Of Republicans and Banana-Republicans

By Scott Horton

I have spent a good bit of time in the archives over the last two weeks, reading materials from the first two decades of the Republican Party – the formative conventions, the campaign of John Charles Frémont and then the rise of Abraham Lincoln, the vigorous debate over the country’s stake in slavery and the resolve to stem it that led to civil war. It was a heady period. Much of this is played out in the pages of Harper’s magazine – for while the magazine took no formal posture and published works of Democrats and Republicans alike (including an amazing essay by Stephen A. Douglas), there is little doubt as to the partisan orientation of the publication as a whole. The spirit of the age stood with the Republicans, and so did Harper’s. And while much of the language of the period seems musty and florid, there is a vigor and strength of vision in those years which is truly inspiring. Indeed, the fact and rise of the Republican Party itself is inspiring – one of the decisive turns in the history of the American Republic, and in the end one of the great political parties to emerge in the totality of human history.

But reading all of this and then turning to the morning newspapers every day, I can’t suppress the question: how did it come to this? It’s hard to see even a trace of the party of Frémont and Lincoln in the party of Bush and Rove. Indeed, the values that Bush and Rove espouse and the constituencies to which they pander seem very much just what’s in the crosshairs for the Republicans of 1856 and 1860; a check of the electoral map in 2004 and 2006 shows the Republican constituencies of yore are, with very few exceptions, safely in the Democratic column, while Bush builds off a base starting with the old Confederacy.

Kevin Phillips, Vic Gold and Andrew Sullivan are among the writers who have attempted to explain this process, each from a different posture and each offering some important insights. But in the end this is a case of a breathtaking political hijacking. It started with Richard Nixon's “Southern Strategy” and wound up with a party dominated by figures driven by nostalgia for the antebellum South.

I believe it’s unfair to a great political party – unfair to Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight David Eisenhower – to call the current tenants at 1600 Pennsylvania “Republicans.” A new label is far more appropriate, because it describes the end state likely to emerge from their transfiguration of American political institutions, namely “Banana-Republicans.”

Without attempting a comprehensive review, here are a few of the basic points of distinction between Republicans and Banana-Republicans:

War and Peace

Republicans believe in diplomacy and mediation as means of avoiding conflicts between nations. They believe in a strong military, but they are hesitant to deploy it abroad until other options have been exhausted. When they do turn to arms, then they believe in an overwhelming commitment of armed force to achieve as rapid and comprehensive a victory as possible – with as little cost in American blood and treasure as possible. They are very conscious of the limits of arms and the value of the American ideal as a tool in conflict. They carefully and patiently build alliances founded on trust and common values, especially with sister republics. They believe that a leader in wartime must keep faith with the people, leveling with them about the hardships that must be endured to achieve an essential goal. But in the end they place their confidence in peace as an objective to be achieved and sustained. They gave birth to the modern law of armed conflict through the promulgation of the Lieber Code and provided the driving force for the Hague and Geneva Conventions.

Banana Republicans believe that engaging in diplomatic chatter is a sign of weakness, whereas unprovoked displays of military force are a sign of strength. They don’t serve in the armed forces; they believe it’s better to recruit human fodder from the lower classes for that purpose (but of course, they will exploit the deployment of troops for partisan gain, decrying the disloyalty of their opponents and accusing them of undermining the troops). They believe that alliances are an encumbrance, limiting their unilateral course of action. And they think it is amusing to ridicule and deride allies who have stood faithfully at our side for decades when the allies question the reasonableness of waging an unprovoked war on another state. They believe in bullying and threats of military force as principal tools for the accomplishment of foreign policy goals. They believe that the lie is a major tool in the leader’s arsenal, and that it can be wielded effectively to stampede the democratic process into war, to aggregate powers in the executive. They cloak their governance process in secrecy. They believe that the law of armed conflict places undesirable limitations on the way they can conduct war, and they repudiate it. Indeed, torture is a useful tool.

Fiscal Accountability

Republicans. They embrace the principles of market economics. They believe in balanced budgets and careful accounting for government expenditures. They want a carefully restrained bureaucracy and they seek to avoid encroachment of the bureaucracy into areas of private economic competition. They support the notion of federal income taxation, and want tax revenue levels that meet current government needs, to avoid mortgaging the nation’s future.

Banana Republicans. Roll up the largest deficits in the country’s history through tax give-aways directed at their key political constituencies. They balloon government spending, funneling much of it to political crony corporations on no-bid cost-plus contracts, which are unmanaged. They eliminate Congressional oversight. They disable government contract oversight. In spite of this, the Government bureaucracy itself grows at a cancerous rate.

Theory of Government

Republicans. That government governs best which governs least. The executive acts decisively when emergencies require a rapid and quick response. But the integral roles of the legislature and judiciary are respected as co-equal branches and checks on the aggrandizement of power in the executive. No man is above the law, all are accountable before it.

Banana Republicans. The president in time of war is not a co-equal, but the supreme and unchecked leader. And the president has the power to determine, unilaterally and without involvement of the other branches, when there is a time of war. The president is empowered to change any law secretly and unilaterally if he believes that it encroaches on his authorities as commander-in-chief. “If the president does it, that means it’s legal.”