Back in the 2004 presidential election, I created a campaign poster of Uncle Sam threatening to blow his brains out with the caption "Vote Bush for president." Funny thing-- it turns out that I was giving Bush too much credit, and the same authoritarian streak that he has actually runs through the Republican party in general:
Various Republican candidates attended a meeting of Club for Growth, and afterwards, National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru spoke to Cato Institute's President Ed Crane about what they said. This brief report from Ponnuru is simply extraordinary:Crane asked if Romney believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review. Romney said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind.Mitt Romney can't say -- at least not until he engages in a careful and solemn debate with a team of "smart lawyers" -- whether, in the United States of America, the President has the power to imprison American citizens without any opportunity for review of any kind. But in today's Republican Party, Romney's openness to this definitively tyrannical power is the moderate position. Ponnuru goes on to note:Crane said that he had asked Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago. The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently.
No word on how McCain might have responded, but given his constant genuflection to the Bush line one has to suppose that he would have a similar answer. What I would like to see is how the Democratic candidates respond to the same question. Assuming that they have a more reasonable ("American"?) answer, the next thing I want to see is for this to be a real campaign issue. Do we want this country to continue drifting towards dictatorship and totalitarianism, or do we want to return to the America that respects individual rights, and once upon a time was the moral leader of the world? I know where I stand.
