Following The Lone Star

An interesting little exchange of emails with someone in the 22nd Congressional District of Texas, to which this blog has referred due to the victory in the Democratic primary there of Kesha Rogers, a supporter of Lyndon LaRouche. It turns out that one of the candidates whom she beat was Minister Freddie John Wieder, Jr. He is a well-known local pro-life activist and a supporter of Ron Paul, and he polled respectably enough considering that he received practically no coverage, a fact which cannot be attributed solely to the unlikelihood of any Democrat's winning TX-22 these days.

Democrats there are Democrats indeed. Hardcore Democrats like the Kennsington & Chelsea Constituency Labour Party or the North West Durham Conservative & Unionist Association, both of which exist and neither of which runs any risk of being mistaken for the other side. The Democrats of TX-22 have nominated Rogers, and more of them than might have been expected have voted to nominate Wieder.

So the challenge to the Democratic Party is clear. It needs to become once again the party of those who would end the bailouts, restore Glass-Steagall, bring home the troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, eschew future such adventures, invest in key infrastructure (not least including nuclear power), uphold the traditional definition of marriage, really fight against drugs, introduce single-payer healthcare, resist climate change hysteria, and defend both classical education and working and middle-class access to it. The party that would indeed have impeached Dick Cheney, even if not quite for the reasons given by LaRouche. If the mainstream party will not do this, then the LaRouche Movement, which considering that Rogers is in her early thirties shows every sign of outliving the man himself, will do it.

And the Democratic Party needs to reach out to those who would otherwise be attracted to Ron Paul and to his opposition to bailouts, to wars, and to the erosion of constitutional checks and balances. It needs to adopt the full Bob Conley position (what a pity that he is not putting up against the absurd Joe Wilson after all) on protecting blue-collar jobs against exportation to Third World sweatshops, on protecting blue-collar jobs against the importation of Third World sweatshops, on English as America's national language, on war, on abortion, and on the nature of marriage. If the Democratic Party will not do this, and even if the Republican Party will not do this, then the Tea Party people, who have not a morally or socially conservative bone in their bodies but who know where the votes are, and the Religious Right, who seem to regard the pro-life cause as fundamentally eschatological, will do it.

Meanwhile, none of LaRouche's views on anything is any less sane than belief in "al-Qaeda", or in "the global terrorist network", or in "Taliban" distinct from the Pashtun as a whole, or in any connection between Afghanistan and 9/11, or in any connection between Iraq and 9/11, or in WMD in Iraq, or in such WMD as a threat to America or Britain even if they had existed, or in an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, or in such a programme's threat to America or Britain even if it existed. Doolally. Stark, staring mad. In fact, LaRouche's theory of a nefarious global Anglophile network is also held by neoconservatives. And there is more than a touch of New Labour about him, with his hysterical hatred of Britain and his incessant abuse of the Queen. Just for a start, examine, when I can be bothered to put them up, the effusions of "Break Dancing Jesus" of this parish. Doolally. Stark, staring mad.