poddy’s prayers go unanswered, however, then there can be little
doubt Rudy
the Reckless will make his dream of war come true.

What killed the Republican party’s long-lost
love of liberty, it’s realism and prudence in the field of foreign affairs –
think of Robert A Taft,
or, better yet, Rep.
Howard Buffett (yes, father to that other Howard Buffett) – is the
cancer
of militarism, and the baneful influence
of the very military-industrial
complex President Dwight Eisenhower warned
us against. To hear Huckabee’s contempt – there is no other word for it
– for the constitutional order, and his apparent indifference to the war-weariness
of the American people, was shocking: this guy, after all, is supposed to be
a moderate, of sorts, and yet here he is up-ending every law and tradition
designed to limit
the abuse of power.

From the perspective of those
concerned with preserving what’s left of our old republic, as well as preventing
the next war, the team of Giuliani-Huckabee is the worst of all possible eventualities.
Yet that is what we may very well get from the GOP. It seems clear enough, to
me at least, that the Arkansas governor is running for Vice President – an office
that has acquired
more visibility than it used to – and if Giuliani has yet to give much thought
to a running mate, as of Wednesday night he may have recognized in Huckabee
a compatible spirit.

A Giuliani-Huckabee ticket would embody the complete prostration of the old
conservatism, with its emphasis on the constitutional separation of powers,
before the war-god of neoconservatism, and the new reality of what Lew
Rockwell trenchantly describes as “red-state
fascism.” Is there no one left, within the GOP, of any prominence besides
Ron Paul to stand up in defense of the former? If so, then the GOP has truly
reached the end of the road, and all its future defeats will be well-deserved.