The unethical unconstitutional radical so-called 'conservative' Republicans

Digby writes about the way conservative Republicans have gradually removed any hint of ethics in American elections whenever and wherever they can. Nixon was the first great example, followed by the secret deal between Republicans and the Iranian groups who held the American Embassy personnel until after the 1980 election so as to ensure the defeat of Carter.

The partisan idiocy that was the impeachment of Bill Clinton followed, but after that came the presidential election of 2000 in which Justice Scalia not only contributed the fifth vote to stop the Florida recounts, he specifically said when he did it "The Constitution does not guarantee a free vote."

I don't think any of us knew just how jarring that assault would be until the election of 2000, when an attack on the vote became quite direct. Al Gore was the winner of the popular vote and the intended winner of Florida's electoral college vote. It was close. But regardless of the Republican mantras about hanging chads and "divining the will of the voters," from the first moments of the election controversy there was no doubt that the butterfly ballot in Miami caused people to vote in error and if that hadn't happened, Al Gore would have been the clear winner in Florida. The intention of the voters was clear, even if the technical difficulties in rectifying it weren't. We know who the voters chose.

But the Republicans cared nothing for the intention of the voters and didn't even want to count the votes that might have legitimized their own man's victory. They used every mechanism and lever of power at their disposal in spite of the fact that they knew they hadn't really won. And they knew we knew they hadn't really won. That a strictly partisan 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court ratified that maneuver was perhaps one of the most shocking attacks on the spirit of American democracy yet. Supreme Court Justice Scalia even made a point of saying that there was no right to vote in the constitution, which is true. But I don't think many Americans believed before that day that a Supreme Court justice would use that fact as a way to justify installing a man in the presidency who hadn't been the people's choice. Now we know.

(See also The Dallas Examiner.)

Then followed the removal of the elected California Governor.

California followed with a GOP financed recall election of the Democratic Governor, a radical departure from the past where recalls had been understood to be used only to remove criminals from office, not truncate the term of a duly elected executive simply because the political conditions allowed you to do it. Interestingly, this sort of radical direct democracy had been endorsed by that old rock-ribbed conservative Karl Marx, when he wrote favorably about the recall provisions of the Paris Commune. One would say this was a matter of strange bedfellows, but these modern Republicans studied communism with fervor and came to admire many of its adherents' political tactics. And in any case, it was a matter of political opportunity rather than philosophy. They would just as easily argue the opposite case. Their philosophy is to take power, period.

All of this is just about elections. They govern in the same way, as laid out in Charlie Savage's new book "Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy."

As Charlie Savage points out, this administration has been centralizing power into the Presidency. It doesn't matter who holds the Presidency. The forms of power that the Bush - Cheney administration have pulled into the Executive Branch will be there for any future President to use. I don't think they every intended for Democrats to again elected and install a President, but it would be a great irony if the powers that Cheney (in particular) have pulled into the Presidency were used against the Republicans in the same ways Republicans have been using them against Democrats for the last eight years.

Irony may provide a level of justice, but I'm not sure we want to keep on living in the America the Re[publicans have been building.