GOP cheers Reagan, cutbacks and war

Scan page 2

ACTION Editor: Alan Benjamin Associate Editors: Mark Harris Michael Schreiber Managing Editor: Nancy Gruber Business Manager: George McCarrell Editorial Board: Les Evans, Dianne Jeff Mackler, Jim Richter, Nat Weinstein Staff: Paul Colvin, Larry Cooperman, Robin David, May May Gong, Millie Gonzalez, Hayden Perry, Linda Ray, Phil Ruble, Joe Ryan, Kwame M.A. Somburu, Marion Syrek, Sylvia Weinstein Socialist Action (ISSN 0747-4237) is published monthly for $6 per year by Socialist Action Publishing Association, 3435 Army St., No. 308, San Francisco, CA 94110. Second-class postage is paid at San Francisco, Calif.

POSTMASTER: Send Send address changes to Socialist Action, 3435 Army St., No. 308, San Francisco, CA 94110.

Rates: 3 issues for $1.00; 12 issues for $6.00; Canada and Mexico $12.50; $30.00 airmail for all other countries; $14.00 surface mail for all other countries.

SOCIALIST ACTION Charlton Heston delivered the Pledge of Allegiance, Wayne Newton sang the National Anthem, and the Rev. Jerry Falwell gave the benediction. Welcome to the "celebration of Ronald Reagan" known as the Republican National Convention.

Everything went according to script. Reagan's nomination was a foregone conclusion. The platform was approved without debate. The delegates cheered the U.S. invasion of Grenada. They applauded the death-squad government of El Salvador. They stamped their feet for cutbacks and prayer in public schools. They got misty-eyed at the mention of advanced weaponry. And they drooled over every banality in Reagan's acceptance speech.

This crowd was clearly chipper for the Gipper. Not surprising, considering that more than half of the delegates reported incomes over $50,000 a year. "We are older, whiter, and wealthier than the Democrats,, one party official noted.

Former Representative John Buchanan, a Republican "moderate" from Alabama, complained that "pseudo-Republicans of the radical right, those of the John Birch Society mentality that we used to call the lunatic SEPTEMBER 1984 fringe, have become a driving force within the Republican Party."

The result is a platform with no appetite for the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion rights, affirmative action, and rent control, but hungry for nuclear arms, military spending, prayer in public schools, and tax breaks for the rich. The Reagan plan for the profiteers, in short, is—let the feast begin.

The Wall Street Journal considers it remarkable that "over the last four years the nation has somehow become comfortable with the idea that someone of Ronald Reagan's ilk could be president of the United States."

The Journal is not unaware that Reagan's rise from the wilds of the right wing to the Oval Office is an indication of how far the austerity drive and military buildup has gone.

What does it mean when the Republicans accuse the Mondale campaign of being way out in left field, when in fact the Democratic platform is only slightly more restrained than Reagan's brand of country-club politics. The answer is that both major parties are in fact shifting the spectrum of mainstream politics to the right. The Mondale and Reagan campaigns are equally predicated upon taking care of the business of big-business-turning away from the poor, taking away from the workers, blowing away the revolutions in Central America, and giving it all away to the rich.

The economy is devastated, yet Reagan heralds a "recovery" discernible only in the super bonuses of the corporate brass as proof that "America is on the road again, while redefining "full employment" to mean 7 to 8 percent unemployment. This is an administration whose only contribution to countering the growing illiteracy rate has been to introduce words such as "takeaway", "two-tier, and "new poor" into the American vernacular.

"Isn't our choice really not one of left or right but of up or down?" Reagan asked in his acceptance speech. Not quite. The two-party roller coaster is rolling again, but it stops where it starts-stuck in the quagmire of capitalist politics.

It is well known that one too many roller coaster rides can have unpleasant results on the stomach. Perhaps that is why roughly half the voting age population can be expected to say no thanks to the Democrats' and Republicans' offer to take us for another ride this election year.

The Richardson-Vicks Corp., it was reported, supplied the GOP convention delegates with 40,000 samples of a new antacid they are marketing. The company also plans to provide samples of their product to the election headquarters of both parties on election day. But they would be better advised to see that their product is available in the voting booths on November 7.