The Great Con

Naming the present era of Republican corruption

Since the end of the Civil War, abuses of power by highly placed Republicans have deeply gouged the face of American history. Our democratic republic has survived these encounters by the skin of its teeth. National Democrats are hardly free of sin, but they usually stray as lone-wolf miscreants. Republicans are customarily organizational and familial about their excesses, which is why the scale and wreckage of their collective transgressions are far more damaging to the Union. So egregious are these escapades that they come widely to be known by shorthand labels -- the Whiskey Ring, part of the rampant corruption and fiscal misfeasance of the Grant administration -- Teapot Dome,McCarthyism, Watergate, Iran-Contra. The list also includes such blatant offenses to the Constitution and the law as the attempted overthrow of President Clinton by members of the Federalist Society and other participating members of the far right in the cooked-up scandals of what Hillary Clinton labeled "the vast right-wing conspiracy."