Take It Back : Our Party, Our Country, Our Future

by James Carville; Paul Begala

• ISBN13: 9780743277525
• ISBN10: 074327752X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-01-10
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

By being too timid and too weak, too hesitant and too confused, Democrats have allowed Republicans to run amok. Republicans today control everything: the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the federal bureaucracy, the military, and the corporate special interests and their lobbyists. They operate powerful right-wing organizations, right-wing think tanks, and a conservative media that serves as an attack dog against Democrats. Republicans have used their absolute power to corrupt our democracy, degrade our military, weaken our health care system, diminish our stature in the world, damage our environment, reward the rich, hammer the poor, squeeze the middle class, bankrupt our Treasury, and indenture our children to foreign debt holders. In this important book, James Carville and Paul Begala show Democrats how they cantake it back.They offer a clear-eyed critique of their party's failures and make specific, concrete recommendations on how Democrats can avoid losing elections on divisive issues such as abortion, gun control, gay rights, and moral values and start winning them on health care, political reform, energy, the environment, tax reform, and more. Carville and Begala say that liberal Democrats are right that too many establishment Democrats kowtow to corporate interests and shamefully supported George W. Bush's rush to war. And moderate Democrats are right to complain that too many Democrats are out of step with middle-class values, too removed from people of faith, too enthralled with intellectual and cultural elites. But the problem with the Democrats, Carville and Begala argue, is not ideological. It's anatomical. They lack a backbone.Take It Backis a spinal transplant for Democrats and an audacious battle plan for victory.

Table of Contents

"Houston, We Have a Problem"	p. 1
Moral Values: God Is a Liberal	p. 31
National Security	p. 85
Don't Just "Clean Up" Washington; Fumigate It	p. 137
A Declaration of Energy Independence	p. 173
Work the Refs	p. 193
The Meeting	p. 235
Taxes: The Heiress Versus the Waitress	p. 247
When You've Got Your Health...	p. 271
The Flood: "Mr. Bill Was Better Informed Than Mr. Bush"	p. 283
Progressive Patriotism	p. 303
Notes	p. 311
Acknowledgments	p. 347
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Introduction Lord Acton was right. The British historian and philosopher of the late nineteenth century is most famous for his observation that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The Republicans in Washington today have absolute power. They control the White House. They control the Senate. They control the House. They control the federal bureaucracy. They control the military. They control the federal judiciary. They control the money of corporate special interests. They control powerful right-wing grassroots organizations. They control a conservative media that includes radio, television, print, and websites. They control an array of right-wing think tanks. About the only thing they can't control is their lust for power. This absolute power has corrupted the Republicans, absolutely. This tremendous concentration of power has corrupted our democracy, degraded our military, diminished our stature in the world, damaged our environment, bankrupted our Treasury, and indentured our children to foreign debt-holders. There is one reason and one reason only the Bush Republicans enjoy this unchallenged power: Democrats let them win it. By being too timid or too weak, too hesitant or too confused, Democrats have allowed Republicans to run amok. Most important, Democrats have not clearly and courageously stated what they stand for and what they stand against. It is the goal of this book to do just that. We've spent our adult lifetimes toiling in the Democratic vineyards. We love our country and we love our party and we're determined to take them back. If you're looking for a book that merely bashes the Republicans, this will disappoint. We take a backseat to no one in our contempt for what the GOP is doing to our country. And this book catalogs the damage in some detail. But more important, the purpose of this book is to look unflinchingly at what Democrats must do and say in order to take back our party, our country, and our future. To be sure, we don't have all the answers. But we've got a good start on them. Not because we're geniuses -- rather, because we're not. Too many Democrats over-think things. This is politics, not organic chemistry. Success has less to do with brains than with guts. The concepts are comparatively easy; it's the execution that's hard. Democrats have failed at the basics: defining their message, attacking their opponents, defending their leaders, inspiring their voters. When we set out to write this book, we took a hard look at what the Bush-Cheney team did right and what the Kerry-Edwards team did wrong in the 2004 campaign. The short answer is, everything. Researching and writing that chapter was painful. We had to confront the reality that, in some cases, people we've considered friends for decades made terrible strategic and tactical decisions -- and their failure has given us four more years of the Bush-Cheney policies we believe are ruining our country. Some of our friends in the progressive movement believe the answer is for Democrats to rally the base, to move more squarely to the left. They see a Democratic Party that is too close to corporate special interests, too eager to please big money, too willing to sell out working people, too quick to go along with an unwise and unjust war. On the other hand, some of our friends in the center believe the answer to the Democrats' problems is to move to the center. They see a Democratic party in thrall to Hollywood bigshots and cultural elites. They see a party too beholden to liberal pressure groups like the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, too contemptuous of people of faith, too dismissive of the middle-class values moms and dads try to pass on to their children. They are, in our view, like the proverbial blind people examining the donkey (hey, we're Democrats; we can't very well use an