Right Wing's Post-Katrina Goals: Prop Up Bush and Promote Extremist GOP Agenda

In his speech last night, President Bush promised the nation that New Orleans and the rest of the battered Gulf Coast will "rise again" in what he claims will be one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen. He made all sorts of proposals, including "worker recovery accounts" and an Urban Homesteading Act. He promised a nervous nation that federal auditors would keep tabs on the $200 billion or so that will be spent on this extraordinary effort. It all sounded very reassuring.

And now . . . The Rest of the Story:

The first thing you need to be aware of is that, despite his total lack of experience in Arabian Horse Show Manag . . ., I mean, post-disaster reconstruction, Karl Rove will be running Bush's show:

All you really need to know about the White House's post-Katrina strategy -- and Bush's carefully choreographed address on national television tonight -- is this little tidbit from the ninth paragraph of Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson 's story in the New York Times this morning:

"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort."

What does that tell us? Well, it tells me that the reconstruction effort will have more to do with rebuilding Bush's poll numbers than anything else. As the Washington Post noted:

Bush and Republican congressional leaders . . . are calculating that the U.S. economy can safely absorb a sharp spike in spending and budget deficits, and that the only way to regain public confidence after the stumbling early response to the disaster is to spend whatever it takes to rebuild the region and help Katrina's victims get back on their feet.

Josh Marshall's translation: "What's driving this budgetary push is not a natural disaster but a political crisis, the president's political crisis. The White House is trying to undo self-inflicted political damage on the national dime."

Of course, there's a lot more at stake than merely improving the image of a wildly unpopular lame-duck president. Right Wing economic and social policies are in just as much political danger as Bush is, so radical conservatives have apparently decided that the best defense is a strong offense:

In the past week, the Bush administration has suspended some union-friendly rules that require federal contractors pay prevailing wages, moved to ease tariffs on Canadian lumber, and allowed more foreign sugar imports to calm rising sugar prices. Just yesterday, it waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region.

Now, Republicans are working on legislation that would limit victims' right to sue, offer vouchers for displaced school children, lift some environment restrictions on new refineries and create tax-advantaged enterprise zones to maximize private-sector participation in recovery and reconstruction. Yesterday, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would offer sweeping protection against lawsuits to any person or organization that helps Katrina victims without compensation.

In other words, this is the stuff that radical right wingers like Grover Norquist dream about most every night.

This whole thing kind of reminds me of the time when the NRA went ahead with its annual meeting in Denver a mere 10 days after the Columbine Massacre rocked the nearby town of Littleton. One would naturally assume that Katrina would have dealt a crippling blow to the GOP propaganda machine and would ultimately allow more moderate, common-sensical thinking to come to the front. But I think Katrina may turn out to be the gift from God that radical right-wing extremists have been praying for.

Notwithstanding Tom DeLay's recent statement that further cuts in the federal budget are no longer possible, it seems clear to me that the "more extreme Republicans" referred to in this 2003 Financial Times piece are going to use Katrina as an excuse to further weaken the federal government: As the FT article noted (after pointing out that "the lunatics are in now charge of the asylum"): "Proposing to slash federal spending, particularly on social programmes, is a tricky electoral proposition, but a fiscal crisis offers the tantalising prospect of forcing such cuts through the back door."

I think that is where we are headed, so long as the lunatics do indeed continue to run the asylum.