Grand Old Party of Law and Order

Gets caught red handed breaking the law

As far back as I can recall, Republicans have branded their party as “anti-communist” and a party “for law and order.” This was President Richard M. Nixon’s first “dirty trick” when he ran against Congressman Jerry Voorhees in 1947. Nixon won that race by inferring that his opponent had been ineffective as a representative and suggested that a Voorhees’s endorsement by a group linked to Communists meant that Voorhees himself had “radical views.” Nixon later sat on the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee, HUAC, which promoted the “Red Scare” and went on a “witch hunt” for commies in every level of our nation. He later became the U.S. Senator from California. This of course was the beginning of the post-World War II, Cold War era. Nixon subsequently became Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower and later ran for president three times, losing the first one to John F. Kennedy in 1960. None of this somewhat ancient history would matter except that Nixon ran on the old “law and order/anti-communism” platform, the same as Donald Trump did in 2020. Nixon got elected the first time by violating the federal law known as the Logan Act to stop President Lyndon B. Johnson from ending the Vietnam War with a peace treaty before the 1968 elections. The Logan Act is the 1799 United States federal law that criminalizes negotiations by unauthorized American citizens with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States. The intent behind the Act is to prevent unauthorized negotiations from undermining the government’s position.

In 1973, Spiro T. Agnew, Nixon’s vice president was investigated by the United States attorney for the District of Maryland on suspicion of criminal conspiracy, bribery, extortion and tax fraud. Agnew took kickbacks from contractors during his time as Baltimore County executive and governor of Maryland. This had nothing to do with the Watergate scandal, in which he was not implicated. After months of maintaining his innocence, Agnew pleaded no contest to a single felony charge of tax evasion and resigned from office. Most of Nixon’s diehard supporters will point to his creating the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Water Act and his opening up trade with China before admitting to his high crime of the Watergate scandal that nearly got him impeached. He resigned instead and was pardoned by his successor Gerald Ford.

Along the way he instituted the War on Drugs and allowed for J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI political suppression program to continue unabated. Both of these programs broke fundamental laws in the name of keeping America safe from “radicals and communists” while violating people’s civil rights. Some of these issues of injustice are only now being reconsidered and reversed. Read more of this in our article this issue on Judas and the Black Messiah. So much for being the party of law and order.

But don’t stop there, another of the “Great” GOP leaders President (and former California Gov.] Ronald Reagan came to power during the Iranian hostage crisis. And how exactly did that crisis end you might well ask? By Reagan sending an envoy before he was elected to negotiate with the Iranians not to release the hostages before he got elected! This became known as the October Surprise in an article by Bob Woodward and Walter Pincus in the Nov. 29, 1986 edition of the Washington Post that said U.S. officials tied to Reagan, well before the Iran Contra affair, considered an initiative to sell U.S.-made military parts to Iran in exchange for the hostages held there. A clear violation of the Logan Act.

By extension, what became known later was that without the consent of Congress the Reagan administration sold anti-tank missiles through a third party to Iran breaking the arms embargo and transferring the proceeds to purchase weapons for the Contras who were attempting to overthrow the elected leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Some of those weapons ended up on the streets of South Los Angeles in the 1980’s as protection for the cocaine trade that fueled money back to the Contra effort and gave rise to gang warfare in LA. Journalist Gary Webb in his 1998 book, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, exposed these crimes.

In March 1987, Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (DTx) introduced articles of impeachment against President Reagan, leading to the joint hearings that dominated the summer. A long line of Reagan’s administration were indicted, including Col. Oliver North, some convicted but later pardoned by his successor and former vice president George Bush Sr., the 41st president.

Republicans will always refer to President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary when arguing about corruption in government. Indeed, Bill Clinton was impeached but not convicted for lying under oath about getting a blowjob from a White House intern. Hardly a high crime.

However, this pales in comparison to what we all just witnessed on Jan. 6 with President Dondent ald J. Trump inspired an insurrection to invade the U.S. Capitol building, disrupting the certification of votes for the peaceful transfer of power. His “stop the steal” campaign appears now to be more about Republicans attempting to steal the election by whatever means necessary and Trump breaking multiple state and federal laws along the way. This was the cause for his impeachment and justifiably so. All of this while he campaigned over the last year that he is the most “law and order president ever” and that once again the “Democrats are all socialists.”

Now I don’t know about you, but all of this law and order, anti-communist rhetoric is wearing mighty thin at this point. And clearly, the Grand Ol’ Party of Lincoln has a very loose grasp of American laws and even less of an understanding of history since they still seem to be fighting the Cold War against enemies who long ago exchanged their communist ideology for capitalist economics. China, after Nixon opened trade relations, may still call itself communist, but it is now beating us at our own game while violating the human rights of its own citizens. As for Russia, it has become one of the most corrupt totalitarian nations and still an adversarial threat to our national security.

There have been at least four Republican presidents who should have been impeached and convicted, then removed from office. Yet, here we are again with a guy who clearly is a criminal that the “law and order” GOP can’t convict or remove. This makes me question what exactly conservatives actually mean by the very term they so often speak but then ignore.